We need to first understand what fat loss is and why you need to do it in the first place. If you don’t have this understanding, you will get disappointed and demotivated and yet again think you’re a failure and hate the process!
There are a lot of factors involved like your calories and macros for fat loss, your protein intake, training for fat loss, counting calories, metabolism, tracking progress, weight fluctuations, how to take diet break, how fast you need to lose weight and a lot of other things specific to fat loss. But I don’t want to confuse you with all this just yet, we need to first understand where you are at and how you can create a system with small lifestyle changes so that you don’t end up failing and reading this blog post all over again!
To start off we need to assess where you are at right now and that can be one of the following situations:
- You might be obese and you need to make a drastic change not only for health reasons but also to get that motivation to get started with the journey
- You might be someone who has recently put on weight due to the lockdown and gone back to your old habits of binge eating, inactivity and lack go general motivation to get things done
- You might have been athletic and healthy before but you’re now working and you aren’t getting the time to workout and follow a healthy lifestyle
- And lastly, you’re someone who has been working out and eating right and doing everything but still not being able to budge on the scale and lose the few extra pounds to look the part
In any of these cases, your aim is still to lose fat right? How much is not important, our next goal is to set up a system to lose the next 1 kg thats it! Don’t even think about the end goal, thing about the system you need to put in place to get there!
Here is what you might experience in your journey:
- You might not budge on the scale, you might be putting on muscle at the same time!
- You might lose weight fast, water weight so don’t celebrate just yet
- You might gain some weight initially too, don’t stress. Trust the process because you have not got a full schedule in place yet!
Ask yourself these questions:
- Have you tried everything when it comes to fat loss and failed?
- Have you consumed so much information on the internet that you are confused?
- Are you unsure where to start you fat loss journey?
If its a yes for any of this you’re in the right place!
- Know the difference between fat loss and weight loss: Your body is made up of two things – fat mass and fat free mass. Fat free mass is your bones, blood, organs, skin, most importantly your muscle that makes up your lean body mass. These are all the things you want to preserve even if your goal is to lose fat. On the other hand is your fat mass which we need to get rid of!
Why reduce fat mass? Because that will make you perform better, feel better, look better and keep you away from being obese and prone to other health issues in general and that is what everyone needs to get rid off
2. Retain lean muscle mass: In order to retain muscle mass, you need to prioritise weight training and ensure that you are getting stronger and increasing training volume over time. Along with this, you need to ensure that you do not lower your calories less than you need to and also make sure that you are having a minimum required amount of protein on a daily basis.
3. Build Habits: This is the most important factor and will take you a long way in your fitness journey, no matter what your goal is. In order to build habits, you need to break it down into smaller (more achievable) goals that you need to complete daily/weekly:
- Protein intake with each meal
- Daily steps
- Strength training
- Sleep
- Daily weigh ins
- Weekly progress pictures
- Add fruits and vegetables (fiber) to each meal
So in order to start, you need to create a system that you can replicate on a daily basis rather than an overwhelming goal like losing 10kgs in 1 month and then giving up in a few days or weeks!