Chapter 1- Why conventional weight loss advice doesn’t work when you need to lose 100+ pounds

Most weight loss advice, whether nutritional or for exercise, isn’t designed for the obese person. All of the excitement and most of the content in the weight loss world seems to be centered around losing a few pounds quickly.

When I was overweight and looking for an answer online to losing weight, I found lots of bad advice, and lots of advice that was actually good in general but just didn’t fit me, my body type, my eating habits, or my mindset.

I eventually got kind of pissed off, because everything I was reading seemed to be catered to people who only had a little bit of weight to lose, even though most of the people who I saw that needed help losing weight were obese just like me.

People don’t understand what it’s like to be obese

Weight loss isn’t the same for everyone. Even after you sift through the bad advice… there are lots of people both online and in real life, who just don’t understand what it’s like mentally and physically to be extremely overweight, what it’s like to have REALLY bad eating habits, and to know just how large the task of losing 100 pounds or more really is for someone.

Not everyone will understand that weight loss for you will be an epic, life-changing journey that will change your life completely, far beyond gained confidence. When you lose 100 pounds, you will be ABLE to do more in life.

Losing 100 pounds means going through many transformations, that over time will add up to one cumulative transformation, which changes your body, mind, and life for the better.

Exercise doesn’t need to be difficult

When you’re really big and wanting to lose weight, one of the first things that may hold you back is the thought that exercise will be harder for you, and that losing weight will actually be that much harder because of it.

A common conception is that you need to jog or do an hour of intense exercise every day to burn fat, and this can make the idea of working out seem burdensome, especially if you have knee pain.

But not only are there a lot of other options, there are even BETTER options available to burn fat than jogging.

Something that’s common for people to over-focus on when they want to get in shape, are the things that they specifically cannot do (yet).

If it’s hard for you to get up and down from the floor… don’t focus on push-ups yet, you can go for a walk.

If walking hurts your knees don’t focus on that fact… do some sitting down exercises while you transform yourself with healthy diet. Soon enough your workout options will open up and you’ll be doing things that you couldn’t before, and enjoying things that used to exhaust you.

You may feel like you are having to sacrifice your results by doing an easier exercise than you ultimately had in mind, but this is not true. The exercises and workouts that you can do comfortably and consistently, are what will allow you to get a good burn for both cardio and your muscles, that doesn’t exhaust you before you are able to burn fat.

When I was in my worst shape, jogging just wasn’t going to happen. But I didn’t let that stop me from doing lots of other even more effective exercises, until I could jog more easily and add it into my routine every so often.

In this guide you’ll discover exercise that fits your body type and personal interest.

More importantly, you’ll learn how to start eating healthy one step at a time, burn fat without ever having to be hungry, and ultimately learn how to lose 100 pounds, or more!

Not everyone understands your eating habits

Not everyone will take the time to get a clear picture of what your current diet might be like, and therefore they might not know how much impact can be made by changing even the smallest detail.

Simply having a typical western diet is plenty enough to be considered as having bad eating habits, and plenty enough to make you gain weight year after year.

But if you are anything like me when I was at my biggest, the diet that made me gain so much weight was often worse than, “normal people”.

I started gaining weight with ordinary bad eating habits, but over time my emotions got wrapped up in food, I got addicted to unhealthy food, and sometimes it just felt like eating was all I had.

People who were giving me advice just didn’t understand how bad my diet really was, and how much they were asking me to change all at once. GIVE UP SODA? To me at the that advice just sounded generic and impersonal. Like… if they had taken a second to ASK me, they would have known that I was drinking a six pack per day, and that drinking one soda every day was an incredible change which would help me lose lots of weight.

I wasn’t about to go from my horrible eating habits to eating some superfood meal plan overnight

I wasn’t about to go jogging when it hurt my knees

And I definitely wasn’t going to kick sugar to the curb in one day and never look back

What it really takes to lose over 100 pounds

With any size of transformation, the key to succeeding is having an effective method for losing weight, and also having the motivation and drive to stick to it.

But especially for those who have 100 or more pounds to lose… motivation is even more important. Those with a longer journey ahead will need an even stronger mindset to make it the whole way, because of a longer stretch of time needed to reach their goal weight, and because of the doubt and stress that can arise from having been overweight a long time, or never having seen oneself in shape, ever.

Even when you know exactly what to eat, what workout to do, and have complete confidence that doing so will bring you success… you will still need to stay strong to stick with the changes.

But you’ll come to find throughout this guide, that being consistent has nothing to do with being perfect.

As we dig deeper into how to lose 100 pounds, you will learn how to find motivation both from external sources, and from deep within yourself.

I’ll show you how to stay on track when things get hard, and get back on when they get even harder.

So now let’s talk about how your size doesn’t hold you back in the slightest when losing weight.

Chapter 2- The Good News: Being bigger means faster results

When you have 100 pounds or more to lose, one of the thoughts that makes it hard to start your diet is that you’re bigger, and that it’s going to take a while to reach your goals.

In this guide I’ll show you how to defeat this thought by teaching you how to:

Stay motivated

Get the fastest healthy results

Gain a long-term lifestyle mindset

Enjoy your journey

And last but not least… and perhaps not the most important but certainly the most immediately exciting… is the fact that bigger people lose weight faster. Your goals might not be as far off as you think, and your size is not going to make things take, “forever.”

The worse your diet is, the more your body can change

You might be thinking, “but my diet is REALLY bad!”

This means that you have even more room for improvement.

The worse your diet currently is, the more opportunity you have for change. Instead of thinking that your eating habits are going to make it harder for you, think of it as a bigger opportunity to make an impact on your results.

If you drink 6 sodas per day… think of how many empty calories you could cut out by cutting back to 1 soda every day. That’s 1,000 calories less every day without even cutting out soda completely.

For me, I didn’t just go from eating normal to healthy… I went from absolute junk to eating healthy, which left tons of room for improvement and fat burning as I gradually made changes. It was actually exciting that there were so many changes that I could make along the way to make a big difference in my results.

I thought about those few people who struggle with their weight but already have really good eating habits, and for them weight loss is a whole different struggle.

I realized that the fact that my diet was really bad, made me blessed to be able to turn it all around. I burned tons of fat in the earlier stages while still drinking one soda per day and having fast food every couple of days, because the reality was that even though I was very far from perfect, I had made a huge improvement from my previous habits.

The worse your diet is now, the more your body is going to change when you replace junk with healthy, nutrient rich food.

The less you exercise now, the more it will make a difference

If you have 100 or more pounds to lose, you might not currently be getting a lot of exercise in your daily routine. Just like having a bad diet… this means that making a small change will lead to big results.

Going from no exercise to consistent exercise (multiple times per week), will immediately tip the scales in your favor (pun intended) and awaken your bodies fat burning abilities.

The results that you see from exercising are not so dependent on the amount of reps you do or how long you can go, what’s important is that you work hard according to your current level of fitness. If walking around the block one time gets you good and tired both with your leg muscles and gets your heart and breathing rate up, then that’s all it takes to get a great workout!

The bigger you are, the faster the weight comes off

You can’t compare your rate of weight loss to someone much smaller than you. Where it may take someone else several months to lose 20 pounds, it could take you a matter of weeks to lose your first 20 pounds if you are big enough and are working hard enough.

Some of you reading this may want to lose multiple hundreds of pounds, and you can expect to lose your first 100 pounds even faster than those who have 100 pounds flat, to lose.

When it comes to setting goals and calculating how much you can lose, using the percentage of your body weight is perfect, as it naturally adjusts for your size. If you set a goal to lose 4% of your bodyweight each month, that would be 12 pounds in the first month for a 300-pound person, but 9 pounds for a 200-pound person.

Don’t worry about calculating for your specific weight though, later I’ll show you a chart of this calculation at varying weights over the period of a year, and I’ll also give you your own tracker to instantly make this calculation with your exact weight.

Chapter 3- The power of diet and exercise combined

One of the most interesting questions I hear, that I love to answer, is… “should I diet OR exercise?”

I think we can all guess that I’m about to say both, and it likely seems fairly intuitive that you will get a better/faster result from combining healthy diet and exercise… I found it extremely motivating when I was losing weight to know exactly how the decisions I was making, were affecting my body/results.

Personally, when I first started losing weight I changed my diet alone, but then I quickly added exercise into the mix once I was confident that I would stick to the changes.

I recommend starting with exercise or diet alone if taking on both at the same time seems like too much to handle… but you should plan to BOTH exercise AND diet as soon as you comfortably can.

Eating healthy every day and working out on a regular basis will help you reach your goals faster, easier, and with an overall better physique than if you just did one or the other.

Here is a piece of a conclusion from research on many compiled studies which compare diet vs exercise vs both. This same research also addresses resistance training vs endurance training which we will discuss further in the next chapter, but as you’ll see below it’s all mixed within the same statements.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4429709/

Terms for research below:

FFM = Fat free mass
RT = Resistance Training
ET = Endurance Training

“With analysis showing that there is a necessity to include exercise in combination with diet effectively elicit changes in body composition and biomarkers of metabolic issues. More importantly, the combination, resistance training (RT) was more effective than endurance training (ET)…

Most importantly is that protocols utilizing exercise were more effective than those that employed just a hypocaloric diet. With the combination of diet with exercise (especially RT) being more effective than diet or diet with ET in reduction of body mass and fat mass while retaining of FFM following treatment.

