Intro
I recently got asked twice about the best approach to losing weight on two separate occasions. So I decided to summarize my thoughts and put them on this page for your reference. I am a firm believer in getting the basics right. I strongly believe in many areas getting the basics right amounts for 80% of the success.
I also believe, when it comes to losing weight, there is often placed way too much emphasis on advanced topics that have very little effect. So this post intentionally covers the most fundamental aspects only. If you follow these guidelines you will get good results. If you violate these guidelines you will not see any results.
Disclaimers
While some issues are a little bit more nuanced than presented here, I intentionally will not get into those nuances, in order to keep the text simple and accessible. Also in order to keep the text readable for a wider audience, I will be a little sloppy with some scientific terms. Again this is intentional.
I hold no certificates in this area and have never received any formal training. So please take everything on this page with a grain of salt and check with an authorized expert. Be wise about the topic, do your own research, and take responsibility for your own decisions. Please do not consider anything presented here as health advice.
Should You Actually Lose Weight?
Let’s start with a short reality check. Unfortunately not everyone who aspires to lose weight should actually lose weight. Self-perception can be difficult at times. If you are already on the skinny side, losing weight will probably not improve your health. Also while beauty is a very subjective quality, losing more weight might not actually improve the perceived level of beauty in the eye of the average observer.
Let’s quickly check if you are on the skinnier side already. There is no one-size-fits-all answer for this question and every person is different. However there are two simple approaches to get a rough idea. First let’s take a look at the body mass index (BMI). You can simply calculate your BMI by taking your weight in kg and divide it by your height in m twice. E.g. if you are 1.70 m tall and weigh 70 kg, just type the following into your calculator app:
70 / 1.70 / 1.70 = 24.2
If you are using the imperial system, you can calculate your weight in kg by dividing your weight in lbs. by 2.2. E.g. if you weigh 154 lbs. your weight in kg is 154 / 2.2 = 70 kg. You can convert your height from the imperial system to the metric system by e.g. using this web app: https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1344222738
If your BMI is below 19, you probably should not lose additional weight.
Secondly let’s take a look at the body fat percentage. I’ll talk a bit more about it in a later section. If your body fat percentage is below 8% to 10% for a man or 21% to 23% for a woman, you are on the skinnier side already and probably should not lose additional weight.
If you are below the recommended lower thresholds above and still are set on losing weight, please be aware that getting into really low body fat percentages requires a very strict approach for most people. So you might consider the material presented here as a starting point. Also you probably want to lose relatively little weight per month in order to maintain your muscle mass.
Caloric Deficit
From a physics point of view losing weight is very simple: burn more calories than you eat. As long as your body burns more calories than you feed it, it has to lose weight. It is as simple as this.
With this in mind we basically have two approaches to achieve weight loss: eat less calories or burn more calories. Let’s start with eating. There are two strategies to reduce the amount of calories eaten. You can eat less of the same food or you can replace some of the food with food that has fewer calories.
Burning more calories can be achieved in two ways. Firstly you can simply burn additional calories by moving more, e.g. take a walk or ride the bike. Secondly it’s important to understand that your body burns calories simply to stay alive: breathing, heart beating, keeping your body warm, replacing cells in the body, etc. – all that requires energy. This is called the basal metabolic rate. You can increase the basal metabolic rate by gaining more muscle mass. The more muscle you have on your body, the more calories is required to maintain all that muscle, and hence the easier it is for you to lose weight.
Body Composition
The human body is made up of a bunch of different things: e.g. bones, all kind of organs like e.g. the brain, muscles, fat tissue, etc. For our discussion only two of them are of interest:
- Muscle mass
- Fat
The look most people strive for is a nice, firm body with a slim waist and somewhat broader shoulders. It’s obvious why we want to lose fat: it is mass that does not match that slim look. And fat tissue tends to “wobble”, so it does not help with that firm look.
I will argue that you want to have a reasonable amount of muscles. Why? First of all muscle tissue tends to be firmer than fat tissue, so it helps with that nice, firm look. Secondly having e.g. some muscle on the shoulders can help to make the waist appear slimmer than it actually is, because there is a nice taper from the shoulders to the waist. It’s all just an optical illusion. Lastly, as pointed out earlier, muscle mass helps to burn calories. So the more muscle you have, the easier you can burn fat.
