How To Keep The Weight Off Forever

I'm gonna break out in falsetto. All right, sustainable weight loss. YouTube, what is going on? Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to the video. In this video, we are going to be covering one of the most, if not in my opinion, the most important thing when it comes to losing weight and changing your body, and that is how to make it sustainable and how to keep the weight off forever. Because if you're watching this video, you're probably like millions and millions of other people in America or across the world. Losing weight is probably not the hard part for you because losing weight is normally not the hard part for anybody. You've probably lost weight before. You've probably done some diet or you've cut out all your sugar or you've done this or you've done that and you've probably lost weight before. That's probably not your issue. Your issue, which is what most people's issue is, is keeping the weight off forever. Once you've lost the weight, what do you do in order to lose the weight and keep it off forever? And in this YouTube video, we're gonna be covering My top 6-ish tips. There might be something else that comes to mind, I'm not gonna lie, but I wrote down 6 things that I want to cover for sure that are going to be the most important components, concepts, things to think about, strategies, all those things combined into this one video here. Um, obviously the last one is going to be the most important because they save the best for last. That's whoever came with that saying, save the best for last. That's what I'm gonna do here, but Other than that, these are all just kind of in a general order. So I want to start with number one, and that is going to be— there's this thing called life that you live. You might be a spouse, you might be a parent, you might be a son that takes care of your parents, you might have a job. Like, you probably have other responsibilities in your life than just going to the gym eating perfect, and sleeping. That's probably not your life. And if it is your life, it's not even my life, and that's a coach— and I'm a coach who does this for a living. So I don't know how you got that life, but if you got that life, kudos to you. But for us normal folks, you probably have a life. You probably have your friends where you go out on the weekends. You probably have your kids' soccer games you got to go to. You probably have work you have to attend. Like, there's this thing called life. And what I mean by that is, one of the first things that comes to mind when losing weight and keeping it off forever is you need to find a way to fit your nutrition around your life rather than trying to fit your life around nutrition. Let me say it one more time. You need to find a way to fit your diet around your life As opposed to fitting your life around a diet. And I'm going to double down on that and say this: whatever you do to lose the weight is the same thing you are going to have to do in order to keep the weight off. What I mean by that is, I don't mean, for example, if you, you know, if you know me and my content, I talk about a calorie deficit a lot. I don't mean for the rest of your life you're gonna have to eat in a calorie deficit because you'd be literally skin and bones and you would dwindle down to nothing and you would literally probably die because you're always eating in a calorie deficit. You would starve yourself. That obviously— that's not the goal here. What I mean is not that you have to eat a certain amount of calories every day for the rest of your life. What I mean though is the methods you use to achieve that weight loss, i.e., let's say you're going to cut out all your carbs or cut out all your sugar or do intermittent fasting or do any one of these things that you see on the internet. If that's what you're going to do to lose the weight, great. But that's what you're going to have to do in order to keep the weight off. So for example, if I were to do intermittent fasting, I love breakfast. I like eating when I wake up in the morning. I would probably die if I had to try and fit my life around a diet. I, for example, you might love carbohydrates, which if you're a normal functioning human being, you probably do love carbohydrates because they're amazing. You probably enjoy carbohydrates. And whether it's like— I don't mean just like, you know, chips and candy and cookies and donuts. I don't mean just that. I mean like you might like potatoes or you might like rice or God forbid you like a bagel here and there or some oatmeal. God forbid. Or I don't know, you might like alcohol. So that might have carbs in it. Whatever the case may be, right? You might enjoy that. But if you're gonna try to cut out carbs to lose the weight, you are trying to fit your life around a diet. Your life, if you enjoy carbohydrates, is not going to fit around said diet where you don't eat carbohydrates. So whatever you do to lose the weight is the same thing you're going to have to do to keep the weight off. And this is why So many people end up losing weight. You probably lost weight when you cut your carbs. You probably lost weight when you cut your sugar. You probably lost weight when you did any one of these 17 different things you've done thus far. That's not your issue. Your issue is keeping the weight off. So you have to start to compartmentalize that. Whatever you do to lose the weight, you're gonna have to keep that up. So if you don't think you can keep up cutting out, you know, in eating 30 grams of carbs per day, Don't do it. If you think you enjoy eating breakfast or you enjoy having a late night snack, or if you enjoy, you know, on a weekend you might want to go out to eat with your— to breakfast with your friends or family, but you can't eat yet because you can't eat till 12 PM. If you don't think you want to do that and