How to Lose Weight - Simple and Easy Steps
Weight loss is one of those things that people talk about often and seem to make as complicated as possible.
Weight loss, in actuality, is defined by one simple scientific process - a caloric deficit.
How you create a caloric deficit is up to you - you can do so by limiting what you eat, adding more exercise, or a mix of both.
That said, there is such a thing as too deep of a deficit. Another common tactic in the diet world is encouraging people to cut everything that they love from their diet or encouraging women to eat very few calories to see significant weight loss.
It is true that the less you eat, the faster you lose weight. But this weight loss won’t be sustainable. See, your body is very intelligent, and once it realizes that you have restricted its energy, it will slow your bodily processes in order to survive on lower caloric needs. When this happens, you will need to continue cutting calories in order to continue losing weight - and this quickly becomes unsustainable.
Dramatic diet shifts like low calories, low to no carbs, or cutting all of your favourite foods will also trigger cravings in the body which will increase your risk of bingeing or simply giving up.
So, how do you lose weight in a simple and easy way?
Find your TDEE. Your TDEE is your total daily expenditure. This combines your BMR (basal metabolic rate, or how many calories your body burns just making your heart beat, lungs breathe, etc) and your expenditure through daily processes like work, exercise, walking, and more.
Subtract 100-300 calories from your TDEE. This will put you in an easy-to-maintain but significant deficit. If it’s easier, you can look at your calories on a weekly basis too. If you have a big meal planned on Saturday night, you may choose to eat a few less calories each day during the week and eat your normal TDEE on Saturday, for example.
Maintain this for an extended period, or until you notice you are no longer losing weight.
Reduce your calories a further 100-200 calories.
Maintain this for an extended period, or until you notice you are no longer losing weight.
Reverse diet - aka slowly increase your calories by 50-100 per week until you are back up to your original TDEE or just below it, depending how much weight you lost.
Maintain.
If you want to lose more weight, enter a deficit again.
The reason for reverse dieting and maintaining is to ensure that you don’t continue dropping your calories too low and end up at a caloric intake that impacts your mental or physical health, causes you to break your habits by bingeing or giving up, and still allows you your daily nutrients to live a happy and healthy life.
