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Quick Ways to Lose Weight

On April 24, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Unlike my last blog post, Quickest Way to Lose Weight, I will cover several quick ways to lose weight in this post. Rather than just cover what I think is the best way to lose weight, I will go over several very good ways to achieve this goal.

 

Weight loss tips abound, but most are missing the forest for the trees. A few really good tips will go much further than a huge bag of very minor tips. In addition, it will be far easier to implement a few solid tips than to try and remember a hundred different things that you need to do differently.

 

You can lose weight, and you will if you follow these tips without adopting new bad habits. Often, when trying to make a positive change, people will sabotage their efforts by simultaneously adopting a new bad habit. For example, when I first decided to stop drinking pop, I thought juice would be better. Little did I know that juice is also just a bunch of dead calories, just as calorie dense as pop, and I often drank more of it than I did pop because it both came in larger containers and because I mistakingly though it was healthier.

 

The result – weight gain. I thought I was doing something healthy, but I made a simple mistake. I adopted a new good habit (not drinking pop) but also adopted a new bad habit in its place (drinking calorie dense juice instead).

 

So the first quick way to lose weight is to evaluate all decisions related to weight loss carefully. Here is a short, but important checklist to make sure that you are making good weight loss decisions:

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  • Is this new habit/rule sustainable?
  • If eliminating a habit, what will fill its place?
  • Is the new behavior/rule better than the old one?
  • Is there an even better alternative?
  • Would trim, vibrant people who I want to be like benefit by following this rule/habit?

 

Is this new habit/rule sustainable?

 

If it is not sustainable, it is not worth doing. Why bother to lose ten pounds if you will just gain it back in a week after you change your habits? Short-sighted thinking causes most people no end of pain. Looking to hook a man with your great looks that usually aren’t there? Go off the diet, and if he was interested in a slimmer you that you can’t sustain, expect him to go bye bye when the weight comes back on. Unless it’s a one-time event (like a vocabulary test), short-term fixes hurt more than help. They just waste your time at least twice (once when doing it the first time, and again when you decide to take the quick fix in the future).

 

If eliminating a habit, what will fill its place?

 

New years resolutions usually fail not because of poor intentions or lack of willpower. They simply fail because they are not engineered to succeed. You may decide to workout eight hours a day, and can keep this up while on vacation, but as soon as you go back to work – you simply can’t do it… not as long as you are human anyway. The sad fact is, most people have no idea how to plan for change effectively, although there is one simple rule that always works.

 

Whenever removing a habit, you need to find a new one to put in its place. If you do not have a new habit in mind beforehand, you will simply end up filling the space / scenario with something random. Since it is random, it may be a better or worse habit. The only way to guarantee success is to decide on a good habit to replace the eliminated one. For example, instead of just saying you will stop drinking Coke, decide to drink water every time you feel like drinking Coke.

 

I got off of the Coke habit while my father tried doing the same thing with beer. However, since my father did not have a replacement, he ended up substituting scotch for beer which just made him more inebriated and cost a lot more to boot! Moral of the story is, you cannot quit cold turkey. Have something to put in place of what you plan on eliminating before you start and stick to it.

 

Is the new behavior/rule better than the old one?

 

Let’s pretend you are working out to lose weight, but decide that you will do something more fun instead of something that is really working for you. Let’s say that you decide to go on a morning walk in the nice fresh air for half an hour instead of doing interval sprints on the stationary bike because it is more enjoyable. Now, there is something to be said for doing what you love, but the new behavior will probably lead to bad weight gain rather than added weight loss. You may like your walks more, but the new rule is not better than a harder workout to lose weight.

 

Is there an even better alternative?

 

Let us continue with the previous example. If you want to get more fresh air, you can substitute a morning walk for high intensity sprints on the stationary bike. However, instead of just walking, turn the walk into a sprinting exercise. Do the same amount of work that you would normally do at the gym, but do it outside at your favorite time of the day when the air is fresh and the birds are singing. At worst, you see the same results, but at best, you get even better results and feel better about it. Extend the length a bit more so you can wind down and enjoy the outdoors more and you have found a much better alternative from all angles.

 

Would trim, vibrant people who I want to be like benefit by following this rule/habit?