you don't think you're going to sustain that forever, then it's not sustainable. And again, the methods you are using to lose the weight are not going to be sustainable. So the weight you lose is going to be unsustainable as well. So keep that in mind that this comes down to— I'm gonna say one last time and we'll move on to the next point, but it's very important. It's honestly why I put it first. You have to work on fitting nutrition around your life as opposed to trying to fit your life around nutrition. If you're not gonna be able to eat 30 grams of carbs a day, if you want to enjoy breakfast or late night eating, whatever it is, like if you wanna do these things, You can't do these diets that are gonna make you lose weight in the short term, but then gain it all back. Because if you can't sustain it and you go back to your old habits, well, guess what? You're gonna go back to the old result, right? So keep that in mind, number one, and try to, you know, you gotta live a normal life. I'll kind of, I'll take this one step further. You can't just eat chicken and broccoli every single day for the rest of your life. You can't just eat 1,200 calories every day for the rest of your life. Like that's not going to be realistic. So you have to be realistic with this. That's number one. And that actually bleeds into the next point perfectly. I didn't mean to do that, but I'm glad it worked out like that. You have to expect this. You have to have proper expectations. Right now, I'm filming this video for free. I'm giving you all my information for free. If you scroll through my YouTube videos, all of the information that that I could ever have in my entire life is all my YouTube videos for free. I don't expect you to do anything for me. I'm giving you literally my best information every single day for free. I don't expect a thing from you because if I did, I would be upset when somebody doesn't sign up for the Clubhouse or sign up for coaching or send me a nice message. In the same way, you expect to lose 15 pounds in a month, and you think that's right, and you think that's good, and you think you're gonna lose 5 pounds per week. It's not gonna happen if you want this to be sustainable. As you've already probably seen, you can lose 3 pounds a week, 4 pounds a week, 5 pounds a week. You can lose 20 pounds in a month or 2 months or whatever it is. Great, awesome, I— that's great. But in 6 months, You lose 20 pounds and then gain 30 pounds back. So in 6 months, you're actually up 10 pounds as opposed to being down in weight because you're taking these unsustainable approaches. So stop expecting to lose weight very quickly. That is one of the main reasons why you are not doing this right now— sustainable weight loss— because you're expecting to lose weight too goddamn quickly. And I know You want results yesterday. I know you don't want to be patient. I know it's hard. I know it takes time. I get it. I understand. But you need to have proper expectations heading into your journey. So, if you're expecting to lose 20 pounds in a month and you only lose 4 pounds in a month, you're going to think you're a failure. You're going to think you're doing everything wrong. You're going to think you're not seeing good progress when in reality, I'm gonna segue. Losing anywhere from 0.5 to 1 pound per week on average is considered a healthy, sustainable rate of weight loss for so many reasons. Number 1, like we said, sustainable. Number 2, good for your metabolism. Number 3, you can actually, you know, live a real life. Again, you can lose weight quicker than 0.5 to 1 pound per week on average. You can lose weight quicker for sure. Yeah. Like, It's possible. It's not impossible. It's possible, as you've probably already seen. But what you're going to have to do to lose weight at a quick— quicker rate than that is going to be unsustainable. It's going to be incredibly restrictive. It's going to be not something you are going to be able to keep up. So yeah, you can lose weight quicker. That's great. Congratulations, Cheryl. That's awesome. But if you wanna make this sustainable, losing anywhere from 0.5 to 1 pound per week on average is amazing progress. So that means in a 12-week span, if you lost anywhere from 6 to 12 pounds, I would be thrilled with you if you were my client. I'd be thrilled. And I'm very adamant about this because one of the main reasons people quit in their journey and never get to their goals is 'cause they have these unrealistic expectations of— I don't even know why. Like, you have no bearing for wanting to lose 20 pounds in a month. You just want to lose weight quickly because that's what you want. But there's no like logic behind it. There's no bearing behind it. There's no science behind it. You just think that you should be losing weight quicker. No, you shouldn't be losing weight quicker. 0.5 to 1 pound per week on average. 2 to 4 pounds a month. If you do anything above that, you're fucking like— you're beyond what average progress would be. If you're right in that range, You're doing phenomenal. You're doing absolutely perfect. Not to mention measurements, progress pictures, so on and so forth, but that's a different thing for a different video. Actually, we might talk about that later in this video, but either way, have proper expectations heading into your journey. So when these things happen, you will know what to expect. You will expect them and you won't freak out when you only lose 3 pounds in a month. That would be tremendous progress. And you also know that not only would that be tremendous progress, but you also know that you can lose weight quicker, but you're gonna go right back to what you were doing before watching this video. So you're gonna lose weight quickly and then gain it back and lose weight quickly and gain it back and start this cycle of just restricting and then binging and then restricting and then binging. I wanna leave this, this part portion right here with this. This is not a game of how little calories can I eat to lose weight as quickly as possible, which is what you're thinking right now. You're thinking calorie deficit, I need to lose weight. The less calories I eat, the quicker I lose weight. Let me try to eat as few calories as humanly possible to try to lose weight as quickly as humanly possible. It's not going to work out well in the long run. I understand why you think it's going to work. 