Guide on How to Lose Weight » The Unclouded Path

Trying to lose a couple of pounds is one of those New Year’s resolutions that nearly everyone makes at some point. But it seems that most people give up within a month or two and forget about it for the rest of the year. It’s not hard to see why. There’s so much misinformation about how to lose weight floating around the Internet, with random people promoting their own miracle weight loss product or regimen every year. It’s also a long-term commitment and requires patience. But with the right amount of planning, it’s not too hard. You just have to follow the basics.

Weight Loss Basics

Losing weight is really all about using more calories than you take in. It really is that simple, and there’s no way around it. But the most important thing to keep in mind is how healthy you are after you lose the weight. There are plenty of ways to shed pounds, but if you’re a malnourished mess afterwards, it’s no good.

There’s no magic product (well no healthy product anyway) that will make you shed pounds without you making permanent changes to the way you eat. That’s why losing weight is a long-term commitment. The first phase is losing the extra weight, and the second is keeping it off. Things like increasing your metabolism can help in this, but changing your diet and exercise are the main factors.

Dieting

So, how should you change your diet? First, you should ignore all of those fad diets, like the low-carb diet. Unless you have a legitimate medical reason (like an allergy) or are a vegetarian/vegan, you shouldn’t just eliminate certain categories of nutritious foods from your diet. Eating a variety of different foods ensures that you obtain all the nutrition your body needs. For example, the low-carb diet cuts down on high-fiber, slow-digesting, carbohydrate-rich foods (like fruits, some vegetables, and whole grains), depriving the body of high-quality carbohydrates (the quality of the carbohydrate is the important factor, not quantity), certain nutrients, and antioxidants. Following these diets puts you at risk of malnutrition and can hamper your body’s ability to heal itself or even increase your risk of certain ailments.

The key is to eat a controlled amount of foods that are filling, yet nutritious. Cutting calories will definitely make you hungrier than normal at first. That’s how most diet attempts fail: people can’t endure the feeling of hunger and return to their previous eating habits. By planning your meals and choosing what you eat carefully, you can reduce that feeling and keep your diet on track. These are some guidelines for a healthy, filling diet:

Eat foods from all the major food groups: fruits, vegetables, grains (whole grains whenever possible), lean protein (like poultry, fish, and nuts), and low-fat dairy. Since you’re going to be eating less food overall, eating a wide variety of foods will ensure you get enough nutrition.
Stay away from “empty calories”, high-calorie foods that have little to no nutritional benefit. These include soda and other drinks made with refined sugar, deep-fried and other greasy foods, high-fat dressings, candy, heavily-processed meats like sausage, and the list goes on. Since these foods are typically not very filling, it can be easy to lose track of them. For example, you might like to order lemonade at a restaurant (about 150-200 calories a glass) and think it’ll be fine for your diet if it’s just one glass. But if you keep getting it refilled, you’ll really start racking up calories without even knowing it. If you really like eating some of these things, you don’t have to eliminate it completely from your diet. Just eat small amounts of it and treat it as a reward for staying on your diet.
Eat plenty of protein. Protein is used in many bodily functions, including repairing your bones and muscles when you’re recovering from exercise. It also has the added benefit of slightly increasing your metabolic rate and can keep you full longer. Need a snack? Grabs some nuts like almonds or cashews. Or better yet, boil an egg or two. Eggs are amazing sources of complete protein. A large boiled egg is only about 75-80 calories but has 6 grams of protein!
Drink more water. Not only does swapping your typical drink with water or unsweetened tea save you a huge amount of calories, if you drink some before your meals, it can also make you feel fuller so you end up eating less.
Make sure you like eating whatever you decide to eat. As I mentioned before, dieting is a long-term commitment. If you get fed up with eating the foods in your new diet, you’re not going to want to stick with it. Don’t like the taste of kale? Hate the chewiness of celery? It’s okay! Just find something else you like that fulfills the same nutritional role.
Track the calories that you eat. This may seem like a no-brainer, but many people tend to underestimate that amount they eat during a diet. As soon as you finish a meal, take note somewhere of everything you ate. If you can’t find the calorie amount, just try your best to estimate it. Having a record of your calories throughout the day can tell you whether you need to cut down on your next meal or if you can have a little extra snack in case you feel hungry.

Exercise

The other part of a successful weight loss plan is exercise. The main reason for this is because in order to meet your weight loss goal without exercising, you’ll need to cut down on calories to a point where your metabolism will slow down. Not only that, if you cut calories too much, your body will start to break down your hard-earned muscle tissue for energy. Muscle tissue burns more calories than other types of body tissue, so just by having more muscle mass, you’ll burn more calories automatically. You don’t want to lose it!

