Want to know how to lose weight without counting calories?
There are only 4 things you need to focus on if you want to lose weight without counting calories. Miss out on one and the sum isn’t as effective. They all have to work in unison. I explain it in further detail in this video.
How To Lose Weight Without Counting Calories – Step #1: Get some sleep
I’m all about getting small wins under your belt and this is one of the lowest hanging fruits out there.
This is your starting point. This is so important that even if I give you the best diet advice and the best workouts on the planet. But if you don’t get your sleep right, you’re not gonna lose weight.
If that’s news to you, that’s a very good indicator why you’re not getting results.
According to research, 1/3 of Americans are sleep deprived. It’s important to point that out because lack of sleep has a direct relation to weight gain, and eventually obesity. It also raises your risk of developing heart disease.
In fact, night shift work is now classified as probably carcinogenic to humans. Yet we deprive ourselves of sleep all the time. We impose a shift work pattern on ourselves especially for those people who live for the weekend.
Put it simply, people who don’t get enough sleep tend to weigh significantly more than those who get adequate sleep. In fact, lack of sleep is one of the strongest contributors to obesity.
In one study, children and adults who were sleep deprived were 89 and 55% more likely to become obese respectively. It’s almost impossible to lose weight if you don’t get this part right.
Here’s what you need to do. Get some sleep. Ideally, anywhere between 8-9 hours in a pitch black room every night.
I’ve literally never met anybody who complained about getting a good night’s sleep.
How To Lose Weight Without Counting Calories – Step #2: Get your diet in check
80% of your body composition is determined by you diet.
Assuming that you’re getting adequate sleep and you’re making the proper lifestyle choices, getting your diet in check is what’s really going to move the needle when it comes to getting results.
The problem is, this is also where things start to go sideways for a lot of people
There are rules to fat loss. There are levels to this. I firmly believe that what you eat and when you eat are equally important.
If you’ve struggled to lose weight up to this point, then you’ve most likely followed the standard American diet or SAD for short. Which is a grain based high carb, low fat diet.
It all started back in 1980 when the USDA released the first dietary guideline. We were told to eat 8-12 servings of grains and 4-6 servings of fruit. And I don’t really blame you for following this because this has been ingrained in our heads for 40 years now.
The problem is, this is also the time when the obesity epidemic in the US. Data now shows that over 70% of Americans are either overweight or obese.
It’s not unusual for the average American or other countries following a Western diet to consume a mind blowing 500-600 grams of insulin and fat promoting carbs daily. And we’ll get to why insulin is important in a second.
The problem is, a lot of those carbs are either in the shade of white, brown, or yellow. Which means that they’ve been processed in some way shape or form. Which then increase the severity of the insulin response by your body.
The more processing your food goes through, the worse it is for you. I always like to say that there are no bad foods. Only processed ones.
These days, everything in the centre aisle of grocery stores are made out of a highly processed combination of white flour, vegetable oil, and high fructose corn syrup or some sort of artificial sweetener. Which is extremely detrimental to your health when consumed regularly.
They promote inflammation and oxidate damage which is the root cause of every debilitating disease out there. The problem is, they’re also very addicting.
I want you to think about all the meals you’ve had over the last 48 hours. More likely than not, you probably had something with the combination of white flour, highly refined vegetable, or high fructose corn syrup. Right?
According to research, of the 600,000 food items they sell in the US, 80% are laced with added sugar. The biggest offenders are low fat and low calorie versions of foods. Because if you take out the fat from food, you have to replace it with something else to make it taste good. And that something else is sugar.
And a majority of people are still under the belief that a grain based, low fat diet is considered healthy.
People still can’t seem to shake off the fat phobia in their diet. So that’s conventional diet wisdom for you.
If this is what you’ve been following all this time, then you need start going the other way. This conventional wisdom hasn’t worked. Eat less and move more, or more commonly known as ‘calories in vs calories out’ does not work. In fact, calorie counting has a 99% failure rate.
Again, over 70% of Americans are either overweight or obese. Even though there are more gyms in the U.S. per capita than anywhere else on the planet.
There’s obviously a huge disconnect here between what we’re told how we need to lose weight vs what we’re actually supposed to do.
The good thing is if you’re watching this video right now, you can finally do something about it
Again, 80% of your body composition is determined by your diet. And if you want to lose your unwanted body fat, the most direct path is by drastically reducing the amount of carbs in your diet. Especially refined carbs and sugar. And this includes “healthy” whole grains that we’ve been led to believe is good for us all this time.
It’s not. It’s making you fat and sick.