…some may select away from exercise altogether, which based on overall effectiveness should be discouraged but if utilized as a stand alone intervention, diets can be effective if hypocaloric and comprised of a higher percentage of total caloric intake from protein.”

Again, it just seems intuitive that diet and exercise combined would be better than one or the other, but it helps to know that studies confirm this, and it also helps to take a minute to think about how powerful it can really be.

If you want to learn even more about how amazing this combination of healthy diet and exercise are, supported by lots of research, check out my article, “Diet vs Exercise for Weight Loss (vs Both)“.

Having personally lost weight with exercise and diet alone before… but now having lost weight with healthy diet and exercise together, I can confidently say that it makes a tremendous difference in the rate of fat burn as well as muscle retention, to have a good balance of both.

Diet without exercise vs. exercise without diet

If you just diet and never exercise, you will not retain muscle as well, and will not be able to reach your goals as quickly, as your sedentary lifestyle will be working against your dieting efforts.

If you only exercise and don’t eat healthy, your results will be drastically affected, as your bad diet content will be working against the hard work that you are putting into your exercise routine. If you do manage to “out train your spoon” and lose weight with exercise alone, your new weight would be harder to maintain as the source of the original weight gain is still present.

This is exactly what I went through in high school, I was able to get in shape for a short time because of taking a weightlifting class 5 times per week, but with my poor diet working against me it took longer to get there, and it all came piling back on once high school was over.

Multiply your results

However, with diet and exercise together, the results from each will add up instead of subtracting from one another… yielding the best results possible.

At the very least you will see double the result from using both methods, but here is how I think about it.

Imagine taking 3 steps towards your goal every day with one good habit (healthy diet/exercise), and then 2 steps away from your goal with another unhealthy habit (bad diet/ sedentary lifestyle). This is an overall gain of 1 step, which is truly a good thing… but might not be ideal being that you put more effort in than results you got back, which personally is my number one pet peeve in life, putting my heart and soul into something and then getting burned.

Now imagine taking 3 steps forward and then another 2 steps forward… with both healthy habits working toward your progress. This is an overall gain of 5 steps.

Without anything holding you back, it’s like the difference between running against the wind, and having it behind you.

Chapter 4- You don’t need to run to lose weight

Jogging just seems like the ultimate fat loss exercise, doesn’t it? Jogging is that timeless exercise that everyone seems to go to right away. When people say “cardio,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Probably the one thing you don’t want to do the most, which is usually jogging for most people.

When you find that jogging is difficult, boring, or even painful for you, it feels like the best option just went out the window.

You may even enjoy jogging, but find that due to your size you can’t seem to get enough jogging done to burn enough calories to make a big difference.

Jogging is something that I have come to enjoy, and that I have added into my routine, over time. However, in the beginning I didn’t do it at all, for the reasons mentioned above. I knew that it was just a small piece of all the amazing exercises available to me.

Weight lifting is for burning fat, not just building muscle

A lot of people think that lifting weights is just for muscle, and that cardio is for burning fat… and they use resistance training as a very small part of their weight loss method.

But most people don’t know how amazing weight lifting or any other form of resistance training can be for weight loss.

“Resistance training” simply means any exercise/ workout that provides enough resistance so that you can break down and build up your muscles. Most commonly this is done by lifting weights, but this can also mean doing bodyweight exercises or increasing the intensity of any other workout, so long as your muscles are worked hard enough. When it comes to bodyweight exercises you’ll find that you get a good balance of both cardio and resistance which is perfect, as the workout will leave you winded AND sore.

Lifting weights was my go-to choice for exercise when I was losing weight. The results that I saw were everything that I thought they would be based on the information that I had read about it.

I highly recommend that anyone wanting to lose any amount of weight take advantage of resistance training, but for obese people especially it is something that is too amazing to be ignored, since being heavy does not hold you back from lifting weights in the slightest.

If standing and walking for an extended period is difficult for you, you can lift weights in sitting position, inclined (if you have a bench), or laying down.

Taking advantage of resistance training when you are losing weight has several very powerful benefits that include the following:

Burn fat during your workout, as well as afterwards

Retain your muscle when losing weight (or even gain muscle)

Build a faster metabolism over time

Multiple studies show that resistance training is just as or more effective than endurance training for fat loss.

Additionally, research shows that with intense resistance training, an after-burn effect is activated for up to 48 hours, where you will burn fat at a higher rate when resting.

This same after-burn effect can be achieved with cardio alone, but it requires your heart and breathing rate to be significantly elevated for an extended period that anyone who needs to lose weight just isn’t going to be able to handle.

Although ultimately the best exercise routine works your muscles and your heart equally, my personal suggestion to anyone wanting to lose a significant amount of weight, is to use resistance training as your “secret weapon” in your weight loss journey.

Here are more conclusions from the same research mentioned in Chapter 3, from a compilation of many studies that compare resistance training and endurance training.

A few terms for the research below:

ET = Endurance Training (Aerobic/Cardio)
RT = Resistance Training (Anaerobic… such as weight training)
REE = Resting Energy Expenditure

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4429709/

“Additionally, when exercise is utilized at appropriate intensities (i.e. higher levels) both ET and RT provides an effective stimulus to alter TNF-α, CRP, leptin and adiponectin levels that all indicate a reduction in the risk for cardiovascular disease and improved metabolic flexibility for the adult who is overfat. With RT producing a greater level of effectiveness for altering these measures…

…and thus indicates that RT should be more readily recommended as an appropriate treatment option to adults who are overfat than what has been recommended currently.

For those who self-select toward ET, it appears that ET is more effective when performed at high intensity (e.g., ≥70% VO2max, or HRmax) steady-state method or as an interval training style.”

And here is what another study has to say on the subject of resistance vs endurance.

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobe/2011/482564/

“Furthermore, it has been shown that RT preferentially mobilizes the visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue in the abdominal region…

As such, RT is recommended in the management of obesity and metabolic disorders.”

And yet another study, which shows an “after-burn effect” induced by intense resistance training. (REE = Resting energy expenditure)

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/32/12/2161.long

“Resistance exercise does not alter circulating leptin concentration but does increase REE and adiponectin in an intensity-dependent manner for as long as 48 and 24 h, respectively, in overweight elderly individuals. It appears that resistance exercise may represent an effective approach for weight management and metabolic control in overweight elderly individuals.”

If you have weights at home, even just a set of dumbbells, there are tons of different lifts that you can do right from the comfort of your own house.

A heavier workout will require a barbell (longer bar for using both hands), and of course… will require even more safety.

Don’t ever push yourself beyond your comfort zone or do anything that could put you at risk. Although intense exercise can be a great method, if it’s not for you, your style, or your current condition, then don’t push it.

If you really want to get heavily into lifting weights (pun intended), then joining a local gym or workout program such as CrossFit is the best way to get access to high quality weights and training for proper movements.

Here are some great dumbbell lifts for varying muscle groups that can be done right from home, and more than half of them can be done without standing if need be.

A trifecta- healthy diet, resistance, and cardio

So, if you should exercise AND diet, and when you exercise you should have a balance of aerobic exercise AND resistance training, then the trifecta of weight loss is healthy diet (including water), cardio, and weight lifting, respectively.

You don’t have to have some complex routine to get both cardio and resistance training. When you lift weights or do body exercises… you’ll work your muscles and your heart at the same time.

On days where you want to work your muscles a bit more, simply increase the resistance by adding more weight, or by simply doing slower exercises, such as doing very slow push-ups.

On days that you want a better cardio burn, simply reduce the resistance and do a higher amount of reps.

I personally prefer to mix it up… most days resistance, some days both, and every so often I’ll have a cardio only day.

The absolute best workout is one that is intense, and gives you a good burn for both cardio and your muscles. Many modern training methods do exactly this to provide amazing results from a short workout.

Find activities that you enjoy, and keep doing them

The very best type of exercise for you personally, is the type that you enjoy and look forward to day after day.

For me I love to ride my bike. It’s a great way to get an extended session of cardio without burning out right away, as well as get an amazing low impact workout for my legs. The best part of it is just cruising around town while I am getting a workout, looking at all of the old buildings… seeing people shopping… with a nice breeze on my face.

When I bought the bike, the guy at store made me promise him that I would ride it and not let it collect dust. I promised him… and I didn’t disappoint. A year later I walked in to get the bike fixed, and this is how the conversation went…

“Dude, did I sell you this bike?”

“Yep”

“Holy shit did you lose a whole bunch of weight?”

“Yep”

“Awesome!”

I was getting tons of exercise without even thinking about it, just because it was something that I enjoy.

If you can find a workout that you love to do over and over, then exercise won’t be something that you have to force yourself to do anymore, rather something that you can’t wait to do.

