Weight loss is much more simple than it is often advertised as. Here is a list of the 7 most important steps to take on your weight loss journey.
Understand the Science
Understand that theonly task you need to accomplish to lose weight is to be in a caloric deficit.This means that you must burn more calories than you add through food. Thespecifics of how to best accomplish this over a period of time may be morecomplicated, but if you burn more calories than you eat, you will lose weight,regardless of the content of what you eat.
Start Drinking More Water
To help sustain acaloric deficit, we will need to cut calories out of our diet. It is mucheasier to do this if there is a more constant feeling of fullness andsatisfaction. Drinking a lot of water can help with this as it assistsdigestion and leaves us feeling full for longer, despite containing zerocalories
Avoid Drinking Calories
Although water willbe incredibly beneficial along your weight-loss journey, a good place to startlooking for calories to cut would be through what you drink. Drinks like sodas,sports drinks, and teas often contain more calories than you would realize,despite a lack of making you feel full and satisfied. There is a chance thatcutting these calories from your diet actually could be the main step you needto take to reach a caloric deficit and start losing weight.
Focus on Resistance Training over Cardio
This is not to saythat you shouldn’t do cardio at all, but it is worth noting that the best wayto create a caloric deficit is through diet rather than cardio, as it takes atremendous amount of effort to just burn a few hundred calories through cardio.However, you should focus on weight or resistance training tremendously. Whenbuilding muscle, your body will actually burn more nonactive calories when notworking out by improving your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). This leads to betterweight loss results over a long period of time.
Protein is your Best Friend
With buildingmuscle being so important to burning calories, eating protein is important tobuilding muscles, making it an ideal nutrient to change your body composition.In addition to that, protein is also beneficial in staying below or at yourcalorie goal in terms of food, as foods high in protein tend to be moresatisfying to leave you full longer despite maybe not having as many calories.
Track Your Calories
Sometimes it isdifficult to determine how many calories we are actually consuming daily. Tomake matters worse, we often eat more calories than we initially realize. Thisis why it is a great idea to start keeping track of your calories (apps such asMyFitnessPal and more make this simple). You should then be able to realizewhere the bulk of your calories are coming in and where you can begin cuttingsome out of your diet. Just make sure, to be honest with yourself and track allof your calories.
Don’t Adhere to an Incredibly Strict Diet
This may be themost controversial pointer on this list, but I believe it is truly the correctcall. It is a good idea to be more mindful of what you eat and to make healthysubstitutions where you can. However, it is important to realize there is nomagic diet for weight loss, especially when your goal is to build a healthierlifestyle over time. Many diets can help you lose weight quickly, but you willlikely succumb to your cravings over time and end up putting the weight rightback on. Your best bet is to make small changes and create a lifestyle that issustainable for yourself so that you can make significant progress over timeand then never look back.
