Super Simple Fat Loss Guide

Firstly

This is usually the part of a fat loss article where it promises you to lose a large amount of weight within a short amount of time. A lot of times including some beautiful imagery about how easy it’s gonna be taking steps one, two and three, and you’ll reach your goals effortlessly. You’ll be eating your favorite foods and looking like a supermodel in no time. I’m just gonna skip all that and go super raw with you.

It’s not.

It’s not gonna be easy. It’s gonna take a lot of effort and hard work. It’s gonna take way more time than you would have imagined. But if there’s one thing I can promise is, it’s that...

You can’t fail.

I mean you're gonna mess up. You're gonna mess up a lot. You're gonna mess up so many times that it starts to feel like failure. But it's not. It's really really not at all. As long as you don't quit, as long as you keep getting back on track, you're gonna make it.

This isn't some motivational "you can do it!" or "impossible is nothing" chant. You really can't fail if you keep getting back on track.

Back on track doesn't mean doing everything perfectly. Back on track simply means putting in your best efforts for the day, and continuing to do it every day after that. Some days your best efforts will only produce 10% of your expected results. Some days it’s 90%. It doesn’t matter as long as you keep trying.

It's perfectly fine to take breaks too.

Life getting too much to handle? Take a break. A day, a few days, a week, a month? Sure. It's not a big deal as long as you get back on track. In the short term it might feel like all your efforts went to waste, but I promise it didn't. In the long term it makes no difference. A 60 day break makes no difference if you've been on track for 300 days over the year.

Forget what happened yesterday, last week, or this year so far. As long as you don’t quit…

you’re gonna make it.

Motivation

Stop looking for it.

The more you look for motivation, the more time you’re wasting time doing nothing at all. Motivation is nice, motivation feels powerful, but motivation by itself does nothing.

Start with action.

Action leads to results. Results build motivation. Motivation encourages more action. The “trick” to getting more motivation doesn’t come from seeking out motivation. It comes from doing first. Action first. Motivation will follow.

The ultimate secret to fat loss: Every diet works

Every diet out there has one common goal: to help you eat less calories.

There’s no universal best diet. But there is a best diet for you. The best diet for you will be different than the best diet for me, will be different than the best diet for Sally.

None of the diets give you faster or better results. They all work the same. They all help you lose fat by reducing the amount of calories you eat consistently.

Choosing a diet you genuinely enjoy is important because the more you enjoy it, the chances of you sticking to it is higher, and if you consistently stick to your diet ultimately that’s where all the results come through. Here are some things to keep in mind when choosing a diet.

Considerations when choosing a diet

There are two things to consider when choosing a diet. Enjoyment & health. There needs to be a balance between the two or not the diet just becomes very difficult to sustain. Extreme on either side of the spectrum is unrealistic and not recommended.

100% healthy and no enjoyment is a recipe for failure. It’s simply not realistic to stick to a diet you hate, even if it’s 100% healthy. It’s also a scenario where cravings become very difficult to fight and the chances of binges occurring are considerably high.

100% enjoyment and zero health is also a problem. Nowadays foods we love tend to be mostly processed foods that are higher in calories and lower in nutrients. It’s difficult to reach satiety in a diet full of “empty calories” which creates the urge to want to eat more, also leading to binges. A big mac meal (including fries & coke) is around 1100kcal, that’s almost a whole day’s worth of calories in one meal.

The best diet for you is figuring out the balance between foods you enjoy, and nutrient rich whole foods (health). Oh, and before we go on I want to remind you that...

There are no “bad” foods.

There are no “good” foods either. Viewing foods as “good” or “bad” can be very misleading.

There are no foods out there that inherently harms you or makes you fat immediately when you take one bite. There are foods with a lot of nutrients (apples, spinach, carrots), and there are foods with not so many nutrients (coke, snickers, oreos). Apples have more nutrients than oreos, but it doesn’t make apples “good” and oreos “bad”. It just means in your day to day diet you should probably eat apples most of the time, and oreos less of the time.

A general rule of thumb is to eat nutrient rich whole foods 70-80% of the time, and whatever you want 20-30% of the time.

Also known as the 80/20 rule.

Calculating your calories

It’s not your hormones. It’s not your blood type. It’s not your body type. It’s not your insulin levels. It’s not toxins. If you’re not losing fat you’re simply eating too much.

To lose weight, you need to consume less calories than you expend.

I’m gonna give you a super duper simple way to calculate your daily target calories.

There’s a lot of super fancy equations out there. They all work. The difference isn’t a big deal at all. This is a starting point. A rough place to get you started. Adjustments will be made as you progress anyway.

To calculate your daily target calories (deficit)

The number you get will be your calorie deficit.

This is the number of calories you should eat consistently in order to lose weight. Eating below this number is not recommended. It may be tempting as you might think eating below the number means a faster pace of fat loss, which is true, but faster doesn’t mean better especially when faster tends to mean not sustainable.