 

Another excellent question to ask about your method for losing weight is whether other healthy and vibrant people would adapt your idea. If, for example, you wanted to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger used to, you should expect to do similar training to what he went through – steroids and everything else included. Are your weight loss solutions actually helpful, or just helpless distractions? If you have a very fit friend or acquaintance, ask them about your idea and see what they think. If they shoot it down and recommend something else – strongly consider their advice. They may be a meathead or whatever derogatory term you have made-up to save your own ego, but they have something you desire. The quickest way to success is often simple emulation.

 

One of my favorite quotes comes from a world-famous powerlifter by the name of Jim Wendler. To get whatever physical goal you want, his advice is pretty much the same:

 

Eat a ton, exercise hard and sleep well. Repeat this daily for 10 years.

 

It’s hard to argue with that! However, few people are able to find habits which they can sustain for ten years since most diets and routines are all about fast results. Shift to a long-term perspective and your goals and behaviors for attaining them become clear.

 

My last quick weight loss tip will also save you a ton of time and frustration:

 

Focus on behaviors and not results.

 

If you do the right things on a consistent basis, do not worry about the results. They will eventually come as long as you keep doing the right things. However, if you are lying to yourself and not doing the right things, the results will never come. Therefore, if you fail to get your desired results time and again, you really need to change your approach because it is not working for you.

 

I hope you have enjoyed these quick ways to lose weight and wish you success in implementing them.

 

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Quickest Way to Lose Weight

On April 23, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Welcome to my article on the quickest way to lose weight. The problem always starts in the definition. Sometimes I address the extremes, and other times I address something more moderate. In this article, I am going to talk about a moderate, but extremely effective way to quickly lose weight and to keep it off.

 

If you have read my other articles, you probably know that I think habit is extremely important. This goes back to Aristotle who said that habits are ten times more powerful than nature. If you form good habits, the results of good habits will follow.

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Instead of asking, “What’s the quickest way to lose weight,” I am going to change the question a bit to, “What is the most effective way to lose weight?”

 

Now, my apologize if you are only thinking about losing weight for a week. However, I think most people are really looking to lose weight for a long time, but want to get off to a good, fast start. There is nothing wrong with this because results are motivating. However, all results have diminishing returns when it comes to weight loss.

 

For example, after a vacation where I lose twenty pounds, I can lose twenty pounds in two weeks because I am quite strong and can therefore burn calories much faster than people who are much weaker. This is because I can do a lot more work, where work equals the amount of energy transferred by a force through a distance. Since I generate more force (mass times acceleration), I do a greater amount of work, and burn more calories. However, this does not go on forever. If I could keep losing ten pounds per week indefinitely, I would cease to exist after about twenty weeks!

 

Therefore, it is best not to get into the short-term mindset. Just be happy with your gradual weight loss. This is actually not that difficult to accomplish with the approach I am about to outline.

 

I will now outline what to do to lose weight.

 

Forget about workouts to lose weight for today. I discuss these in other articles at great length.

 

Today we will focus on diet, particularly, the art of substitution.

 

Substitution is an excellent art when done right, because I find that it makes discipline a lot easier. This is the same approach the National Institutes of Health (NIH) takes to help people lose weight and quit smoking.

 

The main premise behind substitution for weight loss is to replace “bad” foods with “better” ones. Notice that I did not say “good” foods, although that would be an excellent final goal. So the process is quite simple after defining bad and good foods as well as looking at a few examples.

 

What is a “bad” food?

 

The list of bad foods can get quite long depending on who you talk to, but let us make it a bit simpler because easy rules are easier to follow.

 

Bad foods are:

  • calorie-dense: ice cream, soda, alcohol, cereal, bread, etc.
  • processed: come packaged in a box, bag, can or plastic

 

Good foods are basically the opposite:

  • calorie-sparse: vegetables, fresh meats, legumes
  • natural: fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, legumes, unsalted nuts, organic cheeses and breads

 

So to effectively substitute foods, you need to:

  1. Identify “bad” foods quickly and honestly
  2. Think of a better food that can be eaten in place of it
  3. Have the constitution to choose the better of the two options

 

Substitution is like all habits, the more you do it, the easier it is to do.

 

You now know what is the quickest way to lose weight in terms of a sustainable dietary change that it is now up to you to implement.

 

Are you up for the challenge?

 

Are you going to take this very simple and extremely powerful tip and use it to lose weight that you are obviously unhappy about carrying around with you?

