Everyone’s looking for a quick fix. If only a pill or shake existed that could produce weight loss on its own. I typically preach how weight loss is a process and a lifestyle, which it absolutely is! But today I’m going to share with you my best piece of advice. If you’re just going to do one thing then do this. Finally, after 10 years of training, I reveal my #1 tip for weight loss!
I’m going to preface my #1 weight loss tip with another piece of advice. This advice would be my #1 tip except it’s so fundamental to losing weight that doing it should just be a given. What I’m talking about is logging your food! Tracking food consumption in an app like Lose It has been scientifically proven to help people lose more weight. I could go on and on about the virtues of food logging but if you’re interested you can just read this food logging article instead.
Personal Story
Before I reveal my tip I have a relevant personal story to share. Back in the fall of 2008 I was thinking about going vegetarian. I was considering it for a number of reasons. Then I watched a documentary about factory farming and that’s what pushed me over the edge and made me take the plunge. Like most people I loved to eat. Burgers, pizza, fried food, fast food were among my favorites. So you can see how going vegetarian would impact my usual eating pattern.
At fist I felt really restricted because it was all about what I couldn’t eat. People I talked to also viewed my diet as restrictive. They would also focus on what I couldn’t eat. This kind of makes sense because vegetarianism, by definition, is the absence of something. But I even had people asking me if there was anything left that I could eat, as if I had just eliminated all foods from my diet.
The change forced me to do venture out of my comfort zone with respect to food. There were countless things I tried for the fist time – hummus, sweet potato and lentils are just a few examples. Surprisingly, I loved almost every new food I tried and still eat most of them to this day. My point is that is was NOT DIFFICULT AT ALL to try new foods!
Eye Opener
It was around this same time that I started personal training. Looking at people’s food logs was a real eye opener. It turns out that most people eat the same things over and over again. It was almost bizarre how much repetition I found in people’s diets. I told people who came to me for weight loss to reduce their calories. When people are told to reduce calories most of them simply eat less of what they are already eating. There is just one major problem: this strategy is almost certainly going to result in hunger.
Your body is in perfect energy balance when you’re not gaining or losing weight. You are likely almost perfectly satisfied with the amount of food you eat as well. If you upset this balance to lose weight then hunger will be a natural byproduct. How can you avoid this?
The Fix
Reducing calories without experiencing hunger is the main objective of weight loss. This leads to my #1 tip for weight loss (finally). Okay drumroll please… my # 1 tip for weight loss is to try new foods! Don’t underestimate the difficulty of this task. What we eat is so entrenched in us that it’s hard to venture outside our normal patterns. Trying new foods allows someone to reduce their calorie intake while still feeling full and satisfied. New foods should be less calorie dense than what someone is currently eating.
For example, a typical slice of pizza can be around 250 calories. If you replace that pizza with a banana and tablespoon of peanut butter then you are going to be looking at around 200 calories. You will likely feel just as full from eating the banana and peanut butter but you will save yourself 50 calories. Chip away at different food choices like this and at the end of the day you will end up eating a lot fewer calories.
If you’re trying to lose weight eat different not less. Don’t do a massive overhaul of your diet all at once either. Change lasts when you make small, incremental changes over time. Try something new every week or two and it’s much more likely to last. After all isn’t that what everyone wants, change that lasts?