Basics 1: Easy, Quick, and Safe Weight Loss

That’s right “Weight loss that’s Easy, Safe and QUICK! Call now and we’ll double your order! Woo!” Sounds pretty lame and cheesy, right? Yeah, I know, Tell me about it. We’ve all seen COUNTLESS commercials, billboards, magazine ads, pills, cremes, granola bars, cereals (”whole-grain super-foods”), etc, that all claim some sort of amazing weight loss and health results.

Occasionally, you’ll even get a picture of 2 different people who look similar (tricky tricky!) – or a photo of some girl in a bikini who desperately needs to eat. Her fake smiles, spray-on tan, and shimmering body oil are only hiding her immense hunger and utter malice for others.

Well, Enough of all that. What they don’t want you to know is that your body has everything it needs to change – as long as you give it the right fuel. Imagine that! Gimmicky “Products” be damned.

Here’s a miraculous new weight loss product for you… its called…

“Millions of years of Human Evolution!”

(ok, so we weren’t technically “humans” or even upright hominids that whole time – but you get the drift)

That’s right – I promise – No expensive products, no gimmicks, no bullsh*t, just built-in biological horsepower. Seriously, If you want to change your life for the better, sometimes you just have to finally stand up and do it – and no fancy product or bunch of text is going to get you to that point unless you stand up and say “Lets do this.” (except less lame sounding). When changing your life, I think that weight loss is the best way to start, because if you’re like most people and carrying around a few extra pounds, that can have a pretty negative effect on your self-esteem as a whole. Dropping some weight and looking in the mirror can make you feel reborn and change your whole outlook and mood. Its like getting a huge confidence boost that betters almost EVERY aspect of your life… (ok, motivational speaker talk off for now)

Here we go – I’m going to lay out a SIMPLE framework for what you should do in order to lose weight, I’ll save the WHY (how and why it works, technically) for another post coming up – this is all in stages that each have particular goals. This step is to drop weight and boost your ego ASAP!

Lets keep this in bite size pieces instead of giant jargon-laden essays. Sound good? Good.

This is assuming two things: You have 20 lb or more to lose (like most people in America at least, other countries seem to fare better) and you are willing to forget everything you’ve been taught about human nutrition (including “common knowledge”, lies, rumors, and warnings).

1) Ditch the sugar and refined grains

(READ: NO sweets, bread, and pasta!).

Aside from having NO nutritional value, eating these things virtually guarantees that you’re ALWAYS storing fat instead of burning it. You could workout like a crazy person and it still wouldn’t matter much (and most people do). Again, that’s no sugar and starch (which means anything made with flour basically). It causes your insulin to go through the roof (meaning: its the devil).

2) Eat meat for protein, and lots of it.

You should be eating AT LEAST X grams of protein a day. What is X? X is your lean body mass times 0.6. How do you find out your lean body mass? Well, there are a lot of ways of calculating it, but for now lets just say its the “skinny you” inside. You lean body mass is the weight of your muscles, bones, and organs – everything except your fat. We need to make sure that all your ‘functional parts’ are getting enough fuel to do their jobs properly. Confused? Ok, just try and shoot for around 100g of protein a day for now (35 or so per meal). We will revise this later once you’ve come closer to your goal (I’ll do a whole post about lean-body mass calculations in the future). Don’t worry about eating too much – your body simply won’t use it, but (more importantly)don’t worry it WON’T hurt you (or your kidneys).

Note: Not that you can’t follow a decent low-carb plan while being a vegetarian – BUT there’s only so much tofu one can eat, and trust me – you’d be eating a LOT of it.

3) Have *some* green leafy veggies to round things out.

(if you’d like)

Ok, its cool to eat vegetables during the initial slim-down phase – but the bottom line is that you want to keep your overall carb intake around 30g (or less, if possible). All vegetables have carbs – BUT vegetables also have fiber too and while fiber IS a carb, we’re not going to count it against our totals – because fiber can’t be digested (since humans are not herbivores, we can’t break it down internally). So what should we eat? Generally green leafy veggies have good carb to fiber ratios.

4) Drink lots of water

(or any other zero-carb beverage will do, but water is best)

During this time of fat-burning ketosis (the process of burning fat for energy) we need to keep our hydration up. You will be flushing excess (un-burned) fat and water – so the more water we give the body, the more it’ll be able to flush out. Not only that, but it will also help calm the sugar cravings that you might be feeling a day or so into the plan. Some people even feel weak (due to the body changing gears from sugar burning to fat burning mode) for a bit – so don’t be discouraged, its only temporary! Once your metabolism has switched over you should get a big energy boost that you haven’t felt in years!

Now this above is for quick weight loss – its the easiest way to jump-start your metabolism into ketosis and fat-burning mode, you won’t be THIS strict forever, but for now its the best way to move forward. Think of it like the “Phase 1″ of Atkins, Protein Power, or any other diet regimen that has a stepped approach.

Since we’re primarily concerned with losing weight here – we’re not going to worry too much about WHAT we eat for now. Go ahead and eat fatty processed fast food burgers (but hold the bun and fries!), diet sodas galore, and copious amounts of cheese. Later once you’ve reached your target weight we will fine tune to make “better” low-carb choices so we can all live until we’re 106.

Bottom Line: Drink water and keep daily TOTAL carbohydrate intake under 30g regardless of where the carbs come from – after a couple of days, you’ll be losing fat like gangbusters!

Up Next – Supplementation!

Related posts:

1. Bariatric Surgery: Weight-Loss Miracle or just a Hardcore Dietary “Enforcement Tool”?
2. Taking Time to Lose – Weight Loss and Patience
3. Fast Food as a Cheap & Quick Protein Fix?