 

OR

 

Will you ignore this advice and keep asking yourself, “Why can’t I lose weight?”

 

It is now up to you. The ball is in your court. If you don’t learn to dribble, you will never get the ball to the other side of the court and score. There are many ways to lose weight. I apologize for not having the best organization, but there are many gems on this website that, if you actually give them the attention they deserve, you too will be able to achieve your weight loss goals; not just once, but for the rest of your life.

 

Even if you start today and it takes you nine months to hit your weight loss goal which you were hoping to achieve in two weeks, just two years from now, you will look back and realize that the quickest way to lose weight was actually the most sustainable way to lose weight because you don’t have to yo-yo back and forth, and you can always improve your habits.

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Quickest Way to Lose Weight in a Week

On December 15, 2010, in Weight Loss, by admin

Many people are looking for a quick weight loss fix. If you are like me, throughout your life you have tried tens or maybe even scores of diets to always have the same result. You lose weight from diet alone or coupled with exercise and all seems to be going well. It is hard but you stick with it and are content with the results. After some time, eventually, the weight loss stops, and you did not lose as much total weight as you hoped. You are glad to be thinner, but the diet is now not as satisfying because you are no longer losing weight, and it is somewhat of a nuisance. You look to the next magazine rack after your will has weakened and you have gained back every pound you lost, and then some. The next diet promises to do more, and be better, so you work up the resolve to try the next one. Fail, rinse, repeat. If you are looking to lose weight in a week, you are just entering a faster black hole of failure; do not go there.

Let us pretend that you think losing fifteen pounds in a week will make some huge imagined change in your body composition. You think with fifteen pounds of fat, fifteen pounds of mayonnaise jars less that you are carrying under your skin, that your six pack will be visible, or those love handles will disappear. This is wishful thinking and nothing more. Competitive bodybuilders prepare for months for a competition with strict and ever increasing diet restriction, special exercises in the gym, and loads of hormone manipulation that can kill the person that does not know what they are doing. At best, you will succeed in you weight loss, only to look like a slightly smaller version of yourself. You body does not burn all of the fat from its abdominals because you want it to; fifteen pounds of fat loss will come from removing both fat and muscle throughout your whole body; it may knock a notch off your belt size, but it will not do much more.

I lost eighty pounds, and went from two hundred and thirty five pounds down to one sixty five. Did I look better, you bet, but it was from six months of basically starvation and daily exercise. Even then, I was what is known as skinny fat. I was skinny, but not muscular. My muscles got smaller with my weight, so I still did not have a six pack at one hundred and sixty five pounds. If you think fifteen pounds of weight loss due to diet alone will make you look buffed, unless you are already a world-class strength athlete, it simply will not happen.

Now, all of the weight you lose in a week may not be fat and muscle, much of it may be from water. Eat a few salty foods after your diet and you may gain as much as ten pounds back in a day. This is not real fat loss, and can easily be duplicated. Elite level bodybuilders, fighters, and powerlifters regularly cut twenty or more pounds in one single day through dehydration. It is a dangerous practice if you do not know what you are doing, but it is something that allows them to make their weigh-in requirements and compete at their normal weight. The person who can dehydrate and rehydrate better (gaining all of their water back within a day), has a huge advantage because they are essentially keeping all of their muscle but competing against people that do not know how to dehydrate themselves as effectively. Again, this is of no concern to you because you are looking for some kind of visible change in appearance in the long run, not the look of a fat and dehydrated person for a day.

Whether you lose weight and make a smaller version of yourself for a small time and gain it all back, or dehydrate temporarily and gain it all back, the common theme is that you will not look any better in the long run. Luckily, I will not leave you hanging. I will conclude with two solid tips that will improve your body composition for the better in the long run.

Tip #1: Learn how to substitute foods. This comes from the science of habit setting, and a very successful model used to help people quit smoking. In order to change a habit, most people cannot simply stop doing something. There will be a time and activity gap if they stop. They will fill this gap with something else, so instead of possibly letting some other vice creep in, set yourself up to succeed. If you want to eliminate ice cream, for example, decide to make a smoothie every time instead. Instead of buying ice cream at the store, but ingredients for a healthy blueberry smoothie instead; fresh or frozen blueberries, nonfat yogurt, and some bananas are much better than a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. Instead of having cereal for breakfast, substitute fruit and yogurt. Instead of a McDonald’s cheeseburger, opt for their chicken salad with vinegar and oil instead of the thousand island dressing. Make substitutions one at a time and realize how easy they are to adopt. Stick with them for thirty days each and they will be much easier to maintain. This can result in rapid and permanent weight loss because you develop healthier habits and become a healthier person.