'Cause logically it would make sense if you just eat less calories, that'll be a bigger calorie deficit and you'll lose weight quicker. I understand why you think that works, but in practicality, as you've probably seen and as I've seen coaching literally hundreds of people, it doesn't work. 'Cause what's gonna happen is you're going to over-restrict and then you're gonna binge. You're gonna over-restrict. And you're gonna binge. You're gonna feel guilty. You're gonna feel like you fucked up. You're gonna quit for a week or a month, try to get back on track, over-restrict again, binge on the weekends. The cycle's gonna happen in perpetuity. This is where people think like, I've been dieting for 50 years, or I've been dieting for 10 years, or whatever the case may be. No, you haven't. Because if you were, if you were in a calorie deficit for 50 years, you would literally have starved yourself and you would be skin and bones and nothing. You haven't been dieting for years. You've been in a dieting mindset for years because all you think about is losing weight. But in reality, you haven't ever been consistent because you're doing this cycle right here, trying to eat as few calories as humanly possible to try to lose weight as quickly as humanly possible. And every single time it just goes down, up, down, up. And over a period of time, you don't ever make any progress. As opposed to shifting from how little calories can I eat and lose weight as quickly as possible to how many calories can I eat and still see weight loss progress. Abundance, not scarcity. When you shift to that mindset, you will turn into more of a sustainable, slow and steady weight loss where every month 2 to 4 pounds going down, going down, going down, and over a 6, 12 18-month period, you will completely change your body and change your life, as opposed to the opposite of down very quickly, up very quickly, down very quickly, up very quickly, and never making any real progress. You're gonna think like it's gonna be slower progress in the short term because you're used to losing 10 pounds in a month. So 3 pounds is quote-unquote slow progress, but you're thinking very short term. In a span of a month, it might be quote unquote short progress, but in a span of 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, it's actually much quicker progress because as opposed to going down very quickly, up very quickly, down and up, and the trend line staying the same throughout, the trend line here is down 3 pounds, down 4 pounds, down 3 pounds, down 5 pounds, and over time that That's gonna add up and it's gonna stay. So in 12 months, if you've lost 50 pounds and kept it off, that's much better and much faster than losing 30 pounds in a month, gaining 25, losing 40, gaining 50, and not actually making any progress in a month. You're slowing yourself down by doing that. So get out of that mindset, okay? Leading into number 3, stop lying. Labeling foods good and bad. Stop doing that. It's your— stop trying to demonize food groups. Stop trying to demonize carbohydrates. Stop trying to demonize unhealthy foods. We're gonna talk about this later here in a second, but there is no one food or food group that inherently makes you gain weight. The only way you will gain body fat is by eating in a calorie surplus, eating more calories than what your body burns. Over an extended period of time. That is the only way you will gain weight. It's science. There is no— just because you ate a donut doesn't mean you gain body fat. It doesn't mean you fucked up. It doesn't mean you did anything bad. It's just a fucking donut. And the quicker you understand that there are no good and bad foods— sure, a salad is going to be more nutrient-dense. It'll be more food for less calories. And we're going to talk about all this here in a second. A donut might be, you know, more calories for less food and so on and so forth, but donuts are amazing and salads are amazing. They're both just food. What happens is you label these foods good and bad, so you restrict yourself from the bad foods. And what happens essentially is, you know, almost think of it like a can of soda. You're just like, you tell yourself, I can't have this food because it's bad. You shake the soda can up. 2 days later, you're like, I really want this food. Nope, can't have it. Shake it up some more. And this goes on for a week or 2, and eventually when you open that can of soda after shaking it for 2 weeks, what happens? Fucking explodes. The same thing with yourself. When you finally have said bad food, you don't have it in moderation. You have all of it because 2 reasons: you restricted yourself from it for 2 weeks, and you know after you have that food, you're You're gonna go back to not having it because it's a bad food for you. So you're gonna binge on it. So you're gonna feel guilty. So you're gonna use that as an excuse to keep going on the bad eating path and binging and all those things. And again, it's just gonna go back to this cycle of just restricting and binging, restricting and binging, and so on and so forth. So stop labeling foods good and bad. There are no inherently good or bad foods. Now that leads me to the next point, which is gonna be optimize your calorie deficit. Optimize your, your eating habits really is what I want to say, but optimize the