I’ve dieted and lost weight many times. I’ve lost over 30lbs since January and there is no way it’s coming back, I’ve made a lifelong change to watch what I eat. I’ve become obsessed with reading about fitness/diet research studies and success stories. And I’ve become obsessed with being healthy, losing weight, and gaining muscle. I’ve also learned a lot through trial and error and through helping my wife along — she’s lost over 25 pounds on the first diet she’s ever been on.

Also, maybe this is pathetic, but I often fantasize about helping obese people lose weight. I think about motivating them but most importantly teaching them about nutrients, the body, and how to lose weight. What would I tell them about losing weight? I’ve turned it into a three part post. This is my manifesto for losing weight, I’m sure some of the finer points will grow and change but these points I’ll never alter.

I think there are many facets of losing significant amounts of weight but only three stick out as being key for everyone. In this (long) article I’ll talk about each key in detail. I’m not claiming that I’ve discovered anything new or a magic bullet, just relaying what has worked best for me and what, based on research I’ve read, seems to be best. I apologize for the formatting of this article. I have been sitting on it a while and getting all the HTML correct is tedious and boring so I decided to just post up my rough draft that I’ve been piecing together for months.

The 3 keys to weightloss:
1. Maximize your metabolism
2. Count and limit calories
3. Banish white carbs

1. Maximize your metabolism
The first and most imperative step to weight loss is to increase and maintain your metabolism. The body is very good at adapting to change. When starved the body adapts by slowing down and consuming less calories, it’s a defense mechanism. If you want to lose weight or maintain your weight while eating more you need to avoid this.

Here are the ten best ways I’ve found to both boost your metabolism and keep it high if you’re limiting your calories:

1. Weight training and/or HIIT (3-4 a week)
2. Eat every 2-3 hours
3. Never ever miss breakfast (and make it your biggest meal of the day)
4. Protein, fat, and fiber at every meal (or 2 out of 3 ain’t bad)
5. Supplement with Omega-3 (fish oil or flax)
6. Weekly or biweekly high calorie day (”cheat” day)
7. Relax
8. Eat your veggies/fruits or supplement with something like GreensPlus, NanoGreens, Biotest Superfood, etc.
9. Get the right fluids - No liquid calories and a gallon of water a day
10. Eat enough - eating too little is counterproductive

1. Weight training and/or HIIT (3-4 a week)
-Many studies have shown that weight training is essential for fat loss and that aerobics fall short. If you are looking to be in better cardiovascular/aerobic shape you should look into HIIT and leave 30+ minute bouts of stead state cardio to people trying to compete in marathons. As far as beginner routines I recommend StrongLifts.com’s basic 5×5 program or the book “The New Rules of Lifting for Women”.

2. Eat every 2-3 hours
-Never let yourself get hungry. When you feel hungry your body starts shutting and slowing things down. Bring things to eat with you and always have a snack/meal every 2-3 hours. The healthier the snack (higher in protein, fat and fiber) the more satiated you’ll feel and for longer. If you snack on something sugary you’re shooting yourself in the foot — see part 3.

3. Never miss breakfast (and make it your biggest meal of the day)
-Breakfast is the most important and most neglected meal. You’re breaking an 8 hour fast and can even afford to take in ample carbohydrates here. Never miss breakfast, you’re not doing yourself a favor by skipping it you’re just destroying your metabolism.
-Another point I want to touch on that is loosely related is that you should avoid eating a couple hours before bed. A lot of people eat a lot (most!) calories right before going to sleep. Not only does this lead to digestion problems (acid reflux, gas, etc) but the calories you consume have no chance of being used for energy.

4. Protein, fat, and fiber at every meal (or 2 out of 3 ain’t bad)
-An easy rule of thumb is that every snack/meal should have a good amount (at least 10-20g) of protein+fat+fiber. This is often hard to do but if you have a choice this will definitely help you in the long run. This rules out things like Special K bars, dried fruit, or bagels which are no better than candy. Having at least one of these three in every food with thwart some of the bad effects of simple carbs that are present because it will slow digestion.

5. Supplement with Omega-3 (fish oil or flax)
-Omega-3 supplements (fish or flax oil) are probably the most effective/important supplement there is. It has been around for years and hundreds of studies have been published to back up its benefits. It is NOT as simple as eating fish a couple times a week.