Track Your Progress
Losing weight is a long term project. In order to make sure you are on track it’s essential to track your progress. Otherwise you have no idea if what you are doing actually works. Also it just feels great to see that you are achieving your goals.
The mirror is a terrible way to keep track of your body. It’s very hard to visually compare yourself with the image you’ve seen in the mirror a month ago or half a year ago. Also it is a very subjective measurement. Me personally I sometimes think I look quite muscular when I walk past the bathroom mirror in the morning. And sometimes just the very next morning I feel like the guy in the mirror is really skinny (which is probably closer to the truth).
So we need a better way to track this. You can either use one of those fancy mobile apps, you can use an excel spread sheet, or you can use a good old fashioned notebook. All three approaches work fine. Pick one.
There are two important numbers to track. Firstly your body weight in kg or lbs. Secondly your body fat percentage. To measure your weight you require a scale. If you don’t already own one, just get a cheap one. They are available for 20$ or less.
Secondly you want to track our body fat percentage. If you lose weight and the body fat percentage goes down you lost fat, congratulations! If your weight stays the same but your body fat percentage goes down you lost fat and gained muscles, congratulations! If your weight goes up but your body fat percentage does not go down, you gained fat. In that case it’s time to adjust your approach.
There are two practical ways to measure body fat percentage at home. You can either use a body fat caliper or a body fat scale. With the caliper you physically measure the thickness of your skin and then calculate the body fat percentage with a mathematical formula. You can get a caliper for 10$ to 20$, e.g. of amazon.
A body fat scale injects a tiny amount of electricity into your body through your feet and calculates your body fat percentage based on the resistance of your body. You can get a solid body fat scale for 40$ or less of amazon. While the caliper is a bit more accurate, the body fat scale is more convenient to use. Also many of these scales come with a smart phone app that automatically keeps track of your values.
I suggest taking your measurements once a week. There is no benefit in taking measurements more often, as neither of the two values changes in a meaningful way from day to day. However there is quite some natural fluctuation in those values. So if you measure and compare daily, you are basically looking at noise and making yourself nervous over nothing.
In order to keep fluctuation to a minimum, I recommend taking your measurements at the same time every week. E.g. every Wednesday morning after you got up and visited the bathroom for the first time (to minimize the impact of fluids in your body).
Lastly be aware that there is some fluctuation in the measurements for a variety of reasons. So don’t get worked up too much if things don’t look too good one week. Maybe you just drank a lot of water and everything looks better the next week. However if things go into the wrong direction for two or three weeks, make some adjustments to what you are doing in order to stay on the right path.
How Much Weight Should You Lose Per Month?
You should set yourself a very concrete goal. If your goal is just “to lose some weight” you will always fail or always succeed – simply based on your mood and how you define “some” in the very moment. I therefore suggest you set a concrete goal like e.g. “I will lose 1 kg per month over the next 6 month”. If you write a diary, I suggest you write down your goal.
Now how much weight should you lose per month? I suggest you shoot anywhere from 1 kg per month to 2 kg per month (2 lbs. to 4 lbs.). If you are going under 1 kg per month you are not really making any progress. If you shoot for more than 2 kg per month it gets harder to maintain that muscle mass. And remember you want to maintain that muscle mass in order to lose more fat in the future.
While these numbers may appear somewhat small, it’s important to realize that they eventually add up. If you lose 1 kg every month, that’s a solid 12 kg a year. If you lose 2 kg every month that is 24 kg a year. This certainly makes a big difference that you can both see and feel. And others will notice it as well.
Theoretically – especially for heavier, more muscular men – it’s possible to lose up to 4 kg a month. However be aware that this requires a very strict approach and it is harder to maintain your muscle mass if you are going this fast.
Stay On Track
Losing weight is a long term project. Depending on how much weight you want to lose it will take you months if not years to achieve your goal. It’s important to understand that if you lose 2 kg in the first month, then get frustrated and gain 3 kg over the next 5 months, you have not achieved anything. On the other hand if you steadily lose 1 kg per month over 6 months, you have lost 6 kg! So it’s important to choose a speed that you can maintain. Weight loss is achieved through consistency.