Starting to lose weight is a great time to rekindle your passion for activities that you used to love, such as maybe shooting hoops or hiking trails.

Whatever it is that you love to do, don’t set it aside because it’s not the “optimal” workout… if it’s your favorite thing to do and it keeps you active then it absolutely is the optimal workout.

Exercises that are great for bigger people

What if you don’t have access to weights, or you aren’t sure where to get started with home exercises?

If you want to start an organized exercise plan, then the 8-week challenge is a great place to start. The workouts are not complex, they cover each major muscle group, and are meant for doing at home.

Most importantly the plan starts off easy, and builds week by week, just like the diet that accompanies it. There are also instructions on how to do the exercises, as well as how to make the movements easier if you want to. Sign up below to get your free copy or read more about it read more about it here.

An amazing exercise option for bigger people, is walking. I used to think walking was boring, but now I actually enjoy it quite a bit, especially when I walk on the path by the river.

Walking is the most natural form of exercise for the human body, and a great way to burn lots of fat for people who have lots of weight to lose. People at all fitness levels take advantage of the metabolism boost that walking provides.

What if walking hurts?

Traditional exercise advice doesn’t always suit everyone. It can be frustrating to keep reading about exercises that you are too difficult for you and your condition at the moment… and this is especially true for those who find it painful to walk.

Walking is often a great way to get in shape for those who are very overweight and find normal exercises difficult, but what if walking hurts?

If this is the situation you find yourself in, don’t get discouraged, things are going to change soon. Do what works for you now, do it with consistency, and before you know it you will be losing weight and opening up more and more options for your fitness routine.

Soon enough, walking will be a leisurely thing, and eventually jogging may be the next thing that you begin to enjoy.

Here are some exercise ideas for when walking and standing are difficult:

Lifting weights- sitting/laying down

Laying down floor exercises (crunches/sit-ups, leg raises, other ab exercises)

Sitting in chair leg lifts

Resistance band exercises

Swimming

Cycling

How often should you exercise? And for how long?

Just like diet, a lot of people are stuck in an all or nothing mindset with regards to exercise, and feel like they need to exercise like a professional athlete for an hour every day to see results.

But when you find how little exercise it really takes for weight loss, the idea doesn’t seem so daunting after all.

It’s best to get some activity every day, even if it’s just a short walk. Get your blood pumping every day.

When it comes to an actual exercise session, I recommend about 10-20 minutes of exercise, 3-5 times per week… depending on what you are comfortable starting with, how intense your workout will be, and whether you work your muscles enough to give them a good rest (which I hope you do often).

Short, hard workouts are very effective for weight loss. Remember it’s not about time or how many reps you did, it’s about how good of a burn you got, which can be achieved in a short amount of time.

A lot of people will skip the workout altogether if they can’t make it to the gym, and don’t realize how fast and amazing a home workout can be. Home workouts save me lots of time, since I don’t have to get ready and then drive to the gym and back.

When I go to CrossFit, the workout itself is still usually about 15-20 minutes, which is plenty of time to get a workout powerful enough to build any level of body that you want.

So as with diet, consistency is key. Do the level of workout that you can consistently perform over and over, until you are ready to step up your routine.

Chapter 5- How healthy food causes weight loss

You could simply eat foods that you know are healthy, and lose weight without ever knowing how it really works, if you wanted to. But to make a transition to a healthy diet it helps to know exactly how the diet choices you make are affecting you, and why they are making you lose weight.

Not only does this give more confidence in your routine, but it is also very motivating to have a logical understanding of how healthy diet works for weight loss. You can actually visualize how things are happening within you.

Having a basic understanding of how healthy food causes weight loss will help you:

Gain confidence in transitioning to a healthy diet

Be intuitive about making healthy selections

Understand how powerful and sustainable clean eating is for weight loss

Show you that you can lose lots of weight quickly without being hungry

Food doesn’t burn fat… your body does

When people say, “fat burning foods,” it will often cause people to think that the food contains some chemical that directly removes fat within the body, and although you could still eat healthy and lose weight with this notion, it helps to know how things actually work.

How weight loss works:

For a long time, weight loss was thought of only in terms of calories, i.e. energy in vs. energy out.

It’s true that if you are eating more calories than you burn, then you will gain weight, and the opposite is also true… if you burn more than you eat you will lose weight.

But this is very black and white, only shows a piece of the picture, and certainly doesn’t help to explain the source of weight gain issues.

Eating so many excess calories is just a symptom of the real issue, which is our diet content. The western diet is not only dense in calories, but it also affects our hormones in a way that causes us to store fat faster, and being so low in useful nutrients… this causes the need to eat even more.

Whether your body is burning fat or storing it, depends on your level of insulin, as well as a number of other hormones in your body… but everything can be thought of in terms of insulin.

Insulin is not a bad thing… it’s natural that insulin levels will rise and fall in your body on a daily basis, due to the cycle of eating and then getting hungry over and over again. We need insulin to turn energy in our blood in the form of glucose, into usable energy. However, it is the chronic and severe elevation of insulin that is largely caused by an unhealthy diet, which drives obesity, as well as many metabolic issues.

Although scientists are still discovering the exact role that calories and insulin/hormones play in weight loss, they at least know that both are incredibly important. Insulin enables the storage of fat, where calories are effectively the energy that is stored BY insulin, when consumed in excess.

Calories and insulin go hand in hand, when one goes up the other does too, and the same for the other way around, the less calories… the less insulin. For my fellow math nerds… this represents a positive but non-linear relationship, meaning that not all foods are created equal when it comes to how they affect your insulin.

As a matter of fact there is a huge difference between how much insulin your body releases when you eat junk food, vs when you eat whole, healthy food. I will explain this in detail below.

Let’s put thoughts of TYPE of food aside for just a second, and talk about the difference between the body being in fat burning mode, and fat storage mode with regards to eating in general. Then we will talk about how different kinds of food affect your body specifically.

1) When insulin levels are high, your body is storing excess energy (in both fat and muscle).

2) When insulin levels are low, your body is using that stored energy.

3) When you eat (consume calories and blood sugar goes up), your insulin goes up. When you do not eat (blood sugar goes down), your insulin levels go down.

Unhealthy foods, in addition to being super high in calories, raise insulin levels significantly, and keep our body in a constant state of weight gain. What’s worse is that in addition to having an excess of these bad nutrients that spike insulin as well as empty calories that lead to lots of fat storage, junk food is low in useful nutrients… which causes you to be constantly hungry even though you consume a high number of calories.

However, healthy food does just the opposite. It takes up lots of space in your stomach and is high in nutrients for being relatively low in calories, and so will naturally stop your hunger without needing to overeat… which leaves your body in a hormonal state that makes it easy to burn fat, and harder to store it. Foods that are healthy will nourish you without spiking your insulin like junk does, keeping your blood sugar stable and calorie consumption low, while still energizing your body.

Although, of course not everything is black and white… there are some healthy foods that are highly nutritious but still digest quickly and cause insulin to spike (such as white potatoes or smoothies), but they still make great choices for weight loss when eaten in moderation due to how nourishing they are… so long as you are not concerned with blood sugar and insulin in a medical way, in which case especially your physician should advise you on your food choices.

But the idea here is that a smoothie is 10 times better than a milkshake. Even though both digest quickly, how each affects your body is entirely different. A milkshake has almost nothing valuable in it, and turns very easily to stored fat while still leaving you hungry… where the nutrients in a smoothie will satisfy you, and help you more efficiently direct the energy throughout your body to your tissues rather than stored fat.

Not to mention that a smoothie is a fraction of the calories for the same volume (as well as contains many multiples the valuable nutrients that any milkshake would).

But we will talk more about the healthiest foods, vs. kind of healthy foods, in the next chapter where I actually tell you what foods you can eat to lose weight.

Junk food vs. healthy food, what happens when you eat them

This is one of my absolute favorite things to explain to people wanting to lose weight, because this is where the “Aha!” moment happens, and where most begin to faithfully go down the road of eating clean to lose weight.

You won’t need to throw aside everything you’ve ever learned about calories… calories are a very real thing, but soon you’ll see that you won’t need to count them or worry about them anymore, at least until way later when you are trying to get super lean. I’ll show you how calories naturally fit in with eating clean to lose weight, and how you can cut way more junk calories out of your diet by ADDING healthy food, rather than focusing on restriction.

Before I get into the details, I’ll make a summary statement so you can understand the general concept first, so the details make good sense.

Until now, I have always tried to express the idea of healthy weight loss as concisely as possible, but it’s time to break things down. Normally I would write something like, “Healthy food will keep you full and energized while keeping your body in a fat burning state” which is true but it isn’t enough to truly teach the idea.

But let’s expand that single sentence explanation so you can fully wrap your head around it before digging deeper.

“Healthy food,” more specifically food that is natural to the human diet (whole food), causes weight loss when consumed as a replacement to the traditional western diet (high-calorie, low-nutrient, highly processed), because the transition causes a natural calorie deficit, due to the low-calorie, high nutrient, unprocessed qualities of healthy foods.