6. Weekly or biweekly high calorie day (”cheat” day)
-After dieting a few weeks your body starts ramping down your metabolism in defense of famine. One chemical that is indicative of this is leptin. A study I read (I can find link if someone is interested) that after several weeks of dieting leptin levels were down 30-40% in test subjects after 1 day of essentially binge eating it was back up to baseline. Use this to your advantage! Make every Saturday a cheat day. You get to eat whatever you want and it will make every week 6 big steps forward and 1 small step backwards instead of 7 progressively smaller steps forward. I would recommend not eating 3 hours or so before bed on cheat day though to prevent your binge from bleeding into the next day but it’s not imperative just an observation.

7. Relax
-Stress triggers cortisol which causes a drop in metabolism and lots of bad things in the body. Focus on relaxing every day, even if you can only clear your mind for 30 seconds. We’re all going to die someday and given enough time no one will even remember you ever existed so take it easy!

8. Eat your veggies/fruits or supplement with something like GreensPlus, NanoGreens, Biotest Superfood, etc.
-Phytonutrients are the body’s natural healers. People get far fewer now than ever before. Try to eat a diverse diet of fruits and vegetables, make a goal of trying something new each week. Don’t get so stuck in your ways and picky that you never try anything new. We all have 99% the same taste buds and if people eat it there is a good chance it won’t taste so bad.

9. Get the right fluids - No liquid calories and a gallon of water a day
-A very easy rule of thumb is that you should never drink calories. Soft drinks and juice are digested very easily and are completely sugar. They contain no protein, fiber, or fat to slow digestion and glucose hits your bloodstream just minutes after a sip. Unless you are involved in very strenuous exercise — so that all the glycogen in your muscles is depleted — the sugar will spike your insulin levels signaling your body to store fat and the Coke/Juice will go directly into adipose tissue. If you are drinking water this does no happen, it’s quite the opposite actually. Drinking a lot of cold water increases the amount of calories you burn through the thermic effect. Alcohol also falls under the category of drinks to avoid obviously because it contains calories. But it is even more sinister than sugar-waters. Alcohol is seen by the body as a toxin and the liver has to essentially drop everything it’s doing to rid the body of it. The liver is very important to the break down of fat and your metabolism.

10. Eat enough, don’t be aggressive and try to eat less some days
For a long time I tried to diet too aggressively or on some days I would drastically reduce calories (for example reducing to <800). Doing so puts your body into panic-starvation mode and completely shuts down your metabolism and makes you feel horrible. Don't do it, you will not lose weight faster. You may weigh less the next day but it's just water weight (since you don't have as much food/water in your intestines as normal). I know some people think they can starve themselves and lose a lot of weight, maybe they lose 10lbs in a week so how am I arguing with that? There is no way to lose that much in a week unless you are morbidly obese. What you've done is cleared out all the food in your intestines and lost a lot of water. I can lose 10 pounds over night if I go to the sauna and take diuretics (I did it many times in high school wrestling). Ten pounds of fat is 35,000 calories. It is nearly impossible to create that sort of energy deficit in a week in a non 300+ pounds individual.

2. Count and limit calories

I’ve learned that it is not as simple as eating less calories than you expend but that it’s a pretty good starting point. There are three ways to do this:

1. Reduce the amount of calories you consume.
2. Increase the amount of calories you expend.
3. 1 and 2

A common misconception is that you can lose a lot of weight by simply exercising more. You can lose some but not a lot. Jogging for one hour burns around 600 calories (and studies suggest it could thwart muscle gains). So if you jogged 1 hour a day 5 days a week you’d burn less than a pound of fat a week if you eat the same as you have been. Exercise can increase your metabolism but new studies on this effect (excess postexercise oxygen consumption, EPOC) have found it not as significant as previously believed. HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) has been shown to be much more productive but that is an article for a different time.

People often don’t want to consciously reduce their calories. They try some small tweaks and hope for the best. Unless they are very overweight or their eating habits were very poor the results are slow if not nonexistent. Almost every fat person I’ve ever met has went on a “portion control” diet, oh sorry, lifestyle change and they look more overweight than ever as a result. I think it is imperative to keep up with exactly what you’re putting in your body and to logically decide what to consume and not leave it up to emotion and appetite.

A slight tangent I want to deal with here. The sentiment that a calorie deficit burns fat and muscle indiscriminately is one of the biggest urban legends perpetuated among fitness aficionados. If the calorie deficit is too high and the dieter is not exercising (most importantly weight training, see Key 1) it can happen but the body prefers fat as it’s stored energy source, study after study has proven this. If you have a lot of muscle and not very much fat you will lose a lot of muscle reducing your calories dramatically because you don’t have that much fat to get energy from, it’s common sense. People make the leap of faith to say that an obese person with relatively low amounts of muscle would lose as much muscle. This perpetuates laziness and is often promoted by the people trying to sell ridiculous cardio equipment or the latest herbal fat burner. Furthermore, beginner weight trainers can and will increase muscle mass during calorie deficit — which in turn increases their metabolism and fat loss.

