5 Keys to Weight Loss Success
There are five simple, proven keys to weight loss success. If you do them, you will lose weight. If you don't, you probably won't. They are simple, but perhaps not easy. If you're looking for a quick and easy solution, I suggest you look elsewhere. There are plenty of plans out there that make incredible promises that in the end, really are too good to be true. Don't fall for them.
I've done a lot of research in writing this blog, and have had a lot of time to practice on myself. Over and over, these five basic principles have come up and surfaced as the main factors of predicting success. They were the main factors in my success, and I will explain how they can lead towards your success as well. 
The Five Keys
The five keys are:
Can you have success without doing all five? Yes you can. But if you want to maximize your chances for success like I did, you'll want to do all five. In fact it is far easier to lose weight by doing all five than by doing just two or three. Is this blog post a complete and comprehensive guide on how to lose weight? No. I am convinced that everyone must find their own way to physical fitness, and that what worked for me won't necessarily work for you in the same way. But the five keys are sound and apply to anyone who wants to achieve better health. Think of them as guidelines, and ponder how you can adapt them to yourself. I give a general explanation of what each key means and how it applied to my own journey. Then I provide links to related blog posts I have written. Commitment
This is by far the most important key. Why? The obvious response is that if you aren't committed then you won't have what it takes to reach your goal. This key includes many other principles, like patience and tenacity. Let's say you have 50 pounds to lose. How long did it take for you to put that weight on? Probably years. Are you willing for it to come off at a slow but steady rate of one or two pounds per week? That could take almost a year. But if you never start, then you'll never finish.
Another principle behind commitment is motivation. Motivation to take responsibility for you health as well as finding ways to keep motivated during the lengthy and sometimes painful process of losing weight. Multiple times I had to find creative way to keep up my motivation. But I knew I had to do it because I was committed. What was my experience with commitment? I had been overweight most of my adult life. I knew I needed to lose the weight, but I never prioritized it. Even when I exercised regularly, I didn't watch what I ate so only achieved minimal results. That all changed in the fall of 2013 when I went to the doctor. He re-prescribed me pills for high cholesterol and high blood pressure. And gave me a new diagnosis of sleep apnea. My very first blog post talked about this experience, it was scary for me. All of a sudden a medical equipment company began calling and leaving me messages, trying to rent me an oxygen machine to combat the sleep apnea. That was the last straw, I weighed 295 pounds and my body was unhealthy and in pain. I couldn't believe that the doctor didn't even tell me to eat better and exercise, and told me that pills and machines were the solution to my problem. The solution to my problem was clear, I needed to pay attention to my health. I turned my misery into commitment, and began taking steps to getting into better shape. I wasn't happy and made a resolve that whatever it took, I wanted to reclaim my health. It was that commitment that sustained me through my 75 pound weight loss and has helped me to maintain my weight for over a year. And that commitment also helped me find ways to keep motivated along the way. I'm never going back, I am committed to living a healthy life. And yes, that means I had to make some sacrifices along the way. But the primary sacrifice was trading what I wanted at the moment for what I wanted for the rest of my life. If you are suffering from depression, if you have a major medical issue, if you are going through problems in a relationship or some other major life complication, then mustering up the commitment to achieve better health may be more difficult. Some people can take that kind of pain and use it to fuel their commitment, but for others it can just sap all of your energy. Don't beat yourself up if you aren't prepared to make a firm commitment to better health yet. But don't be content with being unhealthy and overweight either. Get the help or support you need to get through your problems, and in the meantime take little steps that will point you in the right direction. Any amount of movement will benefit you immediately - go for a 10 minute walk and you'll feel much better. Increase the duration over time and you'll find yourself looking forward to it. Also take small steps towards eating better. Instead of 5 sodas per day, drink 3, then 1. Ask yourself if you're hungry before eating something. And also ask yourself if you're eating to comfort yourself. There are better ways to be comforted. Take baby steps and you'll start feeling better and find that you have more strength to address your problems. If you are like I was and see a future vision of yourself that you don't like, do something about it. Make a resolution, become committed to a better and brighter path for your future and you will not once regret it. Here are some of my best blog posts regarding commitment and motivation: HOW I lost 70 pounds in 7 months Find Your Motivation Stumbling doesn't equal falling Mid-Goal Crisis: How to Keep Moving Towards Your Weight Loss Goals Seven Ways You Sabotage Your Journey to Health 13 Tips To Help You You Stick To Your Weight Loss Goals rock bottom Diet
By diet, I don't mean go on some temporary diet to lose weight quickly. I mean the classic dictionary definition - "food and drink regularly provided or consumed." (Source: Merriam-Webster). Basically, you need to be more aware of what you are eating and the effects it has on your health. You literally are what you eat. If you eat a poor diet, don't be surprised that you don't feel well.