So here is how that works. Let’s think about what happens in the body when you eat junk food, vs what happens when you eat healthy food. Note that the graph below is just a visual representation of what I am explaining.

Junk Food:

In either scenario (junk vs. healthy), you start off with your belly being empty, and your body being in fat burning mode. But you need to eat… and this is what happens when you eat unhealthy food.

The more you eat… both calories and chemicals that cause insulin to spike are dramatically increased, while valuable nutrients are increased minimally. Your body moves quickly out of the fat burning zone, long before you feel full and energized.

If you eat a large volume of food it will make you feel full as far as amount of food goes… but the lack of nutrients leaves your body unsatisfied, even with a fully belly, which causes overeating and even more weight gain.

Healthy Food:

Let’s start back at square one, but consider healthy food this time.

When your belly is empty and you begin to eat healthy food, good nutrients increase dramatically while calories and bad insulin spiking chemicals are minimal. This causes you to remain in fat burning mode, while allowing you to consume enough nutrients and volume of food to be full at the same time.

You will be both full and energized, yet still be losing weight faster than those who are cutting calories and feeling hungry/tired.

As you can see below, the red line represents junk food, and because of how it is sloped it shows how easy it is to be in the fat gaining zone, and how hard it is to be in the satisfied zone when your diet is unhealthy.

But if you follow the green line which represents healthy food, you’ll see how easy it is to stay in the fat burning zone, and at the same time how easy it is to reach the satisfied zone.

This content was originally written on TheShapeWithin.com

Lose 100 pounds without ever being hungry

What this all sums up to mean, is that you truly can lose lots of weight without having to count calories, or ever have to go to bed hungry.

Have you ever eaten a meal, and afterwards thought, “Wow! That was amazing, I’m so full.” Of course you have. But have you ever done so knowing that you would lose weight because of it? It’s an amazing way to live your life and lose weight.

You have the power to increase your results to almost any level you want, when you are not held back by a restrictive mindset and method… rather you can simply eat MORE healthy food at any time to lose weight faster.

In addition, you can step up your exercise efforts without having to worry whether you will have enough energy, because you are cutting calories.

When you work out you can just eat more healthy food, which in turn will make you burn more fat. You don’t have to play this game of trying to delicately balance things out, you can simply improve your habits and your body until your heart’s content.

It is my personal belief and more importantly my experience, that counting calories and macros and all of that high-level stuff, is for after you already have decent control over your diet, and are in the stubborn belly fat phases of trying to get very lean. Even then you can decide if you want to bother with all of that.

It doesn’t take any counting to switch from a junk diet, to a healthy one, and see amazing results.

Chapter 6- Healthy additions instead of restrictions

So, all you need to do to start losing weight today, is to start eating MORE healthy meals.

You can reach your ideal weight without having to stress over how many calories you ate, or always struggling with trying to cut foods out of your diet.

Simply focus on bringing healthy things into your life… eating more and more healthy food each day/week, and the rest will fall in place naturally.

Transitioning to a healthy diet one step at a time rather than overnight, is a great way to start your weight loss journey right away, but at a pace that you are comfortable with and that you will be able to easily manage.

This is exactly what the 8-week weight loss challenge does. It builds your healthy diet one week at a time, and to succeed all you have to do is to eat more healthy food.

You don’t need to count calories

I could count on one hand the number of times that I counted calories when I lost 80 pounds. Once you start losing a lot of weight without ever having had to count your calories, your focus will quickly shift away from daily calories, and towards quality of food.

Diets that focus only on calorie intake are stressful, unhealthy, and ineffective in the long run.

Since my diet is all healthy now (besides the occasional pizza), I sometimes count my calories to make sure I am getting enough, because healthy food makes me feel so full and energized, so fast.

As you learned above, eating more healthy foods will naturally put you in a calorie deficit, so simply let nutritious food do the work for you.

If you really want to count calories, count how many junk calories you skipped by making a healthy decision… such as skipping the shake and fries at the drive thru, and realizing you just cut 1,000 useless calories out of your day in an instant. But remember to replace that junk food with something healthy.

Quit junk food without stress

As you bring more and more healthy foods into your daily routine, the unhealthy foods that used to hold power over you will naturally fade away from your thoughts.

Rather than always having to focus on all of the foods that you need to cut out of your diet, and how hard that will be, simply fill up on good and nutritious foods and let the good food get rid of the cravings for you, ideally before you even get the craving in the first place.

That’s not to say that you will never have to make a conscious decision to reduce or remove something unhealthy from your diet, but it’s much less stressful to do when you have healthy food filling your belly, as well as your mind.

By the time that I had to actively decide to quit soda completely, I was drinking one little half-sized can per day, because it had become less important to me and had literally been pushed out of my diet by water and clean food.

When I began to add healthy meals into my daily routine, junk food began to drop out of my life without me having to think about it or stress over it. Cravings for junk were less intense, and came less often, because of how full I was with good food already.

Starting with one meal of brown rice and chicken every day began to replace most of my fast food trips.

Soon enough my cravings started to actually change to foods that were good for me, like nuts and fruit.

The more you eat, the more you lose

Since transitioning from a bad diet to a healthy one naturally reduces your calorie and junk food intake, eating more good food means losing more weight.

One of the most powerful concepts that I embraced when I realized this, was that the more healthy food I ate, the more weight I would lose. It enabled me to have an abundance mentality towards my entire routine, including both diet and exercise.

More exercise, more good food, more results.

Chapter 7- What you should eat to lose 100 pounds

So by now I’m sure that you are ready to hear about which foods you should actually eat to lose 100 pounds.

Now that you know how it works, let’s really get started with taking action. This would be where you either modify your current shopping list, or start to create a whole new one.

Take just a moment to consider that this can truly be the day that you change your life forever. If you think that it’s true for you, then it begins right here, with the very first changes you make in your diet.

Below is a weight loss food pyramid that I created to show which foods are good for weight loss, and which are not. It’s a great way to understand what types of food choices are healthy at the store, as well as to spark ideas for beginning to make your transition to a healthy diet.

The point isn’t to only buy foods in the green zone, very few people actually eat that healthy, the point is to start making a shift towards the green by making healthy replacements and additions in your diet.

Whole food is the best

Foods that are “whole” are in general the best foods for weight loss. Whole foods are simply foods that are natural to the human diet, that have not been significantly modified since they grew from the earth (including meat), and are the ideal choice for healthy weight loss foods.

What makes whole foods so amazing for weight loss?

Filled with good, energy-giving nutrients that make you feel happy and full

Low/no bad nutrients that trigger unnecessary fat storage, and block fat loss

Digest slowly… energy lasts longer, and insulin doesn’t spike

Satisfy your hunger with low calories

Whole foods have a lot of nutrients packed into a smaller number of calories, and are usually slow digesting, and for all those reasons lead to weight loss. Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, fish… all of these are whole foods that will give you energy, take away your hunger, and leave your body in a fat burning state.

Watch out though, there are some foods that seem whole, but they have been “refined” which is to say that they have been stripped of extremely valuable nutrients (fiber and protein) that you need to satisfy your hunger and to help you digest your food more slowly. An example of this is white rice, which many may think simply grows like that, but has actually been stripped of the nutrient rich outer “bran” layer that is so important in brown rice.

Just like you’ll see in the next section when we discuss processed foods, always go for non-white versions.

Protein:

Most whole foods contain at least some protein, but make sure that you buy/eat lots of foods that are specifically high in protein, which is essential for satisfying your appetite without overeating, as well as retaining muscle during weight loss.

For most people, getting enough protein means eating meat. White meat like chicken and turkey are naturally lean, but with red meat you’ll want to take extra care to get lean cuts, as animal fat as well as most other saturated fats, should be minimized as much as possible. Fish, however, unlike other meats, has healthy unsaturated fat that will work towards your fat burning goals rather than against them.

But we’ll talk more about fats and carbs in a minute… after just a couple more notes on protein.

Remember that there is such a thing as “whole meat” as well. Ground beef and most lunch meats have been processed (which we will discuss further in the next section), which means that they will digest quickly, and often they are mixed with more bad fat than usual.

Consider processed meat such as ground beef to be a transitional food, until you can make the full switch to all whole meat. When you do eat processed meats, buy the leanest version possible. Switching from 75% lean meat to 97% lean, is an incredible improvement. (1/8 of the fat)

Other whole foods besides meat are also good sources of protein, and can/should be eaten as a part of a healthy balanced diet, as well as a for the protein boost. Excellent examples of these foods are vegetables (absolute # weight loss foods), nuts, seeds, as well as whole grains.

There is some debate over the healthiness of eggs since the yolk has multiple kinds of fat, and personally I remove the majority of the yolks when I scramble eggs, since I get my fat from even healthier sources. Preparing 6 egg whites with 1 yolk is a pretty common thing for me, as it gives a super low-calorie meal with a much higher ratio of protein.

Carbs and fats, the good and the bad

The difference between good carbs/fats and bad ones, is tremendous. Making the right selection will determine whether what you are eating will make you gain weight, or lose it.