There are a lot of formulas out there to calculate how many calories you need a day. People tend to like the ones that say they can eat more — I have no idea why this is so if they want to lose weight so badly. My favorite is one I read about on Drew Baye’s site:

For most moderately active people, multiplying ideal bodyweight (approximately 15% body fat if male, 20% if female) by 15 will provide a reasonably good estimate of daily maintenance calorie intake. Sedentary or smaller people may need to multiply by as little as 12 to 14, while very active or larger people may need to multiply by as high as 16 to 18. Even better would be to measure and record bodyweight and body fat percentage and daily calorie intake over a period of several weeks and calculate maintenance calorie intake based on any changes in bodyweight (if you’re gaining weight your daily caloric intake is over maintenance level, if you’re losing weight it’s below). Better yet would be to be have your resting metabolic rate tested at a physiology lab or fitness center with the appropriate equipment.

I think my ideal weight is 150 pounds (I’m not factoring in the amount of muscle I would ideally have) which comes out to 2250. This number is pretty spot on from my experience with dieting when sedentary. The next step is to decide how many calories less than that you will eat a day. Most people reduce their maintenance amount by 500-800 calories which will make you lose around 1-2 lbs of fat a week. I don’t think men should ever go lower than 1200 and women 1000. I’ve ate 1200 a day before, it’s difficult but doable however my metabolism paid for it (see number 1). The next step is to start counting calories.

Most people have no idea how many calories they’re taking in, and even if they do they often underestimate how much they eat. The beginning calorie counter will might find it daunting at first but it becomes very easy after you memorize the calories in your favorite meals/snacks. Get a small notebook or keep an excel sheet and do it for one week. Just add up all the calories you ate, nothing is too small. If you put mayonnaise on your sandwich remember to add it, if you drank a Sprite at lunch remember that too, and if you had a latte at Starbucks don’t forget that either. Another is way to keep track is to use a site like fitday.com.

When eating out Google the restaurant name before hand — for example, google “tgif nutrition” and see the calorie counts. Look at the calories in dishes — you’ll be amazed at how many calories things have — and commit a couple things to memory that you might get. Make sure to see if the calorie count includes fries or whatever side you choose, it likely won’t and will add 500 calories or so to the total. The same goes for the bread which will add 150 calories or so a piece. Everything counts.

Start out by just counting calories, do that for a few weeks until you’re comfortable with in and it becomes second nature. Then try counting how many grams of sugar, fiber, or protein you get (you want fiber/protein and sugar is the devil, see the 3rd “key”). Add one at a time until it becomes too cumbersome or you find that you’re getting enough every day as a result — after counting my fiber intake for 2 weeks I have subconsciously adjusted to making sure I have 25+ grams per day and rarely calculate it anymore.

3. Say no to white carbohydrates
Carbohydrates are the body’s main source of fuel, it’s where we get energy from. Read here for how protein, fat, and carbohydrates are absorbed in the body. Bad carbs are the simple and easy to digest ones. When you eat, let’s say, 140 calories of sugar (1 can of Coca-Cola) the sugar is digested very quickly and enters your blood stream. High levels of sugar in your blood gives you sort of a buzz. If you do not use these calories — and you won’t unless you are doing vigorous exercise — your body releases insulin which essentially starts the process of storing those calories as fat. The release of insulin also makes you feel sort of lousy and makes you hungry (for more carbs!).

Eating processed grain or sugar sets up a vicious cycle of fat storage, hunger, eating, fat storage, hunger, eating because of the way they are processed in the body. The single best piece of advice I can give to people looking to choose healthier foods is to avoid white carbs, for example, processed grain and sugar.

If the foods you eat have sugar or simple carbs (white bread, potatoes, most snacks, pasta, etc) then it is far better to make sure you are also eating some protein, fat, and/or fiber with those. Protein, fat, and fiber slow down digestion and will help smooth out the blood sugar spike from the bad carbohydrates. I read in a book that mixing a tablespoon of Metamucil (fiber) to a Coke completely changes the glycemic load (that is how much it increases your blood sugar and insulin levels).

Diabetes and heart disease are caused by America’s infatuation with carbohydrates. I could get into conspiracy theories here but the food pyramid was not designed by scientists by any means (Congress came up with after being pressed by mid-west lobbyists, you do the math!). If you cut down on the white carbs you eat you will reduce your risk of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes it’s as simple as that!

Conclusion
OK to sum it up: keep your metabolism high while limiting your calories and bad carbs. That’s it!