Lose Weight AND Keep It Off

So you want to lose weight and keep it off this time. You don’t want the almost inevitable weight gain rebound to happen. How do you do it? 

Because you’ve tried losing weight before. And whatever diet or weight loss plan you’re following works at the beginning. 

Even detox slimming teas that tastes like butt and overpriced juice cleanses work at the beginning. Anything that puts you in a calorie deficit will work.

But you eventually put the weight back on, and then some. Sound familiar? 

That’s why I’m never impressed anytime I see an 8 week magical before and after weight loss transformation. 

Not to take anything away from the accomplishment. But show me your “before and after, after” transformation. Show me how you look 8 months later. 

Because that usually tells a better story whether you’re actually able to keep the weight off. Because you want long term sustainable results.

Here’s the thing. People see me these days and assume that this is how I’ve always looked. No. I’m not naturally lean. I’m not one of those freaks. 

I didn’t win the genetic lottery pool where I can just eat whatever I want and not get fat. Nobody likes those people by the way. If I go YOLO on my diet and I eat like crap, I’m gonna gain weight.

But over the last 8 years, I’ve been able to maintain a physique that I’m proud of. 

I’m healthy, I’m happy with my diet, my clothes fit me well. But more importantly, I feel good about myself. I feel good in my own skin. And that’s what really counts.

Today, I’m gonna share with you my favourite habits when it comes to losing weight. But more importantly, keeping it off forever. 

LOSE WEIGHT AND KEEP IT OFF – 5 Things You Must Do DAILY

I just want to get ahead of this in case you’re looking for some magic weight loss pill. You’re gonna be severely disappointed with this video if you’re looking for a shortcut. Unfortunately, you still have to put in the work. There’s no free lunch here. 

These habits are simple. They’re very easy to implement. But you have to keep doing that. You have to keep implementing them. Keep doing the work.

You can’t just do them once and then say, “I’m good.” There’s no shortcut to hard work. Just like in life. There’s a reason why there’s a top 5 percentile. 

It’s that classic 80/20 principle. 80% of the world’s wealth is owned by  20% of the population.

80% of people who make weight loss new years resolutions fail. Only 20% end up achieving them. So my goal for this video is to get you closer to that top 20% percentile.

The first habit that a lot of people who’s lost weight and have been able to keep it off is they’re all active. They live an active lifestyle.

1. Stay active

They all move their body in some way, shape, or form every day. This is why I’m such a big proponent of setting a goal of getting 10,000 steps every day. Because it brings a boat load of benefits along with it. 

And the reverse is also true. You won’t find a hard time finding a list of  negative health consequences of living a sedentary lifestyle. 

You’ll never hear someone say, I lost so much weight by not doing anything. No. It doesn’t work like that.

This habit is so powerful because with it comes 5 major benefits:

1. It avoids prolonged periods where you’re completely sedentary

Living a sedentary lifestyle, like I said, is not good. It brings a boat load of negative health consequences. It basically shuts down your fat burning metabolism and drastically increases your risk of developing chronic disease.

The problem is, this is kinda the default lifestyle for a lot of people. Especially if you have a desk bound job where you’re just sitting for 8 hours every day. 

If you drive to work, you’re in a sitting position. You’re not moving. We get home and the first thing we do is sit on the couch and watch TV. Still not moving much.

Walking simply allows you to take breaks from those prolonged sedentary periods.

2. It keeps you in the fat burning zone

Walking basically guarantees to keep you below your maximum aerobic heart rate. 

It’s where you get maximum aerobic benefits with minimum anaerobic stimulation. 

Translation? Staying below your maximum aerobic heart rate is where your body is mainly burning fatty acids for energy. This is that infamous “fat burning zone”. Yup, it exists.

While you might not burn as much calories from walking, rest assured the amount of energy you do burn is coming from fat.

3. You don’t have to do “actual” cardio

I don’t know about you but I hate doing traditional cardio. A lot of people will agree with me on that. It’s just not fun. It’s boring. When I realized that I could just walk and it’s actually better for you, that was a complete game changer. Because anybody can walk.

4. It’s relaxing

Walking is basically the opposite of running when it comes the physiological effects that gets triggered in your body when you do it. 

When you go for a run every day, you’re putting your body in a constant state of stress. It starts to think you’re being chased by a bear every day. And chronic stress leads to chronic inflammation. Which then opens up Pandora’s box to all sorts of nasty disease.

While walking is extremely relaxing. It’s basically like active meditation. It’s a great way to lower your stress levels. That’s why it’s so important to incorporate it as part of your daily routine. 

5. It gives you time for personal development

This is one of my favourite unintended benefits of walking. I never expected this and personally this has been the biggest game changer for me when it comes to my personal development.

I’ve been able to read one or two books per week instead one book per month because I started listening to audiobooks during my walk. I also listen to audiobooks while I’m driving. I’m one of those weirdos.

That’s honestly been my secret weapon how I’m able to come up with new videos every week.

And you don’t always have to be listening to audiobooks. Mix it up. Because there’s also so much value in just enjoying your own company. Notice your surroundings. Smile when you make eye contact with someone. Breathe. 

And if you can go for a walk on a trail or somewhere close to nature, you’re absolutely winning. The benefits just gets magnified. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t feel better after spending time in nature.

My next favourite habit that I personally do and I’ve been doing this since 2012 and I get all my clients to do is to weigh yourself first thing in the morning every day.

2. Weigh yourself

Some people might raise an eyebrow on this habit but hear me out. Yes, you should never just rely on the scale when it comes to your progress. But it can be an extremely powerful tool when it comes to seeing exactly where you’re at and making sure you’re always headed in the right direction.

