HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT FAST (WITHOUT PUTTING IT BACK ON)

When  summer season is approaching, one of the main questions asked by body image conscious people is: how to lose weight fast?

Especially, if one is heading on holidays, if there is a deadline such as a wedding, special party or the ubiquitous New Year’s Resolution.

Regardless the case, the common question is: how to do it without failing in the attempt? And equally important, how to avoid gaining it back few months later.

First, I need to address few things  for the reader to understand what needs to be done before  considering starting to be able to succeed. Many people join the gym because they “want to lose weight” but have very little knowledge of “what kind of weight” they need to lose, how fast they can lose it or what is the most effective way to do it.

They wrongly assume that, because they are know taking some exercise their body weight, or their body fat percentage related to total body weight to be precise,should start going down. Below are few things to bear in mind when embarking on a weight loss endeavor.

1-You have to know how much weight you want/need to lose and have a clear deadline to achieve it.

That along will bring about many lifestyle changes in terms of what needs to be done for example, if you want to lose a kilo (2.2 lb ) of body fat you need to burn  9000 cal to achieve it ( yes, one single kilo of body fat contains 9000 calories )How long it takes to burn a kilo of fat depends on many general and individual factors such as sex, age, nutrition status, metabolic rate and especially training frequency among many others.

So if you thing that you can do one or two hours of training per week lets say to lose at least 10% body fat think again, I can assure you it will not happen

The average weight loss (if someone does the right thing) varies between 500 gr to 1 kg per week more or less for an average person.

With that statement along you can stop believing those claims of magic products like Goji berries, fat burners, raspberries ketones etc, causing a 10 kg weight loss in 3 weeks or so, as there are no short cuts or magic weight loss foods that melt the fat. just planning and hard work.

So, knowing how much weight you want /need to lose  will provide a dead line or time frame to achieve the goal which ,in turn, will help to set the plan to do it. For example, if someone has 10 kg of fat to lose and that person is lucky enough to have a HEALTHY METABOLISM and is able to lose 900 gr of fat per week it will take him or her roughly 11 weeks to achieve it.

Yes, it is possible to lose weight faster but the problem is what kind of tissue you lose, body fat or muscle tissue? Healthy weight loss consist of losing mostly fat tissue and none or, at least ,the minimum possible amount of muscle.

Otherwise it will very difficult to maintain the lost weight off for good due to the fact that muscle is metabolically active tissue,it requires a lot of calories to be maintained, fat on the other hand does not.

So lets say you lose 10 kg of total body weight in 10 weeks, five kg from fat and 5 kg from muscle, is that optimal weight loss ? no, it is not!, remember,fat does not require calories to survive, now you have 5 kg of muscle less to maintain!So that person achieved weight loss, after 10 weeks of dedication  relaxes a bit and consumes few more calories and stops exercising for few weeks and all the weight lost comes back …with a vengeance.

2-Have a personalised nutrition assessment and diet plan.

This one is a bit hard to swallow but unfortunately we cannot out train a bad diet.

That  sucks really does’t it ?  I come from Italian and Greek heritage so pasta and sweets are far more appetizing for  me that broccoli…

For instance, if we consider that the average Caramel Frappuccino sold at Starbucks contains roughly 510 cal or that 100 gr of cheddar cheese has 400 cal, one or the other consumed two  or three times on a weekly basis on top of the unhealthy meals the average person consumes, that alone will sabotage  any weight lose attempts in most people.

No amount of workouts will suffice to meet the deadline if you consider  life in the cities and the limited amount of time to drag our bums to the gym…

What a proper diet and personalized plan should look like goes beyond the scope of this article as some of the factors that will determine that are mostly individual to the person, some of them for instance are sex, age , body composition analysis, nutrient deficiency status, race , training age (training age is  how long a person has been training correctly)Each person is different so while two people might get results on the same diet (that sometimes happens) it is the exception to the rule not the norm.

For example, Intermittent fasting does not work for everyone; neither does the Paleo diet, the beach diet, the ketogenic diet or high carb diet if you are male above 10%body fat or female above 17 % body fat .