Neither carbs nor fats should be “cut” from your diet, and neither should comprise the majority of your diet either, even from the healthiest sources. Your body needs a healthy balance of both fat and carbs, including protein of course.

Did you know… That protein, fat, and carbohydrates are the 3 “Macronutrients,” which by definition are substances that are required in large volume by the human body?

But when it comes to choosing the right type of fats and carbs, there is no need to worry… because all that you have learned in this guide so far about the benefits of whole, unrefined, non-modified foods, takes care of 90% of what’s important about carbs and fat anyways.

This is simply yet another section to shed light on how things work, and to give confidence in transitioning to a well-balanced, whole, highly nutritious diet.

Carbohydrates:

The worst carbs are refined sugars and high-fructose corn syrup. These provide no nutritional value other than cheap, short-lasted energy, as they contain no protein or any other useful nutrient. They spike blood sugar instantly, and turn very easily to fat. These can be found in sugary drinks, cookies, and tons of other unhealthy foods.

Then there are refined “starchy carbs” such as white bread and white rice, that are processed/refined… which means that just like refined sugar, they have little nutritional value and digest very fast, making them “empty calories.”

Then we finally come to healthy carbs. Healthy carbs come from whole foods, which digest slowly and allow you to slowly absorb energy rather than an instant spike in blood sugar.

Healthy “simple carbohydrates” are found in whole foods like fruits, and some vegetables in lower amounts (and also in milk although it is not whole). Though simple carbs they are not the absolute best carbs, when they come from natural food they are still a good weight loss option when eaten in moderation, and especially in replacement of unhealthy foods.

Healthy “complex starchy carbohydrates” are found in whole foods like brown rice, whole wheat, and potatoes (sweet potatoes make a better option, as they digest more slowly). Again, although they are not the absolute best carbs, they make great weight loss options as they are filled with nutrients, including some fiber, and provide longer lasting energy rather than turning to sugar and then fat instantly.

The very best carbs are “fibrous complex carbohydrates.” These are found in vegetables, which are filled with tons of energizing nutrients, as well as lots of fiber which helps you digest food more slowly and fill your belly with very few calories.

Fats:

The worst fats are trans fats. These are like the high-fructose corn syrup of carbs… a man-made monstrosity designed for profit. These are just plain bad and are being outlawed more and more. They turn directly to body fat, and bad cholesterol.

Animal derived saturated fats can be found in butter, meat (especially red), and milk. They should not be eaten in large amounts (which is why low-fat milk is a better choice), as they can raise bad cholesterol, and are not associated with all of the positive health benefits of unsaturated fats, if anything the opposite.

Polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats are the best. These fats come from sources such as fish, seeds, nuts, avocados, and olive oil. Unsaturated fats are associated with all kinds of health benefits, such as insulin and blood sugar control, anti-inflammatory properties, metabolic improvement and prevention, diabetes prevention, and weight loss! These fats are highly nutritious and will work towards your weight loss goals rather than against them.

Healthy processed replacements are good too

Although whole food is the best, there are lots of healthy replacements that can be made with processed foods, which make great weight loss options in moderation, and in transition to even healthier foods.

Peanut butter, lunch meat, healthy cereals, whole wheat bread… these are all examples of foods that have good nutrients, but have been somewhat processed (modified from its original whole state, such as wheat being ground and made into flour/bread).

The key to finding healthy versions for these processed foods is finding items that are not refined (applies to bread/grain type products), and do not have tons of added ingredients.

Just like with whole foods, if it is a “white” or refined product, this means it has been stripped of most of its nutrients like fiber and protein. However, a whole wheat/ whole grain product such as bread or pasta, even if it is processed and digests more quickly than a whole food would, at least has valuable nutrients that will satisfy you.

And for making healthy trades beyond bread and grain type of products…

Ignore items that say “reduced fat”, “fat free”, and “reduced sugar.” These are cheap tricks that don’t address the real issue.

Look for healthy versions of some of your favorite foods that say:

-No added sugars

-No artificial ingredients

-No high-fructose corn syrup

If a food says that it is all-natural, it should usually proudly state the qualities listed above.

Look at the ingredients as well on these items, if they live up to their word then there should not be a long list of chemicals that are hard to pronounce. A really healthy cereal should just have a few familiar ingredients that make sense to you, such as oats, dried fruit, nuts, honey, and maybe even a bit of seed oil.

“It’s all relative”

When it comes down to it, whether or not a food is healthy depends on what you are comparing it to.

A piece of bread is healthy compared to cake, and a whole, unprocessed grain such as oats, is healthier than bread. Yet, a vegetable is super healthy compared to oats. Natural juice is better than soda… and water is far better than juice.

Remember when we talked about how having a REALLY bad diet leaves more opportunity for change? This is where this idea comes into play.

When I was just beginning to change my eating habits, someone would walk by and tell me that an apple would be better than a banana, or that vegetables were better than fruit in general… and in my head I would be thinking, “Screw you, I was eating banana cream pie for breakfast a week ago, so leave me alone!”

Just about anything is healthy when compared to… fast food, soda, snack cakes, microwave dinners… etc.

So when making a diet choice and wondering how much of a difference it will make, consider what you are replacing it with, or in other words what kind of food would you normally be eating at that time of day if you weren’t making changes.

Let’s take cereal for example. I love cereal. So maybe it’s not the absolute healthiest choice, as it is a processed food, but there is a huge difference between eating your favorite fruity/frosted/sugary cereal, and choosing one that is made from all-natural ingredients, and has a lot of fiber and protein compared to the amount of sugar in it.

By huge difference, I mean that making the simple switch is the difference between that particular diet choice working towards your weight loss goals, and against them.

Water is just as important as food

Water is often treated as just a minor tool to boost weight loss. Water is one of the most important pieces of a healthy diet, even though it’s not actually food. Drinking lots of water can potentially make a bigger difference in your weight loss results than any single food could.

It’s not just about the boost in metabolism that water gives, it’s that it replaces unhealthy drinks such as soda, as well as reduces the amount of food you will need to eat to be full.

Drinking water isn’t a trick by any means, it’s essential for both digestion as well as the fat removal process itself, but most people simply don’t drink enough.

Water will help you extract nutrients from the healthy food that you consume more efficiently, in addition to filling your belly with volume, which all adds up to water being a healthy and complete way to keep your appetite at bay with consuming 0 calories.

When my diet was at its worst, I rarely drank plain water at all. Looking back, it kind of scares me that I would go for days without drinking plain water, and that the only fluid intake I was getting was through flavored drinks (and the little bit in food).

Water may not seem appealing when you are craving something like soda, but just like making a healthy food replacement, you actually have to take action and drink it so that your craving for soda will go away.

Set a long goal to drink 1 gallon every day, a shorter goal to drink ½ gallon per day (8 cups), but start right away by simply drinking 2-3 extra glasses every day.

When you wake up and before meals is a great time to drink a glass, but I find it easier to carry a water bottle with me everywhere I go. My $5 water bottle was a great investment considering it led to me drinking 100’s of extra gallons of water.

Giving your body enough water to perform at its best, will make you reach your goals faster and easier, so make sure you take water just as seriously as healthy food.

Chapter 8- How to conquer your cravings

When you’re dieting, cravings for junk can seem like something that are completely unwelcome, a threat to your goals… and something that needs to be avoided at all costs, or “endured”.

However, cravings are something that can be easily handled, rather than having to fight them all of the time.

Cravings affect us on more than one level, which explains why they can be so powerful, but this also provides multiple ways for conquering them.

A craving comes from either a desire for something that tastes good, or the actual hunger of needing nutrients, and most of the time it’s both.

To stop the worst cravings for unhealthy food, you have to address both parts to completely get rid of it.

If you are not hungry and still have a craving, then you know that you’re a little addicted to the taste alone, and can simply focus on eating something healthy with a similar taste.

But when you get a craving and are really hungry, you’ll need to make sure you get a good volume of healthy food in your belly, or the craving won’t go away until you have satisfied the need for food.

Let the food do the work

When you get a craving for something unhealthy, whether it’s sweet or salty or anything else, don’t struggle against it and drive yourself crazy by simply trying not to think about it.

Take action, and actually eat something else that is healthy, preferably something that is close to the taste and consistency of what you were craving in the first place.

When your mind is super focused on that one thing you really want, any other food may seem beside the point and unappealing, but if you break that cycle and just start eating a healthier option, the good food will begin to actually satisfy your hunger as well as your craving.

Giving in doesn’t mean giving up

But losing weight isn’t all about completely avoiding your favorite foods.

Moderation is an amazing tool to take advantage of… so that you can still live a normal life while you are getting in shape, and greatly reduce the amount of junk you consume without going through the stress of cutting something you love out of your life altogether.

Being able to indulge in your favorite foods a little without going out of control, is important not just for losing weight, but for maintaining your weight afterwards.

When I would get a craving so strong that I just couldn’t get my mind off of it, I would allow myself to eat a small portion of what I was craving, to get it off my mind.

It’s not worth struggling against something so much that it makes you want to give up completely.

When it comes to exercise, some is better than none… and when it comes to junk food, some is better than tons.