Tip #2: Push yourself five minutes, five seconds, or five pounds at a time. If you already do exercise, this translates to increasing duration by five minutes per session, doing the same amount of work in five fewer seconds, or increasing the weight by five pounds on every new set. Of course, you cannot keep this up forever, but until you are moving more than your bodyweight with complex movements like the squat, bench press, overhead press, and deadlift, you should be able to keep up the momentum. Do not worry about reps when you increase weight. If you do not currently exercise, it is time to start. This means five minutes of walking per day and increase until it is more efficient for you to go to the gym than to walk for two hours, then follow the above protocol.

These two surefire weight loss tips will help you lose weight that will stay off in the long run. There is no temporary fix unless you manipulate your hormones or get liposuction, and you will need to repeat these over and over again anyway, so I recommend following the tips rather than wasting your time, money and health on the latter.

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Lose Weight in a Week

On November 22, 2010, in Weight Loss, by admin

My fitness experiment started about six years ago, and I have learned far more than I ever thought I would along the way. You are reading this post because you want to lose weight quickly. This is an easy goal to achieve, and can be done with absolutely no supplements at all. However, you are missing one key ingredient; long term perspective. In this article I will outline three key topics; the quickest way to lose weight in a week, the best way to lose weight, and having a long-term perspective on health.

The quickest way to lose weight in a week:

OK, so you do not care about where you will be after a month or year with your weight; you just want to lose as much as possible in a short period of time for a special event. Let me try to dissuade you right now from this course of action. If you lose five or even ten pounds, you won’t look any better. You will likely look more sickly, and just like a slightly smaller version of yourself. This was my experience when I first got serious about losing weight.

I went from two hundred and thirty-five pounds down to one hundred and seventy-five pounds in six months. That is ten pounds per month on average, with most of the weight loss being right up front.

How did I do it? I started something called a raw foods diet and fasted (no eating) four times per month. On Wednesday every week I did not eat anything, and at the beginning of every month I did not eat for the first three to four days. This put me in an extreme state of calorie deprivation, and I walked outside for two hours every day. You cannot do much more than walk when you have no calories powering your system.

So, if you still want to lose weight as quickly as possible, I suggest you switch to a raw foods diet and fast every other day for the week. Throw in some mild exercise on the days the days that you eat food (a couple hours of walking will suffice), and you will lose more. Lift some weights before you start your fast and your body will eat up your muscle, which weighs more than fat, and you can lose a little more weight. However, this approach is extremely unattractive for the long-term, so I will just make a few quick recommendations below. Also, please consult a doctor before trying any kind of fasting; this is especially important for diabetics.

The best way to lose weight :

Since starting my weight loss experiment, I have become a competitive powerlifter and lift several times my bodyweight in the squat, deadlift and bench press; I even have a third place medal to show for it in the United Kingdom. By far, the most metabolically efficient way to lose weight is through heavy complex movements; variations of the power lifts and Olympic lifts. Do this every other day and on your off days, for an extra boost, do high intensity interval training. Your diet should include meat and vegetables at every meal, and drop all the starchy carbohydrates including calorie-dense beverages and any kind of grain and fatty sauce (like salad dressing). I may go into further detail in a later post.

Having a long-term perspective on health:

Are you not sick of always having to look to the Internet and magazines for how to lose weight in a week, when if you had a longer time perspective, you would never have to do this again? As I said before already, you will not look much better if you starve yourself, nor is it easy, nor will the benefits stick. After you have finished your starvation, you will go back to normal, and weigh more than when you started.

Consider adopting a healthy mindset instead. In order to weigh less than you naturally weigh (what you weigh now) requires permanent change; you have to establish a new natural weight. The less you want to weigh, the more you need to do. At the very least, you need to either change your diet, or commit to exercising more than you do for the rest of your life – you need a new lifestyle.

Read through the best way to lose weight section again if you need to, and I wish you strength on your journey to a better body, more energy, and greater health.

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