9 Years Of Honest Weight Loss Advice in 17 Min

I've spent the last 9 years coaching over 20,000 people with their fat loss journey. And if I had to boil down everything I've learned into the most brutally honest advice that actually works so you can stop spinning your wheels, here's exactly what I'd tell you. Lesson number 1, hunger is normal. Most people panic the second they feel hungry when they're trying to lose weight. They think it's a sign to eat right away, or they think they should never feel hungry and always feel stuffed. And that's the mistake— thinking hunger isn't normal. And the truth, some hunger is actually a sign that you're doing it right. To lose weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit, aka eating less calories than you burn. And by the way, if you need to know how many calories you should eat to lose weight, there'll be a free calorie calculator in the description of this video. When you're doing this, your body wants to maintain something called homeostasis. It doesn't wanna lose weight, it doesn't wanna gain weight, it wants to stay the exact same. So when you're eating less than you burn, your body sends signals to your brain saying, hey, we're not getting enough calories to maintain our weight, we need to eat more, AKA hunger comes about. But this is a sign you're doing the calorie deficit right and actually going to lose body fat. Now this doesn't mean that you need to be or should be starving, especially if you wanna lose weight in a sustainable way, because eventually you'd say, Fuck this, I'd rather be fat. I want you to think of hunger like a sheet of paper towel. When the paper towel is soaked, aka you're completely full, this is what happens when you overeat and you feel sluggish, and this isn't gonna help you lose weight. But when the paper towel is completely bone dry, this is you starving yourself. This isn't gonna help you lose weight either. But when the roll of paper towel is a little bit damp, Not dripping wet, but also not bone dry. That's where you want to be with your hunger when you're trying to lose weight. A little bit of hunger, but you still feel good and in control. And here's the thing, hunger is just one part of the process. The other mistake I see people make all the time, people quit way too early because they don't see results fast enough. But just because you don't see results right away doesn't mean it's not working. And that's what we'll talk about in our next point. Lesson number 2, be patient. The mistake most people make is expecting to see results right away. After 2 weeks or 2 days, if the scale hasn't dropped or their body isn't looking different, they assume it's not working and they say screw this. And because of that, you quit way too early, right before the progress would have actually shown up. We have a client, Melissa, who fell into this trap before she started coaching with us. She'd stick to the plan for a couple of days or a couple weeks if she was lucky, not really see a big change, and then say, well, why am I putting in all this effort if I can't see the results? I might as well quit. When she came to us, we told her, if you give us 90 days without quitting, I promise you will see a transformation. She committed, and after 3 months, her clothes fit different, her progress pictures looked different, she had more energy, she could start to see muscle definition on her body. And it's not because she found some different secret that we gave her. She just stopped quitting too early. I want you to think Think of your fat loss as a roll of paper towels. Each sheet that I rip off represents a successful day sticking to your diet and your workouts. If I rip off one sheet, does the roll look any different? What if I rip off 2 sheets? Does the roll look any different? It's not until you stack up multiple days, weeks, months of consistently sticking to your plan before you even start to see a difference in how the roll looks. Looks. But if you stopped here, you would never see that difference. And even though you don't see a difference in the first week or two, that doesn't mean progress isn't happening. And once you accept that results take time, there's another truth you need to hear. And honestly, this one might sting a little bit because it's a very unpopular opinion. But if you want to succeed, you need to hear it. Lesson number 3, no one has to support you. A lot of people expect the people around them— their friends, family, spouse, coworkers— to cheer them on or make healthy choices with them or even change their lifestyle too. And would that be nice? And would that make your journey easier? Yes, it would. But when that doesn't happen, you feel unsupported, discouraged, and you blame it on those people because you say it's too hard because My husband has chips in the house, or my wife likes to drink alcohol on the weekends. And that belief ruins more fat loss journeys than almost anything else. One of our clients, Suzanne, had this problem come up. Not only did her husband like to eat some sweets, but she also had 3 kids that had all the treats, snacks, and junk food in the house for them. And yes, it made it more difficult for her to stick to her diet, and it made it feel like she was alone, that nobody really got it or was on her journey with her. But I told her, this isn't their journey, it's yours. You need to take full responsibility for reaching your goals because it's nobody else's job to do that but yours. And we just focused on what she could control because she can control what she eats or doesn't eat, if