How to Actually Lose Weight + Reach Your Fitness Goals

Over the past 3 years I've personally gone through one heck of a journey with fitness. I lost over 24kg (53lbs), developed a nasty eating disorder, recovered from said eating disorder, fixed my eating habits, completely changed my approach and now I'm lifting double my body weight in the gym, dropped cm's off my waist, added cm's to my glutes (yes booty gains!) and toned up my body. All while eating my favourite foods, going out to eat, drinking alcohol and living my life as normal! I don't spend hours in the gym, cut anything out or restrict myself in any way.

Since becoming more educated on the science behind weight loss, muscle gain and metabolism I've become hyper aware of the amount of misinformation out there. We're led to believe that weight loss is a difficult, miserable process where you have to cut out chocolate, carbs, sugar, we have to go keto, do endless amounts of cardio and put yourself through hell to reach your goals. Take it from someone who's done all this, it really doesn't have to be this way! It's easier than you think. It just takes a bit of planning and a lot bit of consistency and patience.

So how do you do it?

Well, the first thing you need to figure out is what your goals actually are. Do you want to lose body fat? Put on muscle? Perhaps both? To achieve the typically sought after slim, "beach body" you're going to need to do both. Fat loss for the lean appearance and the muscle mass for the 'toned', 'fit' look.

Nutrition is everything!

You simply cannot out-train a bad diet. The first thing you need to do is figure out your TDEE. This is the amount of energy (calories) your body needs to maintain your weight. This includes energy expended from general movement, exercise, digestion and maintaining the function of your organs, bodily functions and muscle. To do this, I recommend you track everything you eat as you normally would for 3 days. Be completely honest with yourself when you do this, as it will give you a good understanding of the amount of calories you actually eat (it's likely higher than you think!). Make sure you track a typical day and exclude special occasions or events out of the ordinary, just track a regular 3 days of your life. Take the average number of calories from these 3 days and that is your TDEE. This is the amount of calories your body is currently using to maintain your weight (assuming you're not gaining or losing weight rapidly at the moment).

For healthy, sustainable weight loss you want to put yourself in a light to moderate calorie deficit. This means that you're expending more calories than you're consuming. You can create this deficit either by ingesting fewer calories or increasing calories burned from exercise. If you're starting out from couch potato status, then you could see weight loss just by increasing your daily step count.

Aim to consume anywhere from 200-500 calories below your TDEE. For those of us who are vertically challenged (short), our TDEEs tend to be lower than our more taller friends, so for my shorties I recommend a small deficit of around 200 - 300 calories mostly through activity and prioritizing resistance training to build muscle.

Now, just because you're aiming for a calorie deficit, that doesn't mean you have to suddenly cut out all your favourite foods. You can still enjoy pasta, pizza, fries, burgers, chocolate or whatever else you like to indulge in, you just need to enjoy it in moderation and work it into your daily calories. If you allow yourself to have these treats everyday and nothing is off limits, you won't crave it as much and you won't adopt an all-or-nothing mindset when you do have it. So please do not restrict anything! Sure, prioritize healthy, nutritious foods but it's important to have a nice balance. This is how you can maintain your new diet long term and not revert back to your old eating habits.

Now... let's talk exercise!

Resistance training is your friend!

Exercise is obviously a very important aspect and although not essential for fat loss, I still recommend some exercise for that calorie deficit as well as for the purpose of building muscle.

Even if your goal isn't to be super jacked (that wasn't my goal either), resistance training is still a very valuable tool for weight loss and maintaining weight loss. As you lose weight and you become lighter, your body adapts. The metabolism becomes more efficient at burning calories and while you think you just burned 300 calories during that run, you most likely burned a lot less than that, especially if you're doing cardio as your main form of exercise. Fitness watches and calorie calculators are notoriously inaccurate. You'll never truly know how many calories you burned during a workout, so it can become a bit of a trap to go by these numbers.

Having more muscle mass raises your metabolism just by existing since muscle is more metabolically active than fat, meaning it burns more calories to maintain itself. A person with more muscle mass will burn more calories doing the same exercise for the same amount of time than someone with less muscle mass - which means your TDEE is higher.

You can also prevent this adaptation by increasing your calories back to maintenance every few weeks, just to reassure your metabolism that you're not actually starving and there's no need to conserve calories. This means you'll still be able to lose weight on the same amount of calories as before even though you're lighter. If you've ever heard of reverse dieting, this is exactly the principle it's built on, and it works like a treat. This is a whole other topic though and requires a bit more planning to get right. You'll need to know your stuff to do this properly with the right timing and increments. As a beginner, stick to the basic principles.

All of this sounds great... so what exercise should you do?

Choose the exercise you will stick to!

The most important part of all of this, is being consistent. If you're not consistent and you're constantly yo-yoing or missing workouts, you're not going to see results.

You should choose the form of exercise you enjoy, that you will stick to long term! Try a few things out and see how you like them. For cardio, you can try out running, walking, dancing, aerobics or HIIT. For resistance training you can use bodyweight resistance exercises like pilates, ballet or yoga, you can try lifting weights like dumbbells, barbells or resistance bands, which can be done at home or in the gym. I definitely recommend doing a combination of the two, even if your goal is simply weight loss. It's healthier for you, your bones, joints and muscles! I personally like to lift weights, focusing on muscle hypertrophy and progressive overload with a daily step count goal of 10,000 steps per day.

Be patient!!!

In the age of social media, instant gratification is rife. We want quick results and we wanted them yesterday, but when it comes to health and fitness, transforming your body and lifestyle, it takes time. Quick fixes are not the answer. They're often far too extreme, make you absolutely miserable and don't even get you the results you want. Extreme deficits, diet teas and meal replacement programs will cause weight loss in the short term, but as soon as you eat normally again you'll regain the weight you lost and more. This leads to a never ending cycle that unfortunately a lot of people get trapped in.

Real, sustainable results take time and consistency. It's not going to happen in 2, 3 or even 4 weeks. We're talking months. I know it's not what people want to hear but it's the truth and it's important. The way I see it, is that time is going to pass anyway, do you want to spend that time living your life, slowly and consistently working towards your goal and get there in 6 months? Or do you want to spend that time chasing a quick fix, being miserable, losing and regaining the same 10lbs over and over, only to look the same at the end?

There you have it. That is how you lose weight effectively, sustainably in a healthy way. This is how I did it and continue to do to live a healthy lifestyle. Don't listen to the lies the weight loss industry tell you.

You can have your cake and eat it, too.