There is a saying that you get fit in the gym and lose weight in the kitchen. That is true - by far the most important thing you can do to lose weight is to ensure that you are expending more calories than you are taking in. You may or may not ever want to have visible abs, but you'll never have them just by working out. To get rid of the layer of fat that covers them, you'll need to be in a caloric deficit. There are two primary aspects of diet you need to consider: quantity and quality. Quantity is the caloric content of the food you are eating. There is a simple equation you can follow to help understand how many calories you need on a daily basis to gain, maintain or lose weight. Quality is concerned more about what you are eating and its nutritional value to you body. You can eat a certain number of twinkies a day and still lose weight, but don't expect to feel good or to be healthy. Use the concept of macronutrients to understand how you need to balance your caloric intake between carbohydrates, fats and protein. Focus on eating whole foods like vegetables, fruit, meat and whole grains. Avoid processed foods and foods with numerous ingredients. And avoid foods with much sugar content. The other definition of diet is "a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one's weight" - like Atkins, South Beach, Paleo, Nutrisystems, Weight Watchers, etc. The list is lengthy. What these can do is help to make the process of counting calories and deciding which and how much of each food to eat easier. Some are better than others, but really as long as you are committed you can choose almost any diet and make it work, as long as it is something you can do indefinitely. See my post about choosing a diet. How did I manage my diet to lose weight? I'll admit that I was in such desperate straits that I relied for a few months on a personal trainer to teach me how to plan what I ate in order to increase my health while at the same time lose weight. But the principles are classic as I mentioned above. Balance your calories against your BMR, watch your macronutrients and quality of food. Here are my best blog posts about establishing healthy eating habits for weight loss: a man with a plan food planning One Proven Tip to Dramatically Improve Weight Loss 10 Tips for Controlling Emotional Eating The Simple Method for Losing Fat Stop The Yo-Yo Now Try These Healthy Food Substitutions How to choose a good diet plan Tips for cheating on your diet Set up mental barriers Live life on the edge (of the grocery store) 8 Ways to Resist Food Temptation Using Macronutrient Ratios to Achieve Your Fitness Goals Exercise
Some would tell you that all you need to do is watch your diet and that exercise isn't necessary. I would disagree. While you can lose weight by lowering your caloric intake, you'll never get fit. By fit, I don't mean skinny. I mean have good muscle tone and be able to have the strength and energy to live your normal daily life and engage in recreational activities.