And for this to make sense, you need to know a little bit about basic human physiology. Because here’s the thing. Your body doesn’t count calories. It has no calorie counter. That’s why calorie counting has a 99% failure rate. Your body does however have a hormonal response to all the foods you eat.
And out of all three macronutrients. Carbs, especially refined carbs, spike the hormone insulin the most. And if you’ve been watching my videos, you’ll know that insulin is a very important hormone in your body. It’s the hormone that controls your body weight.
All you need to know is that if your insulin levels are high, you can’t access your body fat for energy. You just can’t. High insulin blocks fat burning. And persistently high levels of insulin, from eating too much processed carbs and sugar and eating too frequently, causes insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance, also called metabolic syndrome, opens Pandora’s box to all sorts of disease including diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.
Your job if you to know how to lose weight without counting calories is to minimize the wildly excessive insulin response by your body caused by the standard American diet.
Again, this is the classic food pyramid I mentioned earlier. We’ve been told to avoid saturated fat and cholesterol in favour of bread, pasta, and “healthy” whole grains. And it has led to massive unintended consequences resulting in a full blown obesity epidemic.
But there are levels to this. You can’t just flip a switch. You need to get to a baseline and get into what I like to call the Proper Human Diet.
The Proper Human Diet
Reducing the amount of carbs in your diet in favour of more healthy fats, combined with making the right lifestyle choices, will allow you to lose unwanted fat and maintain an ideal body composition for the rest of your life. It really is that simple.
And no, fat doesn’t make you fat. In fact, if you’re not eating enough fat, you’re probably fat.
Remember, our Paleolithic ancestors didn’t pop tarts, pizza, bagels, breakfast cereal, and french fries 2.5 million years ago.
Their diet consisted of mostly plants and animals, nuts, seeds, and seasonal fruit whenever they found them. And they didn’t suffer from heart disease, obesity, diabetes, or cancer. None of those diseases existed back then.
And we’re still genetically identical to our Paleolithic ancestors. So it’s really all about modelling what we eat as close to the original human diet as possible.
The problem is, people are always looking for short cuts. People think they can just buy the next best supplement on the market.
When You Eat
The next thing about nutrition that I want to talk about it is when you eat.
Because along with the first dietary guideline came the idea of snacking in between meals. We went from eating 3 meals a day back in the 60’s, to eating 6 meals a day. And we didn’t have an obesity epidemic back in the 60’s. Go figure.
The problem with snacks is a lot of the go-to snacks out there are highly processed and packed with sugar. Think granola bars for example.
There is no scientific data out there that eating 6 meals a day is more beneficial for you. There’s no data out there that proves that you have to eat first thing in the morning. Going back to our paleolithic ancestors. They never ate breakfast. Sometimes they would go days without food.
If you’re trying to lose weight, how could you possibly think that eating 6 times during the day is a good idea? It’s been scientifically proven that eating 6 small meals causes you to eat more because the meals aren’t satiating.
You need to abolish meal times if you want to lose weight without counting claories. You need to delete snacks. But again, there are levels to this. You need to go from eating 6 meals a day to just eating 3 meals a day like a normal human being.
When you stop eating refined carbs which are just empty calories, and start eating more plants and animals. The fats and protein from those foods are way more nutrient dense and will provide more satisfaction levels compared to a diet high in carbs.
What do you think is more filling? Toast with some jam and a glass of orange juice or bacon and eggs with some avocado? The former is a sugar bomb once it enters your system. While the latter is a healthy blend of fats and protein which will activate your satiety hormones.
Finally, consuming less processed carbs results in less insulin production which results in your hunger and cravings to moderate.
The crash and burn effect that you probably experience on a daily basis, also known as getting hangry, is due to your body constantly cycling back and forth from consuming carbs. Then your body coverts it to glucose. Which then results in a subsequent insulin response to moderate blood glucose. Which then results in a sugar crash which leads to you feeling lethargic, hungry, and going for a quick sugar fix. Then the cycle starts again.
Notice how you’re always hungry mid morning or mid after noon after eating a high carb meal?
You can stop that vicious cycle by simply reducing your carb intake in favour or eating more healthy fats and protein.
It’s as simple as this. When you reduce your consumption of carbs in favour of a high fat diet, you’re going to optimize your insulin production. Enabling you utilize fatty acids from the foods that you eat and stored body fat as your preferred fuel source. You become a fat burner.
Your body actually prefers fat as your main source of energy because it’s a cleaner burning fuel. Where as sugar burns dirty and leaves free radicals in your system after it gets processed by your body.
Remember, you can either be a sugar burner, or you can be a fat burner. You can’t do both. And if you want to know how to lose weight without counting calories, which state would you rather be in?