Those are just a few among many other diets out there in the vast internet but the take home is that you have to individualize your nutrition, you can not just follow what works for someone else, there is only one perfect diet to meet your goals: the one that works for you! And that my friends, have to be specifically designed for you according to your uniqueness.

So, my dear readers do yourselves a favor and  have a nutrition assessment and personalized diet plan carried out by a professional with proven results from real people, not just from someone on Instagram fitting into a nice pair of leggings if you know what I mean.

Below are some examples of real results of people I have personally coached for weight loss whose identities will remain hidden (yes, it’s sad but I have to comply with Europe legislation too so I included just their initials)

T.S

By the way, I did not train this person, just did his nutrition assessment and nutrition plan

14/11/201821/12/201811/03/2019100.8 kg96.3 kg93.5 kg

Body fat   14/11/2018 20% 21/12/2018: 15.3% 11/03/2019:    13 %

T.F

I have been training this person twice a week plus one session a week of Interval training .

25/01/201715/02/201715/04/2017110 kg104.3 kg101.5 kgB fat 69.7 %B fat 61.9 %B fat 54.6%

E. C

This person trained for two whole years in a large “Health and well-being” facility without success before she came to me for a 12 week body transformation package, training frequency 2 x week weight training, and 1 x week running session.

18/03/201912/04/201963.3 kg62.8 kgB Fat 38.4 %B Fat 33%

3-Training

The final ingredient in the formula is training.

For those of you who  wish of a magic diet that will melt the fat away without taking exercise I must say with all humility that you are either delusional or  you are just not willing to do it.

While there can be people that will lose weight just dieting (I hate that people …kidding !) that people are a genetic rarity,most of us will have to train hard to achieve it.

Basically, when the nutrition plan is properly designed  to meet the person’s needs, all type of exercise will work…for some time.

After a short period of exercising  the body will adapt to the training stimulus and stagnation will occur,you can engage in aerobics, spinning, Body Pump, Insanity you name it but THE FASTEST AND MOST EFFECTIVE TYPE OF EXERCISE to lose weight is weight training or resistance training.

Of all the types or forms of exercise that you can take, the ONLY  that BUILDS MUSCLE and BURNS FAT fastest to improve body composition  is well planned and structured weight training, especially with barbell and dumbbells.

The how to is very complex, and is best and fastest to invest in a professional to do the hard work for you.Sure, you can try  and watch  Instagram exercises but I hope by now  that you have some basic knowledge of what needs to be  put together before you can even start. More over, most people will have postural problems and or injuries,  joint pains and aches, are unfamiliar with the weight room and just do not know where to start,some will be biased by the popular bodybuilding magazines and their biased information and have been training with improper/imbalanced training programs for years and others, have never weight trained before so do not  know anything about effective weight training .

Recap

You need to have an estimate of how much weight you need or want to lose,that will determine how long it will take you and also  will give you an approximate date by which you should  reach that goal. that will provide you with  a time frame to plan.

You also need to address your personal nutrition strategy tailored to you own uniqueness and lastly, if you want to maximize fat loss and gain or at least retain precious muscle tissue you need to center your workouts around weight training.

You do not have to become a gym rat to achieve it but according to science,and having been myself in the iron game more that twenty two years, experience you need between three and four hours per week, not much in my humble opinion.

That my dear readers is the fastest way to lose weight permanently and keep it off for good according to both science, and my 26 plus years training with weights.Of course, that is if you really want to do it instead of wishing it.

No magic foods, no magic supplements, no short cuts, two of the three examples of weight loss given above are from people I met at a large and well known fitness facility, they trained for months,one of the for two years, without much results until we set in place all that has been discussed above.

You see,that is how the Fitness industry deceives people and commercial gyms strive, by giving a vast array of exercise options but failing to address these three basic principles.

On my next article, I will talk about the fitness industry and  business model of most “Health Chains”

I genuinely hope that this article throws some light into the lives of thousands or perhaps millions of people that truly want to lose weight for good but do not know how, are overwhelmed with confusing and conflicting information  found on the internet or are swayed by the health centers and fitness industry.