And there’s research that supports this habit. There’s research that shows that weighing yourself every day can actually be helpful. 

And again, I can personally vouch for this. It brings so much information and built in accountability when it comes to what you eat and making sure you never go off the rails.

And it really embodies the statement, you can’t control what you can’t measure. There are obviously other ways to track your progress like weekly progress pictures and measurements. 

But if you have a lot of weight to lose, and you wanna make changes in your life and lose some of that weight, you wanna measure your progress on the scale daily so you know what’s going on.

Here’s why it’s key to do it every day. Your weight can easily fluctuate up or down by a few pounds depending on a lot of variables. 

But if you’re someone who only weigh themselves once a week. And that one day just happens to be the day where you had a high carb meal or a cheat meal the night  before. You wake up, you’re feeling a little bloated. You’re a little feeling puffy because of water retention. You weigh yourself and the scale shows you gained weight and you start having a meltdown. 

When in reality, you’ve actually been losing weight the entire week. And if you average out your numbers, you’ve actually lost a pound or two. But in that one specific day, you’re on the ‘up’ side of things. But you won’t have that perspective if you don’t weigh yourself every day.

And if you don’t know how to read this data properly. It can send some people on a downward spiral. This is when people just go YOLO on their diet because they say it’s too hard. They start questioning themselves. Next thing you know, they’re completely off the wagon. 

That’s why you want to get in the habit of weighing yourself every day. You have all this information and you can average that out to get a more accurate representation of your progress.

Bear in mind as well that the process is not linear. Again, depending on your activity level, how much sleep you got the night before, your current stressors, and your diet. Your weight could easily fluctuate. But as long as it’s always pointing in the right direction, you’re gonna be okay. 

Now this next habit will almost guarantee that you’re always headed in the right direction.

3. Get in the habit of taking a break from eating

This is more commonly known as intermittent fasting. And I talk about this extensively in a lot of my other videos. But in layman’s terms, intermittent fasting allows you to tap into your fat stores and burn it for energy. 

It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle. It’s a health tool with a side effect of weight loss. And it’s one of the main tools I used to initially transform my body in 2012 and I’ve been able to maintain my results ever since. It’s also what a lot of my clients use to transform their bodies and maintain it.

Intermittent fasting also helps curb one of the most destructive habits that’s been shown to sabotage people’s weight loss progress like nothing else. And that’s the habit of snacking.

This has been ingrained in our heads for decades now that snacking is somehow healthy because it keeps your metabolism high. Non sense. That’s a myth.

The bigger issue is we don’t really snack on the healthiest stuff. We usually snack on processed food. And it reinforces this unhealthy relationship we have around food in that we’re so scared to feel hungry. As if we’re gonna die the moment we feel the first sign of hunger.

So we take preventative measures by snacking. This makes absolutely no sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Meal times are completely made up. 

Intermittent fasting just gives you this controlled eating window so you’re not eating all day. It’s the anti habit for snacking. And the longer you fast, the better. You’re just giving your body more time to burn body fat for energy.

My next habit to lose weight and keep it off has to do with when you actually eat and break your fast. Because you can easily undo all the benefits that you just got from intermittent fasting if you just freestyle your diet.

4. Eat your vegetables

There is absolutely nothing sexy about this habit but it works like gang busters. There’s always gonna be a never ending debate about which diet is the best when it comes to health and weight loss. You should check out this video if you want to know my take on it.

But almost all diets will agree on this one thing in that you have to eat your vegetables. Half your plate or even as much as 75% of your plate should be made up of a variety of vegetables. The more colourful, the better. The remaining 25% is just gonna be your protein of choice.

Vegetables contain tons of vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients that your body needs to thrive. It also contains fibre which activates that stretch mechanism in your stomach which then sends a signal to your brain that you’re full.

They’re also naturally extremely low in calories. So if you eat a lot of it, it almost guarantees to put you in a calorie deficit without tracking your food. So feel free to eat as much of it as you can until you’re satiated. Just make sure you don’t go to town on starchy vegetables like potatoes, corn, and peas.

From an evolutionary standpoint, this is how we evolved to eat. We evolved to eat plants and animals. Meat and vegetables. 

If you eat a combination of those two things every day and then you combine it with a fasting window that fits your schedule, and you get 10,000 steps every day, that promotes optimal gene expression. You become metabolically flexible. 

The problem really starts when we start falling for shortcuts and gimmicks. Which is actually the last habit that I want you to develop which might be the most important one of them all.

5. Be patient

Patience is a virtue. This is what kinda ties everything to together. Change takes time. You need a little perspective and have realistic expectations about how long this is gonna take. I’m gonna give you some real, honest, and unfiltered talk here. 

If you’re 250 lbs and you wanna get below that 200 mark. It didn’t take you 10 days to put on those extra 50 lbs. It took you several weeks and months; or even years.

Which means it’s gonna take a little bit of time for that weight to come off. A 1-2 lb rate of fat loss every week is really good progress. So you have to exert a little bit of patience with yourself. You have to play the long game. 

Achieving a successful weight loss transformation is a process. But the most important part is the process. I’m not saying that the process is easy by any means. I’m saying that it works if you give it some time. Do you see what I mean here?

The sooner you can wrap your head around that concept, the higher your chances are of finally losing weight and keeping it off for good.

And if you follow all the habits I laid out in this video, it’s not a matter of if you’re gonna lose weight, it’s only gonna be a matter of when. I believe in you. And I’m gonna leave you with one of my favourite quotes. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!

Need More Help?

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