Welcome fellow fat loss idiot! I say fellow fat loss idiot because until a few years ago when I finally started getting things right, I had been on just about every weight loss diet around. Most of these diets claim fat loss 4 idiots, and they often deliver, but they only deliver temporarily. Whenever people are trying to lose weight, they forget one important thing with most diets and exercise routines:

Sustainability.

Without sustainability, there is no reason to start a diet or go to the gym in the first place. People can lose weight with just about any diet out there or any fitness program out there. These are idiot proof, and they work. However, what us fellow dummies forget is the long run. We get excited about the short term benefits, and do not realize that they will go away soon. Like a night when I drank about twenty martinis as a college student and then realized the next day that I could not go drinking for the next two months because I had spent so much. We are great at being enthusiastic, but are fat loss idiots.

So, how can we get more permanent results? Just follow my recommendations below:

Fat Loss 4 Idiots: Sustainable Practices for a healthier body with less fat

1) Set a SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound) goals

If you have not heard about SMART goals, you are missing out on a real good thing. Go to Google and search about them for more info; I will not be justifying them here because I do not have time, but they are very helpful. If you do not know exactly what you want (specific), you do not have a target, so you can never hit it. If your goal, for example, is to lose weight, that tells me nothing.

How much weight do you want to lose? Fifteen pounds? Five percent body fat? What is the end goal? A six pack? Less saggy man boobs? Seriously, how do you define success? The more clear you are, the better you can measure your progress and correct your course to attain your goals. Which bring me onto the measurable bit.

If you cannot measure, you do not know your progress. In my article fastest way to lose weight in a week, I talked about the importance of measurement. If you just want to lose five pounds, that is not specific enough. You are on the right track measuring something, but five pounds of what, muscle? Fat loss is probably what you are after, so you decide to measure your fat loss, but do you know how to measure fat loss? If not, look into buying a set of calipers and learn how to do site tests for fat. You cannot measure without the right tools, so know what you need to measure, and learn how to measure it.

OK, so you now know what you want, and you know how to measure it. Be honest with yourself now; ignorance is an excuse at first. If you are going for a six pack in a few months with twenty percent body fat, it is probably not going to happen. Elite level bodybuilders may have a hard time pulling that one off naturally – then again, they would never let themselves get as fat as you; they have moved beyond fat loss dummies – they are elite. Now, more realistically may be to have a six pack after two years of heavy weight training, four times per week, with interval training on your non-weight training days. In addition to learning how to cut water weight for a bodybuilding competition, you can achieve this goal for a day or two unless you are genetically gifted. In this case, you can walk around with a visible six pack all the time. However, since you are not doing so already, your attainable goal will be to have a visible six pack for a day after two years of consistent hard work and be sure to take photos!

Relevance is also important. Does the above attainable goal sound like more work then it is worth? If so, it is not relevant. Perhaps you just want to get into single digit body fat and look much better than ninety nine percent of the population. If this is more relevant, then you are more likely to succeed.

Finally, your goals must be time bound. If you at any point answered, “I want a six pack,” my question is when? Someday? When you are dead and your body is decaying under the ground? The answer, “someday” really means never because you are missing one of the keys for success – a deadline.

Once you master the art of SMART goal setting, you get really good at achieving specific, measurable, attainable, and relevant goals by a given deadline. This applies to weight loss and anything else in life. If you cannot fit in into a SMART goal, it is probably not worth pursuing.

2) Commit to a healthy and sustainable diet.

Once you know your SMART fat loss goals, you can begin the second phase of my fat loss for idiots guidelines: commit to a healthy and sustainable diet. If you do not have a healthy diet, you surely will not lose fat unless you are doing crazy amounts of exercise. So, what is a healthy and sustainable diet? I will not spend too much time defining one here because I have covered it in other articles on this website. However, a quick summary would be helpful. I consider a healthy and sustainable diet one in which you eat a serving of protein sufficient for your body composition five to six times per day and have some kind of fruit or vegetable with every serving of protein, and healthy fats at snacks.

3) Do resistance training four times per week

The third guideline of my fat loss 4 idiots plan is to do heavy weight training four times per week. Three times will suffice if you are an elite athlete, otherwise, get your butt in the gym four times per week. That means Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday of every week (or some other four day variation). Without weight training, you are missing a factor equally important to a healthy and sustainable diet. You must also get used to the idea of weight training several times every week for the rest of your life. If you do not, you simply will not be able to walk around at your lowest levels of body fat. Heavy lifting gives you the biggest bang for your buck, so stick to complex, machine-less moves like squats, deadlifts, cleans and presses with barbells and dumbbells (not machines). You want to activate those stabilizers all over your body that machines hinder and get optimal muscle activation for the best results. If you do not know how to lift heavy; learn. Look up any powerlifter forums or Olympic weight lifter forums, and the people will help you out; they are a very nice bunch of folks.

4) Interval Train on Non-Workout Days

My fourth fat loss 4 dummies tip  is to take advantage of the days you are not training with weights by doing interval training. This could be sprinting hills or HIIT (high intensity interval training) on a bike (or stationary bike), or track sprints, or sled drags, or any other short burst maximal effort movement. I suppose even swimming laps could count if that is what you have available, but make it from short end to short end and not long to long. These should be about fifteen to thirty seconds in duration, giving it all you’ve got, with a minute or two’s rest between sets. This will keep your metabolism elevated all week and your body will turn into a fat burning furnace.

5) Cheat Your Diet 10% of the time.

My final fat loss 4 dummies tip is to cheat your diet ten percent of the time. This serves several purposes, and let me give a cautionary warning: DO NOT GO OVERBOARD! Enjoy some foods you normally would not, but exercise a bit of restraint. The cheat meals give you a bit of a psychological release from the strict exercise and dieting as well as keep your body from adapting to all of those healthy foods you put into it. If you are eating five good meals per day (minimal recommendation), this means that you can have a cheat meal every third day after two good days of eating. Note, if you miss one of your meals so that you are not eating five meals per day, this counts as a cheat meal; just another incentive to stick to your regular meals.

In this article I have outlined my fat loss 4 idiots guidelines that any dummy can understand. Depending on how smart your SMART goals are will determine how successful you will be. As a fellow idiot, I recommend to aim low at first. Achieve the results you go after, then set more ambitious goals. In this way it is possible to build on your small successes as well as see immediate results. Good luck, and despite the harsh language, I really do hope you succeed. I hope you have enjoyed these weight loss tips as much as I enjoy sharing them. Learning how to lose weight has been my inspiration for this blog, and really does make life a lot better.

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