Also sometimes life throws impediments our way, e.g. you get a lot of extra work on your desk and fall back into old eating habits for some weeks because of the long working hours. Acknowledge that this is part of life and don’t be too harsh on yourself. But also make sure you get back on the right track again soon and keep on marching. If you walk into the right direction more often than not, you will eventually reach your goal.
Eating Fundamentals
In order to lose 1 kg of body fat, you need a total caloric deficit of roughly 7’700 kcal. So to lose 1 kg a month, you have to cut back roughly 250 kcal a day. To lose 2 kg a month that’s roughly 500 kcal a day. You can achieve this e.g.
- Skipping a meal, e.g. breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
- Reducing the size of one or several meals.
- Replacing foods with less calorie dense foods, e.g. replace full fat cheese with half fat cheese or fatty beef cuts with lean chicken breast.
- Cutting back on soft drinks and replacing them with water, non-sugared teas, or the non-sugar variant of the soft drink.
I recommend you choose one of these 4 approaches and stick to it. If you are drinking soft drinks, I strongly recommend you make it option 4. If you have one chosen approach, it’s much easier for you to stick with it and follow through.
It’s hard to say what exactly amounts for 250 or 500 kcal for you, given I don’t know anything about your eating habits. I suggest you check how much calories there actually are in the foods you eat on a regular basis. You can find tables online or you can get a book covering common foods in pretty much every bookstore at a very reasonable price. Also at least around here the container of most foods actually lists the calories.
Alternatively you can just start with an approach that seems reasonable and then check your measurements after a week or two. If you lose the amount of weight you want, great! If not, adjust accordingly.
One word about fast acting carbs (most notably sugar): if you eat those, your body will quickly convert them to body fat. This leads to more fat tissue and you being hungry again quickly, because of low blood sugar (insulin response). Stay away from them! This most notably includes soft drinks, sweets, and white bread.
And yes, that also included fruit juices. If you want to get the health benefits of eating fruits, eat fruits. Fruits and fruit juices are processed very differently by the human body.
There still is this misunderstanding out there, that in order to lose body fat you must not eat any fatty food. This is wrong. The body is perfectly able to burn fat even if you eat fats. In fact fatty food tends to be very tasty and take more time to be digested. So having some fat in your meals might actually help you to follow through with your plan.
Most people who want to lose weight actually enjoy eating. I therefore recommend making sure that you eat tasty food. After all you will have to eat less than you actually want to. So make sure that remaining meals consist of foods that you enjoy eating. This makes it easier for you to stick to your plan.
For that reason I also recommend having a cheat meal every week. A meal where you reward yourself for all the discipline throughout the week and simply enjoy eating. This can be a good piece of meat, a piece of cake, whatever you enjoy the most. Just make sure you don’t go overboard in order not to destroy all the hard work you put in during the week.
While I recommend a balanced diet consisting of healthy foods, this topic far exceeds the scope of this post. In order to achieve weight loss you simply need to reduce the calories you eat, avoid sugars, and keep to it long term. If you do so, you will achieve your goals!
Sport
If you are already doing sport on a regular basis, e.g. cycling twice a week, lifting weights twice a week, or simply casually playing soccer with friends on a regular basis, I suggest you skip this section and simply keep doing what you are doing. It’s more important that you do sports on a regular basis, than what exactly you are doing. And if you have already found a sport that you enjoy and do on a regular basis, that’s great! Simply stick with it.
It’s important to realize that doing sport burns relatively few calories compared to your basal metabolic rate. For that reason eating right is the bigger part of losing weight. And doing some sport does not give you a valid excuse to eat extra food. E.g. taking a walk for 20 minutes does not burn enough calories to justify eating a bag of potato chips.
You can lose weight without doing sport. So if you absolutely hate sport, you can lose weight without doing any sport. However doing sport can help in two ways:
- Doing sport burns calories
- Doing sport helps you to maintain or build muscle mass.
Both items help you to achieve your goals.