You have to realize in those moments where you give in to your cravings, that even though the type of food may be completely bad… the amount that you consume of it makes a huge difference.

Milkshakes and pizza were my “kryptonite” when it came to foods that held power over me. Most of the time I was able to completely get rid of the cravings by simply eating healthy food, but sometimes when I just had to give in, I made a deal with myself that I would have the smallest amount, and because of that I would not be hard on myself for having given in. Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it was improvement.

Even though ordinary pizza is still my absolute favorite food and I will still order it on occasion, for the most part I have replaced my pizza cravings with pizza cups, and my craving for ice cream with smoothies.

(For pizza cups, put your choice of healthy bread in a cupcake pan, and fill it with lean meat, sauce, and any other healthy ingredient you want)

(For smoothies, it’s essential to add more than fruit to get a balance of other nutrients such as protein and healthy fat. Adding seeds such as hemp, chia, or flax will do this, in addition to giving it that creamy texture that our brain goes crazy for)

I can’t remember the last time I had ice cream, as smoothies have taken the place of my milkshake habit.

Healthy trades that match your craving

I have found that the easiest way to beat a craving for something unhealthy, is to find/create a healthy version of the unhealthy food.

Here are some healthy trades that you can make when you get a craving for these common types of foods.

(“>” Means, “Is better than”)

#1- Smoothies > Milkshakes

#2- Energy Balls/Bites > Cookies

#3- Pizza Cups, or Chicken/Cauliflower Crust Pizza > Normal Pizza

#4- Water > Flavored Sparkling Water > Soda

#5- Homemade juice > All-natural store-bought juice > Artificial juice

#6- Apple chips > Homemade potato chips > Store-bought potato chips

#7- Fruit > Dark Chocolate > Candy and popsicles

#8- Natural Honey > Sugar

#9- Grilled chicken wraps > Fast food chicken sandwiches

It just takes a little time and creativity to find healthy replacements that you like. There are lots of healthy versions of my previous favorite foods that I now like even more, which means that giving up many unhealthy foods is not so much of a “sacrifice.”

Chapter 9- Stay on track when life gets hard

When life gets hard, losing weight gets really hard. Stress can make cravings much harder to deal with, and after a while can make you question whether you can stay on track long enough to reach your target weight.

Although your healthy diet and exercise routine should never become a source of stress in itself, it can help in hard times to cut yourself a little slack with your diet, and stay on track with a slower rate of loss, rather than having an all or nothing mindset and risking giving up altogether.

I went through some really hard times when I was losing weight, and staying on track during those times wasn’t simply a matter of “pushing through.”

It required lots of self-kindness as well as forgiveness, the ability to gracefully recover from slipping backwards, and most importantly a constant awareness and reminder of why I wanted to get in shape, and what my goal was.

It’s important to be prepared for when times get tough, before they actually happen, even if it’s just thinking now about how you will handle yourself later.

Although we hope that everything will go just right and as expected during our journey, it’s best to assume that you will encounter stress along the way, and simply thinking of how you can handle these times now, can make all the difference in staying on track.

Getting through rainy days

The first level of struggle you’ll have to get through are single days that are stressful. It’s important to understand that the only way a single day can ruin your diet… is if you are hard on yourself and let things spiral out of control because of feeling like you messed everything up.

In reality, one day in itself is a very small piece of the very big picture, but one day or one moment can be all it takes to give up for a long period of time.

However, knowing how to push through these hard days makes reaching your goals possible, and even easy!

On these days just try to do the best you can with your diet without adding to the stress you are feeling, but without completely throwing your diet out the window. If the entire day went bad, you don’t even have to consider yourself as having fallen off track. You don’t need to make the following day hardcore to make up for any losses either… simply wake up and do better than the day before.

On bad days, try to do something positive and healthy, even if it wasn’t anything near the full extent of what you had planned. Have a healthy dinner, or prep some food for tomorrow, or do a small workout before bed… just a little something to get your confidence back on track.

Celebrate every little healthy improvement that you make.

Surviving the storms

Sometimes life throws more than one bad day at a time. Sometimes life gets stressful for weeks or months on end, and in addition to trying to handle what’s causing you stress or pain at the time, you are left trying to stay on track with your diet on a normal basis.

When you find yourself feeling really stressed or sad, and are having a hard time pushing forward on your weight loss journey, it’s okay to cut yourself a little slack with your routine, and absolutely essential that you cut yourself some slack on a mental/emotional level.

For helping you feel better as well as stay on track with weight loss, be as kind to yourself as you possibly can be… in the way that you perceive your accomplishments, as well as your “failures.”

You have really only failed when you tell yourself so, and anything else is just a setback to overcome.

Think back to the section on cravings when I said that giving in a little doesn’t mean giving up. It’s during these stressful times that cravings are at their worst, and when you can practice moderation and allow yourself a little leeway, so you don’t feel like giving up altogether.

Another way to stay on track during these extended periods of stress, is to turn your diet and exercise routine into something you actually look forward to.

Imagine if your routine was actually a source of stress relief, where you didn’t exercise out of obligation, but simply because you love the activity. Imagine if some of your favorite foods that you go to when you are stressed, were actually healthy foods that help you lose weight.

This is what it’s like when your diet becomes just a natural part of who you are. When this mindset settles in, although hard times will still come from time to time, you won’t need to worry that you will give up or even need to actively try to stay on track. After you get used to the positive changes you make, all you will need to do to get through the hard time times is continue your normal healthy habits… and you will come out thinner and stronger on the other side.

But it’s not always going to work out where you feel prepared and completely in tune with the healthy changes you have recently made. Getting to a point where making healthy decisions is effortless, takes time.

What do you do when life gets tough, and staying on track becomes a constant struggle?

Don’t take things to the next level until you are ready. The last thing you want to do when you are already having a hard time, is to pressure yourself to do even more when you are feeling overwhelmed.

This is just one of the forms of self-kindness that you can practice when you’re having a hard time and trying to improve your health at the same time.

Give yourself some room to breathe, but set a bare minimum goal, such as having one healthy meal per day.

Keep telling yourself that you are going to be so happy that you stayed on track after the storm passes.

Ask yourself this question often, “Is being in shape still important to me?” You’ll find that the answer is yes!

Keep reminding yourself that a better body and life is right around the corner, and that the healthy decisions you are making are leading you directly to your ultimate goal.

And last but far from least, is to connect with and remind yourself of, the most important reason that you personally want to lose weight.

What makes you want it more than anything?

My absolute number one motivational method, for use in all times but especially when life gets hard, is having a very clear understanding of my most important reason for wanting lose weight.

It’s called, “finding your why“, and it is something that gives deep and long-lasting motivation on your weight loss journey.

I could literally list a hundred reasons to lose weight, and I’m sure there are thousands…. and most of them are things that anyone who transforms their body would enjoy the benefits of, but each of us has one underlying idea or circumstance that drives us more than anything else.

Calling upon this thought or image when you are having a hard time pushing through, will give deep meaning to the decision you are making, and bring back the strong desire to improve yourself.

You may find that you already know what this driving force is for you, and simply need to let it become a powerful source of motivation for you. But you may also need to take some time to do some deep searching, before you really connect with and unveil your personal and most important reason for wanting to lose weight.

Never be ashamed of an aesthetic goal, it’s totally natural to want to look good, and if it drives you to push forward, you will also experience all of the other health benefits anyways.

That’s the beauty of it, you can focus on the biggest reward, but still experience all of the other ones at the same time.

Remind yourself that you truly do want to be in shape, possibly more than anything, and that you are willing to put in continual effort to achieve your goals.

Remind yourself that these really weird times do happen… where you outright lose sight of your vision or even trick yourself into thinking that it’s not important to you.

Getting back on track when things fall apart

After doing all that you can to prevent falling off track, there will still be times that you slip a little further than you meant to. When you gain a few pounds back… it can totally stop your momentum and take away your confidence.

I have been through these times, and I know it sucks. It’s easy to focus on the fact that if you had done everything right, that you would be further along in your progress. That thought alone can be overwhelming.

First of all, it helps to know that everyone falls off track at some point, and loses progress. It’s like hiking up a hill, and sometimes you slide back a little bit, but you get your foot hold as soon as you can, and continue your journey to the top. It’s not like a video game where you mess up and just press the reset button… don’t give up and walk to the bottom of the hill to start all over, just get back up and start climbing after you have caught your breath.

When you fall off track with your diet or workouts, get back into it right away at a level you feel comfortable maintaining… and rather than being hard on yourself for having fallen off track temporarily, be proud that you did what it took to overcome the struggle.

Now you can know that you have what it takes to finish what you started.

Getting through the hard times proves that you can succeed

If you can make it through the hard times and come out on the other side still working towards your goals, you’ll know that you have what it takes to make it the whole way.

During one of these stressful times in my life, when I was feeling like I wanted to just give up, I realized that if I could learn to not give up completely during these times, then nothing else could hold me back from reaching my goals.

So instead of going to the store and just reverting back to my old eating habits, I ordered a pizza, and rather than thinking of how I was ruining everything, I focused on enjoying my pizza and looked forward to feeling better and more motivated soon.

