Eat Slowly
The enjoyment you have from eating food doesn’t make you a foodie.
If the gratification you get from food leads to a dissatisfaction from the way you look, then it may be time to change the way you eat and think about eating.
Comfort foods are like a drug that temporarily shift your focus from the problems you’re trying to run away from into an addiction that will cause more short & long term problems.
Weight gain isn’t the problem, it’s a symptom.
Whether you’re unhappy with your job, career path, significant other, family or friends, the fact remains that eating because you’re stressed or anxious is not going to solve the symptoms.
If good habits follow good habits, the same is true about bad habits.
Food can make us FEEL better or worse.
Are you aware of the foods that have a positive effect on your stomach and mood?
What about the foods that make you feel sluggish or cause an upset stomach?
Ideally, you’re going to eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full.
So why do you eat when you’re bored and stop when you feel pregnant?
This is a question I’ve asked myself numerous times.
I’ve also found that when you ask silly questions, your brain gives you a silly answer.
When you have nothing better to do, instead of eating, ask yourself what’s something you enjoy doing that doesn’t add calories? You can build on this and think about cooking a meal that has less calories and still tastes good.
In the same context, how can you stop eating past full if your fullness cues aren’t working?
Eat Slowly
Put your utensils/food down and pause for a moment after each bite.
Easy?
Eat Slowly Without Distractions
On top of eating slowly, put your phone away/turn off the TV.
Easy?
Eat Very Slowly, Without Distractions, and with Full Presence and Attention
Notice your food’s taste, texture, and smell.
Savor each bite like you’re doing an expensive wine tasting.
Pause after each bite and notice the thoughts and feelings attached.
If you need help with deciding which foods you’re currently eating that help or hurt you, send me an email & let’s figure it out together.
How To Lose Weight Without A Diet
What would change about your life if you lost weight?
More confidence? More happiness? More sex?
Are you looking for the fastest way to lose weight or the best way?
We want the body we see on the internet only by doing 7-minute abs or a 3 week keto-diet because that’s what is promised to us by “fitness professionals” as achievable.
Anyone with a high social following has a lot of responsibility & for the majority of “influencers”, they are paid on how much they can sell, not how accurate their products are. They want to sell you something that is a quick fix because they have a quota to hit versus someone who takes the time to educate you on a long term sustainable weight loss process.
The fastest way to lose weight is built upon motivation.
The best way to lose weight is sustained through discipline.
This article is going to outline 3 principles to losing weight, they are:
Calorie Deficit
High Protein Intake
Strength Training
Calorie Deficit
A calorie deficit means you’re eating below your maintenance level in calories. Maintenance level is the amount of calories it would take for you to remain the same weight, anything below that is a deficit. There’s two ways you can create a calorie deficit, decreasing input of calories consumed or increasing output of calories burned. How big a deficit you should be in varies based on how aggressive do you want to take it. Someone who is overweight with a high body fat percentage can have a more aggressive calorie deficit compared to someone who weighs less. Why? Because speed is the one thing people manipulate and speed is the reason why most people quit their weight-loss journey. If you’re not overweight, an aggressive diet (more than 25% deficit) is too fast of a drop that it shocks your body & brain. There is such a thing as too few calories & if you eat too few, your body’s ability to function properly will be impaired. Your body is going to think “starvation mode” & your metabolism will shut off. Your body will spare muscle during this phase & hold onto fat because fat protects your organs for survival. Also, with setting too large of a calorie deficit, you get very hungry very fast & can’t maintain that low calorie intake for too long before you binge eat & gain all the weight you lost plus more. Nutrition is 80% of the change required to lose weight, Activity (workouts + non-workout movement) is 20%. Keep this in mind.
How Much Should My Deficit Be?
It depends on how much you want to lose & how fast do you wanna get there. There’s 3,500 calories in 1 lb. If you created a 500 calorie deficit & did that consistently for 7 days (500 x 7 = 3,500), you’ve just lost 1 lb. For example, I weigh 200 lbs, if my maintenance level is 2,500 calories & I only consume 2,000 calories/day (a 500 calorie deficit), I would be on pace to lose 1 lb by the end of the week. If you wanted to lose 2 lbs/week, you’d create a 1,000 calorie deficit & do that consistently for 7 days. With this information, there’s two types of people, one who sees 1 lb/week as doable, & one that sees 1 lb/week as not enough progress. But if you created a 500 calorie deficit & did that for 52 weeks, you’ve just lost 52 lbs. Still not enough progress? Just a reminder, there’s no finish line & you don’t get extra points for getting there the fastest.
How To Calculate A Calorie Deficit?
First you need to know what your BMR is. I’m gonna save you the trouble of explaining how many methods I’ve gone through over the years. I like using the Katch McArdle Formula because it uses lean mass instead of body weight in its BMR equation. Why is that important? Because the amount of body fat one has influences how big a deficit that person will be in. Remember earlier, If you have more weight/body fat to lose, you can set your diet more aggressively versus someone who doesn’t have as much to lose. Instead of trying to figure out the complicated computations you’d have to do in order to get a close-to-accurate deficit, download Mike’s Macros & it will change your relationship with food & your life forever. Another simple way of calculating calories came from my friend Jordan Syatt, multiply your goal weight by 10, 11 or 12. 10 is aggressive, 12 is moderate, 11 is in between.
For example, I weigh 200 lbs, my goal weight is 190 lbs so my calculations would be:
190 x 10 = 1,900 cals (aggressive)
190 x 11 = 2,090 cals (happy place)
190 x 12 = 2,280 cals (moderate)
Do Diets work?