way you're eating. One of the biggest things that's helped my clients in the past is following the 80/20 rule, and I've done an entire video on the 80/20 rule. I'll link it here above, and you definitely go check that out to go more in depth on the 80/20 rule. But essentially what the 80/20 rule is— excuse me— is 80% of your food choices should come from Nutrient-dense whole foods. Things like chicken, things like eggs, things like sweet potatoes, things like rice, things like oatmeal, things like fruit, things like vegetables. Anything that wasn't made in a lab, right? One-ingredient foods. An apple, that's one ingredient. Sweet potatoes, that's one ingredient. A chicken breast, that's one ingredient. Eggs, that's one ingredient. One-ingredient foods. Not to say you can't mix those. Like, for example, if you're having eggs with oatmeal and you cut up an apple and put it in the oatmeal, that's all fine. All of those are one-ingredient foods. You can mix those, but have 80% of your food choices come from nutrient-dense whole foods, and then have 20% come from things you enjoy— chips, donut, treat, ice cream. I don't care what it is. 20% of your calories can come from things like that. So for example, If you're having, you know, 1,500 calories per day, let's just say, you know, you have a snack, a treat that's 250 calories, and the rest, and the other 1,250 calories comes from nutrient-dense whole foods. Not the other way around. What most people try to do is they try to make the other way around where 80% of their food choices comes from very high processed, very not nutrient-dense, low filling foods. Things like chips or processed foods or all those kind of things, 80% of their food choices come from that and then 20% comes from, you know, the one salad per week or like, you know, they had chicken breast one night for dinner when they actually cooked dinner. Like, you gotta have 80% of your food choices come from these nutrient-dense whole foods and 20% comes from the treats you enjoy. And this is for so many reasons, but optimizing your eating, optimizing— again, for example, If you ate 1,500 calories from Big Macs and Twizzlers versus 1,500 calories from eggs, chicken, steak, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, vegetables, greens, fruits, all those things, eating 1,500 calories of that over there, fruits, vegetables, all those kind of things, you're gonna be way less hungry, way more full, way more energy much better health, that's gonna be easier to stick to that style of eating, those habits of eating, because you're not always hungry, you're satisfied, you have good energy, you're not, you know, you're not ravenously hungry, all those things, right? That's gonna make it easier to make it sustainable because you're feeling good and you're, you know, you have good energy, you're not super starving. Like, if you're— as opposed to if you're always hungry, if you're always starving for food, if you're never full, if you Always have low energy. Like, yeah, it's gonna be easier to keep grabbing, you know, chips and cookies and the highly processed stuff. And again, not to say that stuff is bad, because we just learned it's not bad, but you can't have it for every single meal of every single day. 80%, 20%. Optimize your calorie deficit, optimize your energy, optimize your health, by the way. Like, we oftentimes forget about our health. Like, we're doing this, it's a health journey, right? Like, you want to lose weight for You know, you want to look good naked, yeah, but you also want to be healthy. So optimizing your calorie deficit and the foods you consume, optimizing your health, all your blood marker profiles, vitamins, nutrients, so on and so forth, right? Optimize your eating habits, which is going to make it more sustainable because you will be able to have all those things optimized— health, hormones, hunger, sleep, energy, all those things, right? Fifth is going to be talking about find these things. So you have to find a other things than just the number on the scale or just how your clothes fit or just what your progress pictures say. Because oftentimes during this weight loss journey, it's nothing but tearing yourself down for lack of better terms. You don't like the way you look. You want to tear, you want to tear yourself down. You want to lose weight. You want to lose inches. You want to lose, lose, lose, lose, lose. Everything's always lose. Nothing's ever gaining. Nothing's ever building yourself up. And this is why I'm such a huge proponent of incorporating strength training into your healthy lifestyle/weight loss routine. Because strength training, I can't tell you how many of the clients I've coached, when it gives you something to build on, it builds your body up. Like, for example, I can't tell you how many of my clients, we've gone through a month of the strength training program They started the month at 4 sets of 8 with 10 pounds for their goblet squats, and they finished with 4 sets of 10 with 25 pounds on their goblet squats. And they're like, holy shit, Eric, like I've gotten so much stronger. I'm doing more reps. I'm doing more sets. It could be, you know, Eric, oh my God, on week 1 I could barely hold a plank for 15 seconds, but on week 4 I'm now holding a plank for 35 seconds. That's more than double the time. It gives you something to feel good about. It gives you something to build your body up. In a journey where all of this is always tearing your body down— I don't like the way I look, I want to lose weight, less numbers, less inches, less calories, all those things— you have nothing to build yourself up. And that can be incredibly difficult to sustain because if you're always thinking about the negative, the negatives in terms of like tearing your body down, Don't like the way you look. Gotta lose more weight. Gotta lose more inches. Progress pictures don't look how I want to yet. All those things. You have nothing to build your body up, to build you stronger, to give you some sort of positive reinforcement, some sort of some sort of thing that's not not weight loss or aesthetics based. You can get stronger no matter if you're losing weight, gaining weight, maintaining weight. You can always increase your workout performance, doing more reps. Doing more sets, lifting more weights, going for a longer time on your plank, decreasing your mile time when you run, increasing your workout performance, getting better form. There's so many things you can do with strength training that's going to allow you to have something positive and just different than just your weight loss. 