Another point that I want to make is that unlike fats and protein, carb consumption is not required for human survival. There are no essential carbs required for human survival. There are essential fats like ALA, EPA, and DHA, and essential amino acids but there are no essential carbs. None.
And your body is an amazing thing in that it can create all the glucose that it needs through a process called Gluconeogenesis.
Optimal Meal Frequency
Once your body gets used to eating just 3 meals and you have more stable insulin levels by adjusting your diet, then you can start moving the needle even more. You want to start shortening your eating window even more and this is when we get into intermittent fasting.
In my opinion, intermittent fasting is the most effective and sustainable method of weight loss. Because, it’s not really a diet. It’s more of a lifestyle.
Some of the benefits of intermittent fasting include:
Weight and body fat loss, increased fat burning, lowered insulin and blood sugar levels, improved mental clarity and concentration, increased energy, improved blood cholesterol profile, activation of cellular cleansing, reduced inflammation, and so much more.
The concept is pretty simple. You fast intermittently for a certain period of time and you just let your body use your fat stores for energy. And if you’re trying to lose weight. This is exactly what you want. This is how to lose weight without counting calories.
But again, there are levels to this. I only want you to get into fasting once you’ve moderated your insulin levels by fixing your diet. And this is why some people have a bad experience with fasting when they try it because they don’t really adjust their diet.
A really important concept that you need to wrap your head around with this is you need to change your vocabulary.
Fasting is not a period of starvation. Starvation literally means that you don’t know when you’re going to eat again. Fasting means voluntarily taking a break from eating. The keyword is voluntary. There’s a big difference there.
Let me ask you this. What do you think will happen if you don’t eat? You’re probably going to lose weight without counting calories.
Listen, you cannot reduce body fat on a diet that stimulate chronically high insulin levels. And if you’ve been following the standard American diet and your weight loss strategy is calories in vs calories out, it’s not your fault why you can’t lose weight. But now you know better.
And just remember to always follow the golden rule of fat loss. Eat when you’re hungry, don’t eat if you’re not hungry. Meal times are completely made up.
How To Lose Weight Without Counting Calories- Step #3: Move your body
I’m going to give you the one and only concept you need to understand about physical health. In case you’re one of those people who think that you can just live a sedentary life and not workout.
If you want to improve your overall health and fitness, there’s is literally nothing better you can do than making yourself as strong as humanly possible.
It’s good for your muscles and bones, it makes you feel happier, it increases your energy levels, it reduces your risk of chronic disease, it helps with your skin health, it helps with brain health and memory, it helps with relaxation and sleep quality, it can promote a better sex life, and so much more.
Once again, there are levels to this. If you’ve been living a sedentary lifestyle, just start by going for a walk. Aim to get 10,000 steps every day. Once you’re used to that then I want you to focus on HIIT workouts.
What you don’t want to do is spend hours doing cardio. Because chronic cardio triggers the overcompensation effect. You’re lazy throughout the day and you also tend to eat more because exercise makes you hungry.
Your job is to avoid prolonged periods where you’re completely sedentary.
In terms of what kind of workouts you should do, find one that you like. Adherence is everything.
How To Lose Weight Without Counting Calories- Step #4: Live a lifestyle geared towards health
I mentioned this at the beginning but if you want to know how to lose weight without counting calories, you need to get adequate sleep.
You can’t just be good throughout the week then blow it all away on the weekend.
That’s like taking one step forward, two steps back.
You also need to manage stress levels. This is another secret killer of your weight loss progress. If you have chronically high stress levels, you’re not going to lose weight. All you need to know about this is if you chronically trigger a cortisol response. That’s the fight or flight response in your body. By being chronically stressed, you’re going to keep triggering a high insulin response. Again, high insulin blocks fat burning. People also tend to stress eat so that’s just a bad combination altogether.
Next up is you want to control your environment. Again, it’s all about putting yourself in the best position to succeed. Make sure you’re not stocking bad food at home. Make sure you’re surrounding yourself with the right people. Remember, you’re the average of the 5 people you spend time with the most. So choose wisely.
How To Lose Weight Without Counting Calories- Step #5: Give It Some Time
Know that there’s going to be speed bumps along the way.
Follow the 90/10 rule when it comes to this. 90% of the time, you’re following the right plan. The other 10% is when you allow for this thing called “life” to happen.
If you stumble along the way, and you will. Just remember that you’re one meal away from getting back on the wagon.
If you followed all these steps, it’ll allow you to easily lose 1-2 lbs of body fat per week. Even if you’ve struggled with your weight for most of your life, you can dramatically change your life by following all the things I laid out for you.
Remember, You’re one decision away from a different life.
As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!
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