Example: if your goal is to reach 55kg, your total calories will be 

• 55kg x 27 = 1485kcal

Eating 1485kcal daily consistently will help you get closer & closer towards 55kg.

What about macros?

Macros are short for macronutrients, or in other words proteins, carbs, and fats.

While a lot of diets out there focus on your macro ratios, I recommend just keeping an eye out for protein. I could give you exact numbers to the decimal points of how much protein you should eat on a daily basis, but for starters using your hand size as an estimate is more than sufficient.

Having a 1-2 palm sized portion of protein with each meal will more or less hit your minimal requirements for the day. In total that’s about 3-6 palms of protein daily.

The exact amount of carbs and fats to have is more preference based. I don’t recommend avoiding either one completely, but whether you enjoy more fats or carbs in your diet that’s completely up to you.

Tracking food

Tracking food is not a necessity, but I do feel trying it for 60-90 days is very helpful for your fat loss journey. It helps bring awareness to your eating habits, along with awareness to caloric values of foods. Overtime it helps you make better decisions with your food choices which in turn help you be more consistent with your diet. 

Have 250kcal left in a day and don’t know what to eat? Do you want to finish the day off with a snicker bar, or perhaps you’re feeling a little hungry and some bananas and watermelon will help you feel fuller for the rest of the night? Food awareness and self awareness helps that decision making process a little bit easier.

Tracking app

Personally I use myfitnesspal to track all of my food. It’s not the best app out there (I haven’t tried any others to say so), but it’s the app that I used that helped me reach my goal weight. I used the free version during my fat loss journey. The premium version isn’t a necessity at all, it’s just a luxury.

Any app that has similar functions can help you track your food. Or if you want to go super old school style, pen & paper works too. You can google calories of most foods out there for a rough estimate.

Measuring progress

You don’t need to step on a scale to lose weight.

Scale weight is one of the many many different ways to measure progress. It’s not the best way. It’s not the only way. It’s one way. It’s data. It’s not a reflection of success or failure. If the number on the scale makes you uncomfortable and ruins your mood for the day, there’s no reason to step on the scale at all. Throw the scale away, focus on being consistent with your diet and you’ll continue to make progress.

There are many other ways to measure progress such as body measurements, feeling how clothes fit, before & after pictures, how you see yourself in the mirror, your energy levels, your relationship with food.

If you do choose to weigh yourself, I do suggest weighing yourself daily but only reading into the weekly averages. Weight fluctuates on a daily basis depending on a number of factors that’s out of your control. Comparing your weekly averages is a more accurate representation of your progress than the day to day numbers.

Weigh yourself at similar times & clothing daily for more consistent data.

Supplements

You don’t need any to lose fat.

You can get the majority of your nutritional needs from real foods.

There’s no special pill to accelerate the fat loss process. Losing fat takes a long long time. It’s consistency & patience. If you’re really looking for a supplement with special powers, it’s sleep.

Sleep is the best natural supplement out there.

How fast can you lose fat?

You can’t control the exact speed or pace you lose weight. But you can control how consistently you stick to your diet & exercise.

Looking for “fast’ fat loss methods is a dangerous mentality to be in. Taking shortcuts like crash diets do give you fast results but are almost always unsustainable which leads to a rebound in weight.

To lose fat sustainably, you have to continue doing the things that helped you lose the weight in the first place. Fat loss is about creating sustainable habits. It’s not a temporary summer camp. It’s a forever lifestyle change.

What you think will happen…

What actually happens…

Best exercises for fat loss?

You don’t need to exercise to lose fat.

Yes you read that right. I’ll say it again. You don’t need to exercise to lose fat.

But please don’t take this the wrong way, please don’t misunderstand. This isn’t a license to completely skip workouts. This is merely highlighting the importance of exercise in a pure fat loss perspective.

It’s not as important as your diet.

Working out is an inefficient tool for fat loss. It’s super great for muscle & strength building and muscle retention, and absolutely vital for health. But for fat loss? That mostly comes from your diet, from the calorie deficit.

It is possible to lose weight without any exercise at all, but it’s still highly recommended to find some kind of exercise you enjoy and keep it up consistently along with your diet. Exercise does not have to be the gym. It could be basketball, soccer, hiking, yoga, pilates, zumba, dance, martial arts, boxing, marathon running, cycling, anything at all.

So then what is the best exercise to lose fat?

One that you enjoy and can stick to consistently along with your diet. That is the best exercise for you.

That’s it for now. I hope it helps!

Share this with a friend so they can stop messing around and make actual sustainable progress.

Share on Facebook | Share on Twitter

More?

• If you want to see more content like this, I’m super active on Instagram [@pohhuexp]. There I post at least 1 article (check post captions), and 1 video (IGTV) on a daily basis. There’s also a daily Q&A session in my stories where I’ll answer as many questions as I can.