If you are not doing any sports yet, I suggest you start slowly and pick up activities that you actually enjoy. E.g. you can start with taking a walk twice a week. You might want to pick up activities that you can easily include into your everyday life, e.g. taking the bicycle to work instead of the car twice a week or getting of the bus a station earlier and walk the last kilometer. If you enjoy working out, you might join a local gym. Whatever you choose, make sure it is something that you enjoy at least to an extent. Remember consistency is king. It’s more important that you stick to doing something for the next 6 months or so than doing the perfect thing for two weeks – before you give up.
It’s important not to injure yourself during sport. So please be smart. Again, if you do sport for 2 weeks, tear a muscle and then sit on the couch for 2 months, binging potato chips, you will not achieve your goals. If you e.g. do cycling or inline skating be sure to wear appropriate protective gear.
If you pick up weight lifting, please make sure that you maintain good form in order to minimize the risk of injury. If you lack knowledge or experience, consider hiring a good coach for a few sessions. He will teach you the correct form and can help you tailor a good routine for your exact body type and your exact goals.
If you are on the heavier side, be aware that that extra mass you are carrying increases your odds for injuries. You might want to stay away from sports like running, soccer, etc. Sports like swimming or cycling, that go easy on the joints, might be a better fit for you.
Finally be aware that your body requires time to recover after sport. In this time the body repairs the tiny damage that sport did e.g. to the muscle fibers. This time is also very important for your muscles to grow and for you to get in better shape. If you wake up tired in the morning, are not seeing any progress in your training over a longer period of time, or generally are starting to feel sick or anxious, you might be doing too much sport. Consider cutting back, to give your body the well-earned break it requires to grow stronger.
How much sport you can do and how much rest you require varies greatly depending on a number of factors like e.g. age, gender, and your fitness level. However, you want to have at the very least one day per week where you are not doing any sport. If you are doing more demanding sports like e.g. weight lifting, your body will require more rest.
Lastly remember that consistency is more important than what exactly you do. If you go to the gym 5 times a week for two weeks and then stop exhaustedly, you will get very little benefits. If you take a walk twice a week for the next 6 months however you will eventually see consistent results. So make sure you pick a sport that you like doing and make sure you actually have the time to do so. If you are working full time and take care of three young children, driving to the gym 5 times a week most probably is not a realistic option.
Strict Plans
Let me be honest. The fastest way to weight loss is following a very strict eating plan and a very strict exercise plan. If that is your thing and you enjoy that kind of live style then by all means go ahead. There is no faster way to achieve your goals. Also a great instructor can help keeping you motivated.
On the other hand following such strict plans can be exhausting. And let’s be honest for a moment. Most of the people who are overweight are overweight because they like to enjoy life and enjoy eating a variety of food. If following a strict eating and exercise plan is not for you, then the approach presented here might be better suited for you. Remember that weight is lost over the long run, so it’s important that you choose an approach that you can stick to.
Local Body Fat Loss
Some people are overall happy with their body but just want to lose a little weight in one place, e.g. on the belly. Let me break that to you: outside of liposuction there is no way to force your body to lose fat in a specific place. Where you gain or lose fat on your body is genetically defined and cannot be changed.
Yes, it might be very different for other persons and maybe that’s not fair. Though luck. Nothing that you can do about it. Just accept it.
Shortcuts to Losing Weight
There are many products offered that promise you to burn fat very quickly without any effort. In fact the internet is full of commercials for pills, capsules, drinks, magic shoe inserts, bracelets etc. To the very best of my knowledge they don’t work. And even if they have some little effect, it’s nowhere as big as advertised.
These products are just a way to make money quickly for the vendors. And they give you an excuse to not change your eating habits or do a little more sport. Stay away from them! Save your money. There is no way around doing the work.
One product that is offered to support weight loss is meal replacement shakes. I don’t get the concept. Most people, who want to lose weight, enjoy eating. In order to lose weight they have to eat less than they want to. So why would you replace a tasty meal that saturates with a shake with an artificial taste?
There are three short cuts that actually do work – or might work. The first one is liposuction. It obviously works. I am not a physician so I don’t give any advice on that.
The other options are medical products for which I am not convinced that the risks and side effects outweigh the benefits. Plus some of them are illegal here and they might very well be illegal where you live. So I will no talk about them. Sufficient to say that I don’t recommend any of them.