When you exercise in combination with eating a healthy, protein-rich diet, you maintain muscle strength and prevent your body from breaking down existing muscles. You don’t want to exercise too strenuously during your diet though because your body needs to recover after a workout, and since you’re not eating as much, your body’s healing ability will be limited. Here are some tips for exercising:

Exercising a certain muscle group will strengthen that muscle group, but it won’t burn fat in that area specifically. A common misconception is that if you want to slim down some part of your body, you should exercise that part more. This is called spot reduction, and the consensus among scientists and fitness experts is that it’s a myth. While you may build more muscle strength in that area, you burn fat pretty evenly across your body.
You don’t need to do crazy workouts. Even things such as lifting small dumbbells you may have at home or doing sit-ups will work as long as you do it regularly. If you do choose to do strenuous workouts, make sure to get enough rest afterward to let your body recover.
Exercise with a friend, if possible. Having someone work out with you can boost your motivation while you slog through your routine. Also, if you have someone who will (nicely) hold you to your exercise commitments, you’re more likely to keep at it.
Pick an exercise routine that you’re comfortable with. As I mentioned before, losing weight is a long-term commitment, so you want to choose a regimen that fits your lifestyle and that you’ll stick with.

Weight Loss Goals

Now that you know the basics, it’s time to set a weight loss goal. Most fitness experts recommend that you aim for roughly 2 pounds (0.9 kg) a week at most. Any faster and you risk losing muscle mass. It takes time to lose the right kind of weight, so be patient. You’ll be rewarded with a lean, healthy body at the end. You should also weigh yourself every day. Since your body’s weight fluctuates throughout the day due to things like eating meals, it’s best to weigh yourself at the same time every day (like right before you eat breakfast). It helps you keep track of your progress, and seeing your hard work bear fruit will motivate you to continue your efforts.

Also remember that once you meet your goal (congratulations!), you should continue to monitor the amount and quality of the food you eat and keep some sort of exercise regimen going. This will prevent that extra weight from coming back.

Who Should Lose Weight

Losing weight should not be an obsession. If your BMI is in the normal range, and your body fat percentage is normal, you’re fine! You may want to change the way you eat to be healthier, but you shouldn’t try to lose weight just for the sake of it. Losing too much weight can increase your risk of decreased immune function, osteoporosis, and infertility (for women). The people who should lose weight are those who have or are at risk of obesity. Obesity is associated with many diseases and conditions, especially cardiovascular ones, and increased mortality and is largely preventable.

Yue’s Recommendation

(Disclaimer: The following is my own experience on how I lost weight. I don’t claim that it will work for everyone. I’m mentioning it because it worked for me, and it may work for you.)

I recommend using this calculator to figure out how many calories you need to eat per day. It’s easy to use and takes into account your gender, age, current height and weight, and your activity level. I also recommend using this calculator to calculate your body fat percentage. When I started my weight loss journey, I was at 140 pounds (64.5 kg), and I wanted to lose 20 pounds (9.1 kg) so that I would be in the middle of the normal BMI range. After inputting the rest of the values into the calculator, I ended up with 1639 calories to “Lose Weight” (1 pound per week) and 1229 calories to “Lose Weight Fast” (2 pounds per week). I chose to go for the latter. Here are some things I did:

I treated my diet as having a “calorie budget”. Therefore, my goal was to find the best “deals” in terms of calories vs. nutrition, and if I wanted to treat myself that day, I needed to “save up” for it. I found that approach to be quite fitting.
I usually don’t have time to cook, so I end up going to fast food a lot. Fortunately, many fast food places have made good efforts to offer healthy options on their menu and present detailed nutritional information on their websites. The Bacon Ranch and Southwest salads at McDonald’s (both with grilled chicken instead of crispy and with no dressing) were pretty much my go-to item when I went there. They’re only about 350 calories and give 37-42 g of lean protein and plenty of vegetables! Also, many six-inch sandwiches at Subway are under 500 calories and give anywhere from 19 to 29 g of protein. They were also pretty filling. I really suggest looking at the offerings at your favorite fast food places to see if there are healthy options you may like. That being said, I made sure to eat foods from all the major food groups I mentioned above.
I take a Centrum multivitamin, a B-complex supplement, and a calcium supplement at the end of every day. This probably helped patch up any nutrient shortages I had during my diet.
For snacks, I usually had nuts or a boiled egg. They really did keep hunger away until it was time to eat a meal.
I swapped soft drinks for unsweetened iced tea or water. You can’t beat 0 calories.
I already walk to whatever food place I decide to go to if it’s less than a 30 minute walk away. That comes out to about 30-50 minutes of walking nearly every day. But for my diet plan, I also added planks and squats on top of that. Every day, I did 3 1-minute planks, each separated by 30 seconds of rest, and 2-3 minutes of repeated squats while holding a 5-pound dumbbell in each hand.
Each day, I allowed myself one or two small treats (small candies like Hi-Chews) that I didn’t include in my daily calorie count as a reward for staying on my diet.

As a result of my efforts, I reached my weight loss goal in a little under 3 months and surprisingly shrunk my waistline by nearly 2 inches. I found that the weight loss was slow at first, but then sped up later. I also found that my hunger cravings gradually decreased as I got used to the lower calorie limit. After reaching my goal, I switched to my new “Maintain Weight” limit of 1924 calories while keeping the same level of exercise, and so far (about 1 year later), I’ve still kept those 20 pounds off. Overall, I thought my plan was relatively painless to go through as I got used to it, and it even saved me some money from lower food costs. If you think it’s a reasonable plan for you, give it a try!