Yes. If you google any type of meal plan for weight-loss, they all work, they’re not magic. The #1 factor that will help you lose weight is counting calories. Also, creating a deficit through nutrition is much easier than creating it through exercise. If you ate an apple every day for 30 days, its calories wouldn’t change. However, if you ran a mile a day for 30 days, you would burn more calories on day 1 vs day 30 because your body isn’t conditioned for it; but, as time goes on, your body adapts to the stress of running and you perform it more efficiently, burning less calories on day 30.
High Protein Intake
Now that we have a better understanding of what you need to focus on when setting up your calorie deficit, next priority is protein. More protein is going to help you feel sexy & strong, here’s why:
Boosts Metabolism
Reduces Appetite
Changes Several Weight-Regulating Hormones
How?
Your brain has many functions, one of it is hunger control. Our brain processes information all day, & it changes after consuming food. We have satiety (appetite reducing) hormones & hunger hormones. The more protein you eat, the less hungry you become. Out of all three macronutrients, protein, carbs, & fats, protein is the one macro that takes the most amount of calories to burn through digestion & metabolism. What does this mean? There’s this thing called TEF (Thermic Effect of Food), & protein has the highest TEF ranging between 20-30%. Let’s say for example, you had a meal that contained 100 calories of protein, 20-30 of those calories are going to be burned through digestion. Metabolism is the process of converting the food we digested into the fuel/energy we need to live. A high protein diet helps us achieve that. Protein helps build & maintain muscle mass, maintaining muscle mass burns more calories at rest than maintaining fat mass does, therefore, by increasing protein intake & building our muscles, we’re boosting our metabolism.
How Much Protein Do You Need?
This is tricky because the best answer for you is “it depends”. The Dietary Reference Intake is only 46 & 56 grams for women & men, respectively. That’s insane but then again, this is the minimum amount to prevent deficiency. What we’re interested in is building muscle & losing fat & for that matter, let’s talk numbers. Men & women process protein differently meaning, men have a slight advantage when it comes to consuming protein (I realized this from working with clients, I don’t have a scientific explanation for it). How much protein you need is based on preference. Some people can eat a lot, some can’t. It’s also harder if you’re vegetarian/vegan. The easiest way to get more protein in your diet is protein shakes so if you’re not at least getting one, one a day is going to make a big difference in your physique over time.
Aim for your goal body weight in grams of protein/day & go from there. For example, my goal body weight is 190 lbs so at the minimum, I’m aiming for 190 grams of protein every day. Keep in mind, the lower your calories go, the higher your protein intake should be. The reasoning here is protein is going to help build or retain as much muscle as you can, the more muscle you have, the less body fat you have as well, & the more calories you burn at rest. The biggest issue with being in a calorie deficit is losing muscle along with weight and the reason why we don’t want to lose much muscle mass is to avoid the “skinny fat” look. Your goal isn’t just to lose weight, it’s to lose weight & look sexy naked. You will avoid “skinny fat” with developed muscles.
Strength Training
"How important is strength training for weight-loss?"
"If I only did cardio, is that good enough to lose weight?"
The truth is you can lose weight doing both.
What’s going to get you there the fastest?
A combination of both with a focus on lifting supplemented with cardio.
If you had to choose? Strength training > cardio.
Strength training 2-3x/week with the right amount of intensity is what you should aim for. What people don’t understand about working out with weights is the calories you burn is not confined to just your time in the gym. You’re burning calories after the gym while your body is recovering, about 24-48 hours. Strength training builds muscles, which in turn boosts you metabolism, & muscle burns more calories at rest than fat does. The benefits of strength training is not limited to body composition. The stronger you become, the better you look, the more confidence you gain, the happier you feel & the better you treat people. Strength training is what led me here. Years of depression & insecurity about how I looked was diminished when I saw the results of consistency. I’ve been blessed & fortunate to help others in their weight-loss journey through paying attention to their own nutrition & working out 2-3 times a week.
Cardio can be supplemented 2-3x/week with varying intensities. HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) cardio can be performed 1-2x/week, one example is sprints performed for 30 seconds with 60 seconds of rest with multiple sets. There’s a different type of cardio you can do called LISS (Low Intensity Steady State). LISS is cardio performed at a low intensity meaning your heart rate isn’t working hard. An example of LISS would be walking on the treadmill at an incline & speed that’s not too challenging (5% incline, 2.5 speed). What I love about this type of cardio is it’s a form of active recovery so for people that “need to do something everyday”, this is a great option. It’s an easy way to burn calories & recover from workouts faster.
While most people choose cardio over strength training for weight-loss, what I want you to get from this article is that the progress you want to see is not going to happen overnight. Ads you see about fat-burning pills, new diets, “fat burning workouts” are designed to prey on the weak-minded individuals who are impatient & looking for a quick solution. If you’ve tried to lose weight before & didn’t succeed, it’s not your fault. To the uninformed, everything looks like it could work but the truth is, changing your body, which took you months or years to get into this shape is not going to be solved in days or weeks. You’ll win this game if you have patience, if you can be consistent, & not quit every time you “fail”. You can’t fail if you keep going. You’re going to have many setbacks because life isn’t perfect, but the people I’ve seen become a success story, are the people who never gave up.
Action Steps You Can Take Now
Start tracking you calories for weight-loss today! Learn how here
Hit your Goal Body Weight in protein every day. Find your protein number here
Strength Train 2-3 times a week. Have 1 Day of cardio if you want. Don’t have a routine? Send me an email & I’ll give you a FREE 4 week program here: abel@aymhigher.com with the subject “4 Week AYM Higher Program”