Are you looking for a simple weight loss plan that WORKS? Do you struggle to reach or maintain a healthy weight? Have you tried The Atkins Diet? The Zone Diet? The Paleo Diet? The Keto Diet? Do you find that nothing really consistently works for you?
Or do you not even try to figure it out because everyone seems to say something different?
If so, you’re in the right place!
Simple weight loss concepts have become cluttered with confusing, contradictory, and often wrong information. This barrage of information is probably one of the major contributors to the obesity epidemic that plagues America and the Western world.
You really don’t need to know ANY of this stuff!
Losing weight really is a very simple physiological process. Some of this additional health and nutrition information may be valuable, but when it distracts you from the simplest reality of all, it is HARMFUL.
On this site I’ll sort through the clutter and show you the simplest, surest, and most irrefutable way to lose weight.
But let’s start with a little pop-quiz that may help determine whether or not you are a victim of this information overload. For each of the following statements answer True or False:
Pop-Quiz
- Eating natural, unprocessed, organic, unrefined foods help you lose weight while eating highly refined, processed, artificial foods cause weight gain.
- Salads are better than hamburgers for weight loss.
- Drastically limiting carbohydrate and sugar intake helps you lose weight.
- Counting calories is an antiquated concept that has been scientifically proven to not work.
- Alcohol consumption makes weight loss almost impossible.
- Diet and exercise are essential in any effective weight loss program.
- Fast food/junk food are completely incompatible with weight loss.
- To lose weight you should eat smaller, more frequent meals because it keeps your metabolism active and causes your body to burn more calories.
- Eating larger, less frequent meals causes your body to enter a crisis mode where it cuts back on burning calories and makes weight loss more difficult.
- Eating in the evening promotes weight gain because those calories just sit all night and turn to fat.
- Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and since it is consumed early, the body is better able to burn it off throughout the day.
- “Good fats” promote testosterone production which promotes muscle growth which results in a higher rate of fat burn.
- The Keto Diet is the holy grail of weight loss because it trains the body to burn fat instead of storing it.
How did you do?
If you answered “True” to most of these then you are definitely a victim of the information clutter that muddies up the concepts of simple weight loss.
At least as worded, every one of these statements contain at least some truth, but on balance every single one of these statements is misleading at best, mostly false at worst. The fact that each of these statements contains some truth is what clouds peoples’ judgment.
Although the answers to these questions will become clear throughout this site, for a brief discussion of each of these quiz questions see Weight Loss Pop Quiz Answers.
Simple Weight Loss: THE Answer
So what is the solution? I have some seriously good news for you: IT’S NOT THAT COMPLICATED!
The solution to weight loss is simply this:
EAT FEWER CALORIES THAN YOU BURN
In the end, for the purpose of simple weight loss, it does not matter whether the calories are “good” or “bad”, natural or artificial, low-carb or high-carb, or whether they are consumed frequently in small quantities or infrequently in larger quantities, it only matters that you consume the correct number of calories.
You certainly should try to eat a “healthy”, balanced diet and avoid unhealthy foods. But for weight loss the calorie count really is PRACTICALLY ALL THAT MATTERS. And if you need to lose weight, losing weight is probably the single most health-promoting thing you can do, so the “healthiest” food really is the RIGHT AMOUNT of food.
Does this sound a little surprising to you? I am sure it does. It’s so primitive and unsophisticated. The “experts” tell us to avoid carbs, “bad fat”, processed foods. They recommend natural foods, the South Beach diet, the Paleo Diet, the Keto diet, the Atkins diet, the Mediterranean Diet, etc. Many of them also tell us flat out that counting calories is NOT the answer.
They actively denounce the ONLY thing that actually WORKS!
Do I actually have to COUNT calories?
No, you may not actually have to look up the calories for everything you eat. You can – and probably should – start by just trying to EAT LESS. That may result in you consuming fewer calories than you burn without doing all the lookups before every meal.
If that works for you, GREAT! Keep it up and read no further.
But if it doesn’t work it is because you aren’t eating as light as you think you are. And in this case the only way to find out where you’re overdoing it is by MEASURING EVERYTHING. You can read all about this at Count Calories to Lose Weight.
AND you can still do the “ABC” diet
Maybe you have already read about the wonders of the Paleo Diet or the Keto Diet and are convinced that these diets can deliver tremendous weight loss and health benefits.
NO PROBLEM! Follow whatever diet you want! Just make sure your calorie counts at the end of the day don’t come out over your limit.
If you read the leading advocates of all these other diets very carefully you will see that almost every one of them makes the same point I make: To lose weight you must limit intake. The biggest difference between them and me is that they say it one time in one sentence on page 78 after they have said everything else whereas I say it on almost EVERY PAGE.
It is even simpler than eat less than you burn
Above I say you need to eat fewer calories than you burn. That’s true, but unless your daily life involves standing, walking, running, and lifting ALL DAY EVERY DAY, weight loss goes from “eat less than you burn” to JUST “EAT LESS”. In other words, unless you are training 5-7 hours/day for the Tour de France, the “what you burn” number is relatively static. Unfortunately, it’s also relatively insignificant.
I’ll get more into the details elsewhere on this site (like at Lose Weight Without Exercise for instance), but the reality is that the body is very efficient and refuses to burn any more fuel than is absolutely necessary. It was designed that way so that it could survive periods of scarcity as it often had to do in pre-modern times.
Exercise and an active lifestyle are certainly good for your health, but they really don’t burn as many calories people think they do. The only practical way to run a significant, consistent calorie deficit is to LIMIT INTAKE, not burn more.
This site’s mission
Health and weight loss result from long-term habits, ways of thinking, and correct perspectives, not from some magical product or step-by-step program.
The mission of this site is to help set you on the long-term path of reaching and maintaining a healthy weight by sorting through the confusing clutter and focusing on those things that are most important toward that goal.
So grab a coffee
One cup of coffee with a teaspoon of sugar and two tablespoons of half and half has 56 calories. So grab yourself a cup of coffee, write “56” in your calorie log for the day, and click through the items in the that right menu bar and read all you could want to know about simple weight loss.