I focused on how far I had come, the fact that I could indulge a little and not spiral out of control, and the fact that I wasn’t drinking soda with the pizza.

You have to remember that things will get better, and when they do you’ll thank yourself for not giving up.

Even when you tell yourself that you are giving up, allow yourself to wake up the next morning and change your mind without guilt.

Chapter 10- How small changes add up to huge results

People have the tendency to go all or nothing when starting a new diet, which makes things really hard right from the start.

Why wasn’t anyone telling me to drink 1 soda instead of 4? Would it not make a big difference if I skipped the milkshake at the drive-thru? What if I stop putting sugar in my cereal?

And most of all, can’t I just eat one healthy meal per day to start with? Can’t I make a huge difference without totally ripping apart my diet, overnight?

The answer is an absolute yes.

Let’s talk about how the little changes add up quickly, and how results you may perceive as being small, are actually incredible.

2 pounds per week is 104 pounds per year

Let’s do some really simplistic math, just to show how the pounds lost each week add up quickly over time. If you want to lose 100 pounds in one year, all you need to lose each week on average, is 2 pounds. Doesn’t sound like much? The numbers don’t lie. There are 52 weeks in the year, and 52 multiplied by 2 is 104.

I prefer a different way of calculating goals which I will show you below, but this simple way of seeing how things add up is incredibly powerful to see, and I hope that it inspires you to truly believe that 1 year from now, you could be 100 pounds lighter, or more!

As I have mentioned before, you will lose weight faster than someone who weighs less than you, but you will also lose weight at a faster rate at the beginning of your journey than when you are nearing your goal. This is why calculating your goals by using percentage of your bodyweight is a great way to account for this fact.

When you weigh more, multiplying your weight by a certain percent will give a higher result. Much the same, as time passes and you weigh less and less, multiplying by that same percentage will give a smaller result.

The table below shows how much you could weigh on a monthly basis, over the period of a year… if you were consistent with diet and exercise, and lost 4% of your weight each month. This has been done considering multiple starting weights, so for quick reference simply pick the starting weight that is closest to yours.

If you’re anything like me, you’d like to have this calculation done for your exact weight, and perhaps to even be able to play with the control on percentage a little bit. No worries, I have you covered.

I have created a weight loss calculator/tracker that will instantly calculate your goals for you, as well as let you track your monthly weight over time. Read more about it and download your free copy here.

Just imagine yourself actually living life at the weight that is possible to be at only a year from now, and think of how amazing it will be.

Why consistency is so powerful

Everyone always says, “consistency is key.” But what does it really mean to be consistent? A lot of people think it means never messing up, and never eating anything unhealthy at all. However, being consistent with your weight loss efforts can be easy, and doesn’t require anything near perfection.

Consistency means making enough healthy decisions on a daily/weekly basis to move you towards your goals. This simply means that you are making improvements over your previous habits, and that when considering the big picture, the good that you do outweighs the bad.

Many will give up because they were not perfectly consistent, but in many cases their imperfect efforts were actually making them lose weight faster than they wanted anyways… but they just didn’t give it time.

That’s how powerful clean eating for weight loss can be, that you can do less than you meant to and get more than you hoped for, if you just keep making improvements.

Let’s look at an example of a journal for an entire week of weight loss, that didn’t go perfectly but would bring consistent improvement and results… possibly more than you thought in the first place.

Although I made this journal up, this is exactly what a week would have went like for me near the beginning of my weight loss journey, and exactly the type of habits that started leading me towards my goals at a pace that made me happy, and surprised the heck out of people around me.

In this example, the week begins with a bit of stress and a couple missed healthy meals/ workouts right from the start, to emphasize the point that consistency is easy even when things don’t go perfectly, as long as you recognize your progress and don’t give up/ keep starting over.

Monday- I wanted to start the week strong. I wanted to have a healthy breakfast and to exercise before work, but it didn’t happen. My lunch wasn’t healthy either, I had fast food. It was just so stressful at work and I felt kind of guilty about how the morning went…. but I finally had a really healthy dinner, and even got in a little bit of exercise. Today was a success, not perfect by any means… but it was still a big improvement over my normal habits.

Tuesday- I worked out for a few minutes this morning, and I had a healthy breakfast. I don’t think I like exercising in the mornings… I didn’t eat a healthy lunch, but I had a healthy dinner again. That’s two healthy meals today! I’m actually very happy about it.

Wednesday- It was a bad day. I only had one healthy snack and didn’t exercise. I was sore from the day before so I didn’t mean to work out anyways, but my diet was not good. It’s a good thing that some of those extra calories are going to my muscles at least… It’s okay though, I’ll do better tomorrow, plus overall this week has been a big improvement.

Thursday- I had a healthy breakfast, and I didn’t get to eat lunch because work was crazy, but I did have healthy snack to hold me over. I ate a healthy dinner and had a great workout this evening. It was a full healthy day.

Friday- It was a healthy day up until the evening… I went out with friends and had pizza. But I still had two healthy meals today.

Saturday- I went for a long walk before having a healthy breakfast this morning, then ate kind of healthy for the rest of the day besides a couple of cookies. Not bad!

Sunday- I had a really good workout today. I ate super healthy all day, and even prepped some food for next week. I think I can do this.

Lost 3 pounds this week!

(Remember 2 pounds per week is 104 pounds per year)

So let’s think about how this week went for this pretend person. Some of you might have thought that the week didn’t go well, if it weren’t for their positive and forgiving attitude. They definitely had some external stress going on which made things a little difficult, and they were a bit disappointed at imperfection at times but overall very focused on improvement and celebrating success.

Some days were better than others in this example, but consistent progress was made all throughout the week. The overall results led to weight loss, and more importantly this person was in a mindset that allowed them to keep pushing forward with confidence.

Despite the fact that it could have gone better, this is usually the reality of how someone actually begins to succeed with weight loss. Not everything works out exactly like you plan, but if you don’t let it throw you off your game and make you feel like all is lost when you give in to unhealthy cravings, you will see exciting fat loss results on a continual basis, and begin to see yourself transform right away.

Anyone else could have given up when things got tough or went off track, and they would not have known how amazing it would be to see the results stack up week after week.

Don’t get me wrong I have fallen off track before for extended periods and gained weight back, it happens to all of us even on our final journey, but the key to pushing forward is self-kindness/forgiveness, and getting back on track gracefully as soon as possible, rather than throwing in the towel completely.

Even when you are a master of consistency, there will be hard times where things are hard to stick to.

Remember that consistency is key, and the key to consistency is simply to always keep improving, no matter the pace.

Always improve, and never plateau

When you continually make healthy changes, always focusing on improvement, the results that you see will constantly come.

When you make small changes consistently, your diet quickly builds up to become very powerful, and when you continue making improvements along your journey, you will find that the results just keep piling on and you never plateau.

If your diet is a fixed thing that never changes, and just is what it was since the day you made one big overnight change, at some point you will hit a point where your body has come into balance with your new habits.

It’s only natural, but those who have a fixed mindset and aren’t open to improving their diet beyond one initial change, will at some point likely find themselves stuck in a plateau. If you want to go that extra mile at the end and get that six pack, you will naturally need to step up your game with both diet and exercise.

What many call a plateau, I simply call balance. It’s during these times that you have the decision to keep doing what you are doing and maintain your newfound body, or to push forward even further if you want to go above and beyond. Your body isn’t stuck, it’s simply that there are still improvements to be made if you choose to do so.

Gradual changes allow your diet to become a lifestyle

The greatest benefit of taking things one step at a time, is that the changes you begin to make in your life become natural to you, rather than a burden that you need to endure.

With the right mindset, you can have the confidence of knowing that the next time you start, will be YOUR time to truly get in shape… because you resolve to keep moving forward a pace you can stick with, without the pressure of wondering if it will be too hard for you to sustain the changes.

Soon enough, not only will making healthy decisions not be hard, but it won’t even be something that you need to actively think about. You can simply just be you, and live your life the way you normally do, and you will continue to work your way towards your goal or easily stay there once you have arrived.

The healthy foods and workouts that are leading you to your ideal weight, will simply become a part of your lifestyle.

Chapter 11- How to track your progress, beyond the scale

Weighing yourself is an amazing way to see definitive results. There’s just something deeply satisfying about seeing your progress represented in the form of a solid value, that simply can’t be argued with. That being said, there are so many other ways to track/enjoy/celebrate your progress beyond what you see on the scale.

On that note, it’s easy to get in the habit of weighing yourself A LOT, and this can lead to disappointment even when you are making great progress. I never suggest weighing yourself multiple times per day, and personally I do not weigh myself more than once per week.

Even if you have a digital scale which most people do these days, there are just too many fluctuations that happen throughout the day in your diet and body, to expect a consistent downward trend on the scale if you are weighing yourself constantly.

If you weigh yourself once or twice per week, you will see a more accurate trend of your weight steadily reducing over time, where small fluctuations on a daily basis will be a minor factor in the result that you see.

But enough about scales and numbers, let’s talk about other even more enjoyable ways to admire and record your progress.