she gets her workout in or not, what she does with her sleep, what she preps for her meals. Fast forward 6 months later, she's down 35 pounds. And the funny thing, the same people who weren't on board in the beginning, after starting to see her results, were asking questions and now on board with their healthy lifestyle change as well. You know how when you're on an airplane, the flight attendants always say, put your mask on before helping others? That's your fitness journey. If you wait for everybody else to put their mask on first, you'll pass out before you even get a chance To breathe. You can't rely on anyone else to do this for you. Would it be nice if you had their help? Yes, but it's not necessary. And don't look for it and don't expect it, because when you don't expect it, you will show up and do what you need to do anyway. And anything else is just extra credit. And once you stop expecting everybody else to be on board, here's the part most people overlook. It's not the big flashy changes that are going to change your body. It's The small wins that add up over time. Let me explain. Lesson number 4, the power of small wins. Too many people underestimate the small daily actions because they don't feel it's big enough or good enough to matter and make a difference. They think 6,000 steps a day, that's not enough. I need to do 10,000, or I only lost a half a pound this week. That's nothing. And so they ignore the small wins. Which is exactly why they never stack up into real progress. Because why would you keep going at something if you feel like you're not making good enough progress? You're gonna do what we talked about earlier, which is quit. One of our clients, James, used to beat himself up for only losing 1 pound a week or only being able to work out 3 days a week instead of 4 or 5. He thought it wasn't gonna be good enough for progress, and he was comparing himself to other people on the internet who were seeing faster But these pictures are 12 weeks apart, and after just staying consistent with his plan over 12 weeks, he lost a little over 18 pounds. And as you can see, completely transformed his body. He didn't crash diet, he didn't try to speed the process up, he just stuck with it and let the small wins stack up. So let's make this visual. Let me give you some examples. If you walked 6,000 steps per day That's 42 marathons walked in a year. If you lose 1 pound of fat per week, that's 52 pounds of body fat in a year. If you lift 5 more pounds each workout, that's 260 extra pounds you lifted in a year. Think about that. Tiny or small or insignificant wins that you think are happening compound into massive changes, and that's what actually transforms your body. And that's the secret. Real transformation isn't about taking massive leaps in a month. It's about slowly stacking up daily wins and habits. But here's the thing about small wins: they only matter if you're consistent with them and let them stack up. Which brings me to one of the most underrated strategies for successful fat loss. Lesson number 5: create a floor, not just a ceiling. Most people only focus on their best days. I'm gonna walk 10,000 steps today. I'm gonna go to the gym in the morning. before work for an hour. I'm gonna pre-track all of my food and hit my calories perfectly. But then life happens— stress, kids, work— and because they can't hit that perfect ceiling that they set for themselves, they do nothing at all. This all-or-nothing approach kills progress. We have a client named Isabel. She used to fall into this all-or-nothing trap. On her good days, She crushed it. She was on point, hitting her calories, tracking her calories, getting her steps in. But then maybe the weekend came around, or she was hanging out with some family members, or maybe she was about to go on a vacation. And so on those bad days, not only did she do nothing, but she ended up being so much worse off. She would way overeat. She wouldn't get any of a workout in. She wouldn't get any of her steps in because she thought if she couldn't do it perfect, then what's the point? So we built her a worst day floor routine. If all else goes to shit, she's gonna get one 10-minute walk that day. She's gonna make sure she gets at least 20 grams of protein at breakfast, and she's gonna make sure to have a full glass of water before dinner. 3 simple things. But from those 3 simple things, she was able to stop doing nothing and falling into the all-or-nothing trap, and she was actually able to stay consistent on those bad days. So now she was doing great on her great days, but she was also staying consistent on the bad days. That's when her weight loss started to actually happen and then stay off. Think of it like a thermostat in your house. You don't let the temperature drop below a certain point, correct? That's your floor. Even on the coldest days, the heat kicks in to keep it from crashing. Your fitness needs that same kind of floor. On your worst Most unmotivated days, what feels almost too easy that you know for a fact you could do? Maybe it's a 10-minute walk, maybe it's drinking a protein shake, maybe it's a 5 or 10-minute bodyweight workout. Whatever it is, give yourself 2 to 4 things that you can do on your worst days, and this way you can hit your ceiling, but you can also hit your floor. So this is a win, this is a win, And anything in between is also a win. Floors make consistency automatic, and there's one floor that automatically snowballs everything in a positive way, and that's what we're going to talk about next. But before we get into that