Atkins / Low Carb
One way to lose weight is the Atkins-diet. Or more generally diets that only allow for a very low amount of carbohydrates. These diets certainly work. And they work very well.
They are not exactly easy to follow, as you pretty much have to stick to a quite rigid set of foods to eat and a set of foods to avoid all the time. Cheating only once will throw your progress back significantly. Also eating at a restaurant or at friend’s places might create challenges.
However if that does not deter you, I highly recommend taking a look at it. For the sake of brevity I will not go further into that topic here.
Short Term Weight Loss
Sometimes diets are handed around on how to lose 3, 4 or even 5 kg within 3-7 days. Do they work? Kind of – but mostly no.
These diets all have one thing in common; they cut back massively on carbohydrates. So the body is forced to access its own carbohydrates stores. Along with these carbohydrates, a significant amount of water is stored.
So if you go on one of those diets, you lose those carbohydrates and more importantly that water. So yes, your weight actually drops. Depending on several factors you can actually reach the numbers promised by these diets.
However there is a significant amount of drawbacks with this approach. Firstly a big chunk of the carbohydrates and water are stored in muscles. So if you lose that weight, your muscles get smaller. So while you get lighter, you might actually appear less lean, because you are losing the weight in the wrong places. Secondly you probably will feel miserable, as the body starves for these carbohydrates. Again, feeling miserable does not help with an attractive appearance.
Most importantly however this kind of diets is not maintainable. There is a reason why they are only advertised for 5-7 days. Once your carbohydrates stores are empty, they are empty. So you cannot lose another 3 kg in the following week by following the same diet. Worse, as soon as you start eating normal again, your body will fill up those stores quickly and store the additional water with it.
Similar effects can be achieved by reducing water intake or using diuretics. This approach comes with all the same drawbacks as outlined above and on top of that can introduce serious health risks. Stay away from it!
Take Action
It’s not important to get everything right from the start. There are many ways to lose weight. And every little bit of progress counts. Every week that you don’t work on your weight is lost progress. Let’s say you can make 250g of weight loss per week. If you procrastinate for another 4 weeks you will give up on 1 kg that you could have lost in that time. So it’s important to take action now, immediately. You don’t have to do everything right, but just start doing the important things right.
If you have no better plan yet, you can use the following one:
- If you don’t already own a smart scale, order one now. There are plenty of great options on amazon for less than 40$. Just pick one.
- Weigh yourself every Wednesday morning, immediately after you woke up and went to the bathroom for the first time.
- Commit yourself to losing 1 kg (roughly 2 lbs.) per month.
- Decide on your eating strategy:
- If you are drinking soft drinks, stop doing so. Or at the very least replace half a liter of your daily soft drink intake with water, tea, or artificially sweetened soft drinks.
- If you are not drinking soft drinks, reduce the amount of food in your dinner by half.
- Check your measurements every Wednesday and adjust your eating accordingly.
- If after the first successful month you want to add some sport, pick a sport that you enjoy and do it twice every week. Pick precise targets, so you can easily verify you if follow your plans. E.g. “I will take a walk for 20 minutes every Monday and Thursday evening after work”.
- If eventually you screw up your schedule, don’t be too harsh to yourself. Failure is a part of every process. But make very sure you get back on track soon and work on your goals.
Take action, now!
If Eating Less Is Too Hard For You
For some people it’s very hard to eat less and they are not willing to give up their beloved soft drinks. If that’s you, please stop lying to yourself. You don’t want to lose weight. Save yourself the time and effort. You want to lose weight as much as I want to learn to play the guitar.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love to be able to play the guitar. But I cannot be bothered to practice. Or even pick up a guitar. Or even do a google search about guitars.
There is no free lunch. If you are not willing to put in some effort and suffer a little bit, you cannot achieve any goals.
Celebrate Your Success
Finally, if you manage to lose weight over an extended period of time, be sure to acknowledge your hard work. Allow yourself to be proud of yourself! Losing weight might be simple, but it certainly is not easy. So be very aware of your achievements and celebrate them.
Conclusion
- Weight is lost in the long term through consistency.
- Eating fewer calories is key.
- Doing sport helps.
- There are no short cuts. You have to put in the work.
- Set yourself a realistic goal.
- Track your progress and adjust accordingly.