A metabolism-boosting road to weight loss
Many have asked how I help others to lose 10 pounds in just 6 weeks without having to give up their favorite food (pizza, anyone?). So, here goes. I want to share 5 super easy steps that worked for me, friends, family, pet dog(?), and clients :
#1: Group your foods
Group the food you currently eat by the following categories: Carb, Protein, Veg, Fruit, Fat, and Sugar. This is similar to the Macros method, where people track their Carb, Protein, and Fat. Except I take fruit, fat, and sugar out of carb to count them separately.
#2 Count your portions
Find out how many portions of each you’re currently eating. I use the below portioning system that has worked wonders for my extremely busy, working professional clients. This system is based largely on calories. But feel free to use your own portioning system, the key is to use a consistent way of quantifying each food.
#3 LOG RELIGIOUSLY!
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of tracking (aka awareness) to weight loss — find a way to log your daily intake v.s weight to better manage your progress. Here’s a template of a food & weight log I use for clients:
#4: Find out how much you SHOULD be eating
You’re probably wondering, how does one know how much to eat?! You can use any online TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) calculator that tells you how many calories you should eat based on your fitness goal — weight loss, maintenance, or bulk. Here we’ll focus on weight loss + maintenance.
Specifically, within your total daily calorie budget, I’d recommend using calculators such as this one, to figure out your optimal proportions (%) of calories coming from each food group.
Good news: a lot of the times, this means you are currently undereating. Meaning to lose weight, you should be eating more of a food group or more calories overall. I see this in many of my female clients, who are “afriad” of eating carbs and fat, which in fact are key to building the muscles that burn fat! This sounds counterintuitive but hesitate not. Go ahead, adjust your portions and see your body do the work.
#5 Gradually go on a caloric deficit
After determining how many portions to eat, the fun begins. Every week, adjust your portions down bit by bit — I’d say -100 calories a week — so that your body doesn’t notice and enter the neverending cycle of starvation <> binge eating.
EPILOGUE: REVERSING DIET TO MAINTENANCE
Losing weight is easy. Maintenance is the art to be mastered.
Now you’re at your target weight, here’s the twist!
Instead of remaining in a low-calorie environment, go on a “reverse diet” to build your portions & metabolism back up to your maximum potential, as such:
The reverse diet is so important is key because most people stop at their weight loss calorie, which makes it easy to gain back the weight. Say, at weight loss, you were only eating 1,100 calories/day. Now that you’re at your target weight, you know your maintenance weight is 1,600. Most people who gain back the weight fall into either bucket:
Bucket 1: Immediately splurge and eat at 1,600 cal/day, which quickly throws your body back into weight-gain mode
Bucket 2: Continue eating 1,100 which reduces their metabolism. This is dangerous because as soon as you start eating out and overeating the 1,100 that your body has been used to, you throw your body back into “Bucket 1 mode”.
So, my biggest learning is:
Losing weight is not at all about starving, but about gradually adjusting portions and increasing your metabolism to be able to eat more while losing / maintaining weight!
Your thoughts
And that, ladies and gents, is how I’ve been co-existing with Pizza. What weight management techniques did you find helpful?