floor, if you're interested in having a personalized plan built specifically for you and getting paired up with an expert one-on-one coach on my team to hold you accountable so you never fall off track, click the link in the description of this video to learn more about our online one-on-one coaching program. Lesson number six: Sleep more for easier fat loss. So many people try to outdiscipline bad sleep. They slash their calories, they add more cardio, they chug caffeine, and then they wonder why their cravings explode at 9 p.m., their workouts feel awful, and the scale won't budge. The mistake is treating sleep like it's a nice to have thing instead of making it one of your biggest. Fat loss priority tools, because poor sleep hijacks hunger, calorie burn for the day, motivation and willpower and energy, and it makes everything so much harder. One of our clients, Dan, was trying to white-knuckle his way through a diet, sleeping only 5 to 6 hours a night, but then he would end up binging 3 to 4 days out of the week, and his workouts really weren't progressing and building muscle because he didn't have the energy or the motivation to push himself. So we set a sleep floor where he had to be off his phone by 10 PM, lights out, and no caffeine after 1 PM. Within 14 days, his late-night snacking significantly decreased. He had way more energy and motivation to push himself in workouts, and he was able to kickstart both fat loss and muscle building, losing about 15 pounds in the next 8 weeks. Your body is this phone. When you run it down to 5% battery, all of the apps that you need for fat loss— willpower, hunger control, motivation, energy— start to not work properly. But when you actually plug it in and let it recharge properly, everything works so much faster and efficiently. So set yourself a sleep floor that you're gonna do no matter what. And this could be a bedtime window. You have to go to sleep between a certain amount of time. This could be a caffeine cutoff. By 1 or 2 PM, you have no more caffeine. This could be stop eating 2 to 3 hours before you go to bed because this will improve your sleep quality. Make sure you have a dark room and a cool room, which will help you get to sleep but stay asleep longer. And your goal should be try to add 30 to 60 minutes of sleep this week. I'm not going to say to transform your entire sleep schedule, but even just 30 to 60 minutes will make a big difference. So sleep recharges your body overnight, but what you do during the day matters just as much. And one of the most underrated hacks for both fat loss and energy is so simple, people usually skip it. Lesson 7: The power of mini walks. Most people think they need to carve out an hour or 90 minutes of cardio to see results and make it feel good enough. And if they don't have that kind of time, they're better off just doing nothing and it's not worth it. The mistake is ignoring the small opportunities throughout the day that actually burn more calories, lower your stress, and keep you the most consistent. One of our clients, Emily, was stuck at a desk all day for her job, and then she had to drive an hour to and from work. And then when she got home from work, she also has young kids, and so she had to drive them to soccer practice. and band practice and whatever else kids do these days. So she felt like she had no time to get in extra cardio or extra steps. But that's because she was thinking about dedicating 30, 45, 60 minutes to trying to get more cardio and steps. And that's when we talked about, Emily, why don't you just start to work in little mini 10-minute walks throughout the day? So before she would go into work in the morning, she would do a 10-minute walk around her building. About halfway through her morning, she would get up and take a 5-minute walk to go fill up her water bottle on the top floor versus filling up her water bottle on the floor that she had. At lunchtime, she carved in a 15-minute walk, and right before she left work, she did a walk around the building for 5 to 10 minutes. From doing these little blocks of time, she would add up 5,000 to 7,000 steps During the day without ever actually doing extra cardio or carving out 60 minutes to go walk. And she actually looked forward to them because it wasn't such an overwhelming task. And not only did it help her fat loss, but it also helped her clarity, mental focus, stress relief, and energy. She actually looked forward to it. Think of mini walks like dropping coins in a jar. One coin by itself doesn't look like much. 10 coins won't make you rich, but if you keep dropping in a few coins every single day, the jar fills up faster than you think. It's the same with the 10 to 15 minute mini walks. One by itself might not be life-changing, but actually it could, because from that one walk, it could snowball into such a more positive day for you in all actions, not just your walks, but in your workouts, in your steps, in your work life, in your relationship. I know for me personally, if I start my day off with a 10 to 15 minute walk, I am so much more likely to get 8,000 to 10,000 steps that day. But if I miss that 10 minute walk in the morning, it's a lot more difficult to hit those 10,000 steps. Now, even with these tips, they won't work unless you also pair it with a correct exercise routine. So either click the link in the description of this video to have us build you a personalized workout and diet plan and hold you accountable to it every step of the way, or watch this video here next to learn more about exercise for fat loss and muscle gain.