Exercise typically fits into two categories: resistance training and cardio training. Resistance training involves either using weights or your own body weight to strengthen and build your muscles. Cardio means any exercise that raises your heart rate. Typically in a given amount of time, you'll burn more calories doing cardio exercise than weight training. Naturally you would think that if cardio exercise burns more calories, that you would want to do that more for weight loss. Here's a secret: the more muscle mass you have, the more calories you will burn, even when you are doing nothing. Does that mean you have to go to the gym and lift heavy weights in order to effectively lose weight? Not at all. There are many ways to get started with strength training, but the most important thing is to just become a more active person. If you haven't been working out, it's probably best to begin with walking. Take a walk each day for 15 minutes for a week. Bump that up to 20, then 30, then 60 minutes in subsequent weeks. Once you're into a comfortable walking routine, you can consider other forms of cardio exercise. Here are my posts about exercise: How to Make Time for Exercise 6 Best body weight exercises Don't be Scared of the Gym 6 Tips for Getting Started with Lifting Weights Do You Need A Personal Trainer? Don't Let Getting Hurt Derail Your Fitness Plans Don't Skip the Warm Up A Great Resistance Training Routine 45 Minute Upper Body Workout Take the 52 Day Challenge Tracking
If you're not tracking your progress, you're not making progress. How can that be, you ask? If you're committed, trying to eat right and exercise, shouldn't that be enough? In a word, no. For example, let's say that you've created an eating plan that leads towards losing one pound a week. If you don't track what you're eating, then you really have no idea if you're eating too many or too few calories...you're guessing. And true progress can't be made through guesswork. Similarly, if you're not measuring your weight, body part circumferences, or body fat percentage, you don't really know exactly where you stand in terms of weight loss and body composition. But, you say, my clothes are looser, isn't that enough? Clothes are one gauge of progress, and quite a good one. But you could be losing a lot of muscle and losing a small amount of fat, or losing fat and keeping muscle. Your entire goal with weight loss isn't just to lose weight, it's to lose fat.
When I say you need to track your daily food intake, I know that sounds daunting. I made a blog entry regarding food tracking that should help make it a simpler task. To be fully honest, I don't track my food intake every day. But during the period of time where I was following a plan to lose weight, I did track it regularly. And still to this day when I want to lose a few pounds I start tracking just to see where I'm at and what needs to change. For exercise tracking, you can be as rigorous as you want. If your plan is just to walk 30 minutes a day, that doesn't require much tracking if you are consistent. If your fitness plan includes weight training, then you'll want to track the amount of weight you're using for a particular exercise along with reps so that you can improve over time. There are plenty of smart phone apps and web sites out there that make it easy to create and track your fitness goals. Lastly, you want to be sure and take body measurements every couple of weeks. I recommend measuring your weight, body part circumferences, and your body fat percentage. See this post I made regarding measuring your progress. How did I track my progress as I lost weight?
There isn't necessarily one right way to track you progress, but the most important thing is to find a way that works for you and use it on a consistent basis. Then you know where you stand with regard to your goals. Here are my blog posts regarding tracking: How to tell if you are progressing One Proven Tip to Dramatically Improve Weight Loss Using Macronutrient Ratios to Achieve Your Fitness Goals How Healthy is Your Blood? Support
Why do you need support when trying to lose weight? Perhaps that is a silly question to you. Losing weight is not a very quick or easy process, regardless of what the countless ads you read tell you. It takes commitment, eating right, exercise and tracking. At times you feel worn out, irritated by how slow things are progressing, frustrated that things aren't progressing, etc. If you want to successfully lose weight, you need to build a structure of support around you so that when (not if) you run into those rough times, you have mechanisms to help you keep focused on your goal.
For me personally, once I decided that I was going to lose the weight, I also began to put a support system into place to ensure that I didn't fail. Here are the things that I did:
As I started to make noticeable progress, I turned towards all of the above methods to help me stay patient and get through the hard times. The support actually grew over time - as people started to view me more as a person who was dedicated to health and fitness, they began to look at me as an example. In turn, since I knew I had a reputation, I was hesitant to do anything that would disappoint me or others. For better or worse, I became "Shrinkinguy," a fitness superhero (haha). Here are some blog posts I made related to support: Take the 52 Day Challenge Fitocracy: Social Fitness My Favorite Health and Fitness Podcasts Starting Out Mid-Goal Crisis: How to Keep Moving Towards Your Weight Loss Goals 13 Tips To Help You You Stick To Your Weight Loss Goals Bottom Line
These five keys - commitment, diet, exercise, tracking and support are simple, yet powerful tools for you to use as you prepare and plan for a better, healthier future. They were critical to my success and I know that you'll find them useful as well. Please give me your feedback on my contact page or in the comments section below and I will strive to improve on this post over time. Good luck, and let me know how I can help.
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