The Four Things You Need to Know to Lose Weight

Every single day I am honored to get emails from people all over the world who have, are or are planning on losing weight. The first time I got an email like this asking for advice, I felt completely validated as a person who had lost some weight and as a writer and a motivator. Here I was, pining away on this personal, sacred writing mission and someone had read and trusted me enough to ask for help. To this day, I’ve never accepted anything for the “work” I’ve done for others. This is a labor of love.

On this first occasion, I took two hours and created a special meal plan for my new Weight Loss BFF. I sent him ten recipes and a few workout ideas that I had done when I was near my heaviest. I got him to connect with me on MyFitnessPal so I could customize advice for him. We friended each other on Facebook and I gave him my cell phone number to text for advice. My new BFF, call him Mike (because that isn’t his name) sent me pictures of everything he ate…

For two days. And then he disappeared. I texted him and never heard back. I messaged him on Facebook and then he unfriended me. Profile pictures and check ins to pizza joints verify he gave up but I was left feeling like somehow I had failed him.

I still get messages from Mikes every single day. I’ve seen a few success stories and far more failures but I know that isn’t my fault. Like with fitness, the same gym sells the same membership to countless people. Some people will take advantage of it and some won’t. The barbells don’t create strength, using them does. In my experience, I get three types of messages in my email box from potential weight losers:

TYPE 1: “I want to do this! But I need meal plans and exercise ideas and an accountability partner!”

I used to get so excited to get these emails, but the unfortunate reality is that I’ve learned that more often than not, these people will almost always fail. More on this in a bit.

TYPE 2: “I want you to know you inspire me. What do you think about carbs?”

These people are like me: constantly tweaking and super scientific. There are two subgroups of Type 2:

Type 2A’s are looking for the magic bullet to lose weight the fastest because they want to win. They tend to be highly competitive and this can be a hindrance or a motivator.

Type 2B’s are looking for the magic bullet because they’re lazy and they don’t want to do the work. These people either fail or they go low carb and wonder why they can’t lose weight eating 15 pounds of bacon per day. (side note: I love ketogenic diets, I just think it’s funny that people think they can overeat and lose weight on any “diet”).

TYPE 3: “I don’t need anything from you. I’m going to lose weight I just wanted to say thank you. Can you shoot some video from behind while you do squats so I can analyze your ‘form’?”

These people are by far the most likely to succeed. And not just because they are smart enough to know that Baby Got Back. They don’t need anything, as evidenced by the fact that they aren’t asking for anything.

Type 1s and some Type 2s have an incorrect assumption about weight loss and I’m going to correct it for you right now:

“Ignorance alone didn’t make you obese and knowledge alone will not correct your obesity.”

My weight loss story doesn’t “sell” well. I don’t have any shakes or commercial products to push. I ate a lot of chicken breasts and spinach and there’s nothing sexy about that. Granted, I spent a lot of time studying nutrition because I was a Type 2A. I was very much intrinsically and extremely motivated, but I thought I would find some magic bullet to catapult me into weight loss success. In my defense, I did drop 200 pounds in a year, but I never did find that bullet.

Obviously learning is not necessarily a bad thing, but allowing our perceived ignorance to stand in between us and weight loss success is worse than doing it the “wrong way”. In typical Fitness magazine fashion, I’m here to tell you The Four Things You Need to Know to Lose Weight.

1) You will lose weight if you eat fewer calories.

I know. Mind blowing stuff here. Take it from me guys, I’m a weight loss blogger.

Your body burns a certain number of calories a day, and if you eat less than that, your body will probably burn some fat. There are some other factors, but they don’t apply for most people, so see your doctor.

Layne Norton pointed out in a recent episode of Mark Bell’s Powercast that he finds that your basic metabolic rate is a moving target. Our metabolisms speed up and slow down as we age, change the way we eat, exercise more or less or differently and many other factors. His takeaway: if you stop losing weight, eat less 500 less calories a day than you’re eating now. See if it doesn’t kick some things lose. Constantly test stuff. Eat less.

How do you figure out how many calories you burn to give you a baseline on how much you should eat to lose or maintain?
* You could use a BMR calculator. I mean, by could, you should do it. It’ll give you a rough idea, but it isn’t 100% accurate.
* Try to eat the same amount for a month. If you gain weight, you’re eating too much. If you lose weight, you’re eating less than your BMR.

2) Paleo doesn’t work. Neither does keto or high carb or vegetarian or vegan or cabbage or Twinkies or shakes or wraps or herbal pills.

OH NO HE DI-INT.

The truth is that nothing works and conversely everything works. I point this out all the fricking time and I feel like I’m probably beating a dead horse here, but we literally have had guests that have lost weight doing every single thing imaginable. And you could probably find someone that lost weight eating anything. I tried this myself, asking a friend to name random foods in some kind of sick fatty Mad Libs game. Proof (disclaimer: I do not endorse these, if anything, I use them to prove a point):

• Pizza: The 30 day Pizza Diet
• Artichoke (this one was stupid easy): The Artichoke Diet
• Peanut Butter: There is an actual book for this one

What works is changing the way you eat. My recommendation on health (not just weight loss) is and always will be the same: eat more foods that come from the ground, trees and lean or quality animal proteins. Be wary of any food that comes in packaging.

We could say the same thing about fitness programs. Trying to decide between Starting Strength, Strong Lifts and Westside? First program you should try is the one where you show up.

3) There is only one way to lose weight.

The only way that works to lose weight is one pound at a time. You cannot lose 100 pounds at once. You can lose one pound 100 times. That is what will make you successful. Focus on the first step. Why is this so important?

Sometimes we are so focused on the big picture that we forget to pick up our paint brush and make that first stroke. This was Mike’s problem. He wanted the meal plan and the fitness plan and the road map and here’s the problem.

This is how we want weight loss to look like:

In reality, successful weight loss almost always looks like this:

And unfortunately for many of us, it actually ends up looking like this:

4) The only person that can help you get healthy is the same person that made you unhealthy– and it’s not your mother, or your abuela or your pappy or your spouse.

It’s time to stop blaming everyone. Conversely, it’s time to stop looking for a weight loss savior that is going to give you a magic pill or a meal plan or success. Podcasts like ours are amazing to keep yourself surrounded with positive thinking and validation that this crazy marathon has a finish line. But if I can be so bold, if you’re on this journey to fat loss, I want you to stand up right now and say this affirmation:

“I am becoming healthy for me. I deserve to be healthy, fit and strong. I don’t need any other person but myself to succeed.”

If you’re a person of faith, change it to myself and God if you feel so inclined.

If I can be so bold (and I can because I’m writing this thing), if you need anyone else to succeed, then one day you’re going to fail and you’re going to blame that person. Stop the blame game, forgive yourself and make a commitment right now to yourself to do this for and to and with yourself because you fricking deserve this.

You may have noticed that none of these things have anything to do with understanding the difference between fat, protein and carbohydrates. They don’t require you to understand the difference between simple and complex carbs or to list the 10 healthiest vegetables to cut belly fat or how to make the latest killer smoothie. At the end of the day, the best way to get somewhere is to leave somewhere.

Do you think I left anything out? What do you think you need to know to lose weight? I’d love to hear it in the comments below or on our facebook page!.