Take pictures, you won’t regret it

One of the most powerful things you can do on the first day of your weight loss journey, is to take a before photo of yourself. Taking full body pictures of yourself can feel really strange when you are not comfortable with your body, but you won’t regret it once you start seeing progress, and begin to document your changes. (You can even start a blog!)

I really wish I had more pictures of me when I was at my biggest, but I am very happy that I was able to record my progress, because it deeply inspired me along the way and now it has begun to inspire others as well.

Seeing an old photo of yourself after you have lost a significant amount of weight (or even 10 pounds for that matter), especially when put right next to a photo of you after all of your hard work, is a super empowering thing to see. It gives you an incredible boost of motivation to continue your journey, tons of pride for yourself, and complete confidence that your routine/method is working.

Buying new clothes… bittersweet, but an amazing feeling

Having to buy new clothes because you lost weight, is one of the most deeply fulfilling rewards that come with weight loss. The beauty of it is that it happens several times along the way.

It can also be somewhat annoying though… If you are working hard then most likely you will end up needing to buy new clothes again while the current ones are still fairly new.

This is why if you are exercising AND dieting, I highly suggest buying a few clothes to hold you over until the next round of shopping, rather than buying an all new wardrobe and watching it go to waste months later.

I also highly suggest trying on clothes when you go shopping if you normally don’t, because I have gone home all too many times with brand new clothes that were “my size,” but ended up being too big.

I can just hear the girl at the store, “None of these fit?” Yes! none of them fit!

But overall, fitting into a size smaller than you did before is absolutely incredible, every time.

It’s a clear expression of all the hard work you have put in, right there for you and everyone else to see. It’s like not weighing yourself for a long time, and then being astounded at the results that the scale shows. All of a sudden it clicks that you as a person, are a size smaller.

As you lose weight, your current clothes will get bigger without you noticing for a while, and when you finally size down it’s like, “Wow!”

I used to wear XL shirts and size 38 pants, and now wear medium shirts and size 32 pants. If you are reading this there is a good chance you have even more sizes that you will progress through.

Enjoy what your new body allows you to do in life

Perhaps the most important and inspiring indication of progress, are the things that your new healthier body allows you to DO.

This can mean simply doing things that you could not before, or enjoying things that used to give you pain or that would exhaust you.

Some important milestones for me during my journey, were the following:

-Mowing my lawn without breaking a sweat or having to take a break

-Jogging my first non-stop mile since high school

-Doing my first pull-up since high-school

-Realizing that stairs didn’t exhaust me anymore

The things that you are able to do, due to your smaller size, lower weight, and stronger muscles… can be life changing, especially when you have even more weight to lose.

As you lose more and more weight, pay attention to the things that you can now do, which you could not do so easily before. Realizing these feats will make you feel like pure gold, and inspire you to continue your efforts with conviction.

You can also set goals in terms of physical ability, such as striving to do 10 normal non-stop pushups, and being able to jog around the block without stopping, and of course being able to lift higher amounts of weight.

All of these things are very powerful indicators that you are becoming a healthier, thinner, and more able person.

Chapter 12- Look forward to the rewards

One of the best ways to mentally prepare yourself for starting a new (and final) weight loss journey, is to connect your mind to what your life and body can be like in the near future.

Truly take a moment now, and time in each day, to get excited about losing weight, and ultimately becoming the fit person you dream of.

Now that you have confidence in doing things the healthy way, getting in shape shouldn’t be something that you don’t let yourself look forward to… because it “might not work out”.

The only way it’s not going to work out, is if you don’t work for it. Losing weight isn’t one of those things like trying to get a job that you want, where you do all the right things and then someone comes along and takes your place or tells you that you are not qualified.

It’s your choice, and yours alone, which I find to be incredibly empowering… to know that although it’s sometimes hard for me to put in the work, my efforts will make a difference and the next morning I will wake up closer to my goal. Nobody can take that away from me.

So, when you know that it is your time to transform yourself, you can confidently look forward to what’s about to come, because you can finally know that it’s a dream that you are about to bring into reality.

Change your life in a year

There is no universal statement that I could make about how long it will take any given person to reach their goals, but what I can say, is that 1 year is an excellent amount of time to set a goal for losing 100 pounds.

We already talked about how the math adds up, but what you can do to really start looking forward to your results, is to really envision yourself being 100 pounds lighter in about 1 years’ time.

Some may flinch when I say 1 year, but for some of you it may be inspiring to hear an actual time frame.

When you think about it 1 year really isn’t all that long, considering the following:

You get to enjoy the reward for the rest of your life

Your “diet,” isn’t a temporary thing anyways, it will become a natural part of your life

You will love your new body way before you reach your ultimate goal

The time will pass anyways, might as well make the best of it!

Going through many transformations

You can look forward to many rewards that will come long before your end goal. Something that I always say about losing lots of weight, is “The more you have to lose, the more you stand to gain.”

The heavier you are now, the more exciting changes there are to look forward to. Every 20 pounds is a transformation in itself, which means that you don’t have to wait a long time to start enjoying the rewards of all the effort you put in. Your first 20 pounds is right around the corner!

Every time you fit into a smaller shirt or pair of pants…

Every time someone says, “have you lost weight?”

Every time you look in the mirror, and realize that you are stronger and thinner than the day before.

The rewards get bigger and bigger as you get smaller

Losing 10 pounds means knowing you can do it, and showing the first signs of being thinner. People may even notice already. If you look closely, you will certainly notice. You may not feel a difference yet, but you will feel better because of your improved diet.

20 pounds begins to make an impact in how you feel, and reveals an undeniable change in your overall size. You may even notice your face beginning to thin at this point, which is just as exciting as your belly going away. 20 pounds is very powerful.

50 pounds is a complete transformation in itself, even if you have double that to lose. After losing 50 pounds you’ll be significantly lighter on your feet, and far more confident about yourself. You’ll have that “wow!” factor, where people just can’t believe it’s you, and keep saying you look like a whole new person. You start to see how every little part of you is tightening up… and that you are gaining definition. Your jawline starts to show, you can begin to see the natural contours of your body, and maybe even start to see a bit of muscle outline. For men, your veins will begin to pop out a little on your forearms, which is a pleasant surprise.

100 pounds will be a complete life change. It may be the first time you have ever been in great physical condition, which will feel more amazing than I could even say, both physically and mentally.

Imagine the future you

Picture this. You wake up feeling amazing, and well-rested. You sleep better than you used to, because you don’t snore anymore, and also because your eating habits don’t keep you up at night.

You see a whole new person in the mirror.

It’s not just your belly that’s gone, it’s every little piece of you that has transformed. Even your face is well-defined.

You see someone staring back at you that was hidden inside for a long time, and you actually perceive yourself in a new way. You have more confidence naturally, than you ever thought you would.

When you get dressed, before you even put your clothes on, you can actually feel in your hands that your clothes are lighter than they used to be, because that’s how many sizes you went down.

You slide on your shirt, and it fits just right. There’s nothing to cover up besides your bare skin, and you don’t have to worry about your belly.

Nothing “makes you look fat,” because you’re not overweight anymore.

Imagine meeting someone and going on a date, and your weight not even being something that you think about. You can just focus on just being you.

Imagine your kids asking if you want to play a game of baseball, and your only concern being finding the equipment to play… not whether or not you can keep up. Imagine your kids trying to keep up with YOU!

Imagine getting invited to go on a hike or to a pool party, and you have the freedom to just say, “Yes, I would love to!”

Amazing things can be right around the corner, all you need to do is make that first healthy grocery shopping trip, and to start making changes at a pace that you are comfortable with.

If you want to start a step by step program that you can simply follow to lose weight, you’ll love the 8-week challenge. Sign up below to get your free copy or read more about the 8-week challenge right here.

Wishing you the best on your journey!

-Corey Bustos

Did you like this guide? If so, would you mind sharing it? It would help more than I can say!

References:

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Clark, James E. “Diet, Exercise or Diet with Exercise: Comparing the Effectiveness of Treatment Options for Weight-Loss and Changes in Fitness for Adults (18–65 Years Old) Who Are Overfat, or Obese; Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Diabetes and Metabolic Disorders 14 (2015): 31. PMC. Web. 23 Feb. 2018.

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Barbara Strasser and Wolfgang Schobersberger, “Evidence for Resistance Training as a Treatment Therapy in Obesity,” Journal of Obesity, vol. 2011, Article ID 482564, 9 pages, 2011. doi:10.1155/2011/482564

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Intensity of Resistance Exercise Determines Adipokine and Resting Energy Expenditure Responses in Overweight Elderly Individuals
Ioannis G. Fatouros, Athanasios Chatzinikolaou, Symeon Tournis, Michalis G.Nikolaidis, Athanasios Z. Jamurtas, Ioannis I. Douroudos, Ioannis Papassotiriou,Petros M. Thomakos, Kyriakos Taxildaris, George Mastorakos, Asimina Mitrakou
Diabetes Care Dec 2009, 32 (12) 2161-2167; DOI: 10.2337/dc08-1994

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