'Cause I promise you, if that's all you think about, you're gonna drive yourself insane, as you probably are right now. You might be one of those people who have been in this dieting mindset for 50 years or 20 years. Dieting forever. You're in the dieting mindset forever. So if you can use exercise not as a tool to burn more calories— like, people, this is where people go wrong. They use exercise as this thing to burn more calories, and that just goes right back to lose more weight, tear yourself down. Use exercise as a tool to increase your workout performance and build your body up. I cannot tell you how important that is. If you need some extra help on strength training, I'm going to link a video here above as well as I'm going to put my 52 totally free workouts here below. They have exercise tutorial videos for every single exercise. Go check it out. It's totally free, but definitely check that out. And the last one, okay, is going to be consistency over perfection. When we talk about losing weight sustainably and keeping it off forever, One of the biggest things I've seen, and you're probably gonna relate to this, if you're not perfect, or if you go over calories one day, or if you miss a workout one day, or your weight spikes up one day, you think you fucked up. You think you did something wrong. You think you ruined all your progress, and you quit. Because you're not perfect. 'Cause things didn't go perfectly. 'Cause God forbid you missed a workout one day. Or God forbid you went over calories when you went out to your son's birthday party and had a piece of cake. God forbid, you use that as a reason to justify you quitting altogether because you weren't perfect. So why even try? Let me tell you this: you can't fuck this up. You can't. You cannot fuck this up. And excuse my language, but I really do mean that. The only way you eff this up is if you quit altogether. That's That's the only way because something is always better than nothing. Nobody ever got fat from one night of eating. Like, you didn't gain 40 pounds from one night of having some ice cream. You also didn't get skinny from eating perfectly and only salads one day. So this idea of if you're not perfect, you just quit altogether, that shit has to stop. Because it's not true, and it's not true. You don't have to be perfect in order to see results. You just have to be consistent. Results are not bred from perfection. Consistency breeds results day after day, week after week, month after month. Nobody's perfect. I'm not perfect. You're not perfect. Your favorite Instagram model is not perfect either. Nobody is. It's not real. So you chasing this like perfection that's not even real. When it doesn't happen— again, expectations. When you're not perfect, you think you're supposed to be because that's how you think you have to lose weight. When you're not, you think you fucked up and you go and quit and you go and binge and all these other things. Stop it. Stop. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be consistent. So that means, for a quick example, 80 to 90% consistent. That is how you're gonna make this sustainable. You're gonna be able to have a life. You're gonna be able to eat a bit more calories. You're gonna be able to do all these things with 80 to 90% consistency. That means out of 31 days in the month, you hitting your calories 25 to 28 days, anywhere in between there. If you do that, I promise you with all my heart, you are going to see progress. I promise you. There's just no other way because consistency breeds results. Stop using yourself not being perfect as an excuse to quit altogether. That shit ends right here. You got it? You can't fuck this up. The only way you fuck up is if you quit altogether, and I know after this moment, you are no longer doing that. Capisce? Capisce. Wonderful. Listen, hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, please feel free to leave a thumbs up and drop a comment below and let me know if you enjoyed the video. Let me know what your favorite part was. If you have any questions, concerns, again, please feel free to drop below. Also subscribe to the channel if you like that. I don't know where the button is, probably somewhere down here. But again, losing weight is not the hard part. Keeping the weight off is. And if you want a different result, I'm glad I'm gonna end like this. If you want a different result, you have to do something different. So what I'm saying here, possibly eat more calories, which by the way, if you want to know how many calories you have to eat to lose weight, There's a totally free calculator. I'll put it here above. Eating more calories, being consistent, you know, not just saying fuck it when you aren't perfect. All these things that I'm talking about, if you want a different result, you gotta do something different. So if you wanna just keep losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight, gaining weight, awesome. Keep doing what you're doing right now. But if you don't wanna do that, come over to the dark side and join us on Sustainable Weight Loss 101. Alright? We'll talk soon. Thanks. Thanks, Eric.