How To Lose Weight When You're Short I How to improve metabolism
In this instructional video, Eric Roberts explains why shorter individuals face a harder time losing weight due to a lower total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) compared to taller people. He breaks down the components of TDEE—basal metabolic rate (BMR), non‑exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), thermic effect of food (TEF), and exercise activity thermogenesis (EAT)—and shows how each can be optimized. The core strategies for short people are: (1) increase BMR by building lean muscle through strength training, (2) boost NEAT by aiming for 7,000–10,000 daily steps, (3) maximize TEF by consuming a high‑protein diet (0.8–1 g protein per lb of goal body weight). He advises modest cardio (1–3 short sessions per week) and emphasizes that nutrition is the primary driver of fat loss. Diet recommendations include precise calorie counting using a food scale, setting daily calories at roughly 10–12 × goal body weight (in pounds), prioritizing nutrient‑dense whole foods (80 % of intake), incorporating high‑volume low‑calorie foods, and following a consistent eating schedule (3 meals + 2 snacks). Throughout, he provides motivational encouragement, shares client success stories, and stresses that while the process is tougher for short individuals, it is entirely achievable with consistency and effort.
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YouTube, what's going on? Welcome to the video. Welcome back to the channel. In this video, you and I, best buds, are going to be chatting about losing weight as a shorter individual, whether male or female. Nothing against people who are on the shorter side, but if you're watching this video, you're probably on the shorter side because you probably want to learn how to lose weight as a shorter person. So you probably might have already experienced this or had thoughts about this or have seen this. You may think it's a bit harder to lose weight if you are a shorter person. Is that true? Is that not true? Is there things you have to do? Is there certain special diets or certain special workouts or whatever the case may be? We're gonna cover all that here in this video. Okay? So I wanna first establish this. We're gonna talk about what you need to optimize if you are on the shorter end, and then we're gonna— I'm gonna give you some diet tips at the end of this video. Okay? So first and foremost, I'll just make this very clear. I am not speaking from experience here because I am 6'4. So as you can see, I am not on the shorter end. But with that being said, I have coached plenty of people who are on the shorter side and just knowing the basic laws of weight loss and thermodynamics and the science behind how you lose weight and all these things combined, then I am able to teach you and educate you on what to do if you are a shorter individual. Okay? That's number 1. But number 2, let's establish this first and foremost. If you are on the shorter end, if you're not 6'4, yes, it is going to be a bit harder for you to lose weight than somebody who is 6'4. Why is this? Right? Let's say you're 5'1, 5'2, 5'3, 4'11, whatever the case may be. It's gonna be a bit harder for you. There's no question about it. No way around it. It is going to be harder for you. You're already starting from somewhat of a disadvantage. Why is this? There's something called your TDEE, which you're— as you can see, we're going to talk all about your TDEE here in a second. But basically what your TDEE is, is just how many calories your body burns a day. It's your maintenance calories. So you need to eat X amount of calories in order to maintain your weight, right? That's what your TDEE essentially is. Somebody who is 6'4 myself, I'm gonna have a higher TDEE than somebody who is 5'1 automatically by doing nothing else, by doing nothing different, because I have larger organs. It takes more energy for my body to move around throughout the day. And, uh, you know, during sleep I burn more calories. And just somebody who is taller is gonna have higher maintenance calories than somebody who is shorter for no other reason than just that height discrepancy. So let's say, for example, If somebody who is taller, their maintenance calories are 2,400 calories, let's just say that. That's how many calories they need to eat every single day in order to just maintain their current body weight. Let's take somebody who's 5'1. Their maintenance calories might be 1,800 calories. Call it that. It might be 1,800 calories. That's a massive difference, right? And again, there's certain things that come into play here when talking about how many calories your body burns. Which again, we're going to talk about over here in a second, but that discrepancy right there. So again, let's talk about going into a calorie deficit, which is the only way to lose weight, whether you are 5'1, 6'4, 7'2, 410. The only way you are going to lose weight is to eat less calories than what your body burns. And again, we'll talk about how many calories your body burns in a second. That's the only way to lose weight. So let's take somebody whose maintenance calories are 2,400 calories. For them to lose roughly about a pound per week, they're gonna have to eat 1,900 calories 'cause it's 500 calories minus your, your maintenance calories, right? They're gonna eat around 1,900 calories and they are going to see about a pound a week of weight loss, roughly. Now, let's take somebody whose maintenance calories are 1,800 calories. For that same individual to lose a pound a week, they are gonna have to eat 1,300 calories In order to lose roughly a pound per week. As you can see, that is a massive difference in how many calories you are allotted to eat in order to make sure you're losing roughly a pound per week. And again, by the way, you don't have to lose a pound per week. And even if you do do that, you probably won't lose a pound a week because the scale fluctuates and there's so many things that go into play. And just don't worry about that aspect of it. I was just giving you a numbers kind of cue here. Somebody who's taller is gonna be able to eat more calories and still lose weight than somebody who is shorter. That's why it is more difficult. The shorter person's body automatically burns less calories and has a lower maintenance calorie level. So you're going to have to eat fewer calories in order to lose body fat, which is inherently in and of itself harder. Like it is harder. It is easier to eat more calories. That is easier. It's not easier to eat less calories. It's easier to eat more calories. So it's going to be a bit harder for you if you are on the shorter side because Your maintenance calories are just gonna be a bit lower. And so, yes, it makes it harder. That is for sure, without question. There's no real arguing that, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. And I really need you to understand this. And I'll put some pictures here of some of my clients who are on the shorter side. Like, you know, again, I almost like feel bad about calling people short, but like, I guess it's just like, I guess it is what it is. I'm not like saying it's bad or anything. So I don't want you to think that at all. Or like, I'm like, giving people like I'm not, I'm not giving them a compliment or anything along those lines. Either way, I'll keep moving on. My clients right here, they're all on the shorter end, right? They still saw tremendous progress. And I really need you to understand this because I think oftentimes seeing that social proof, seeing that, oh, other people have done it so I can do it too. I think that's really important because, yes, it's harder. We've just established it is harder. I know it's harder for you. It's gonna be harder. But now what? That doesn't mean it's impossible. It doesn't mean you can't do it. It doesn't mean you shouldn't try because all of those things are not true. You will, you can and you will still see fat loss progress, still reach your goals. It's just gonna be a bit harder and it might require more of you. But that's fine because you know what? Like anything in life worth having is gonna be hard. So I know you can and you will do this, all right? So now that we've established that, let's really deep dive into what you can do to optimize all of the things if you are on the shorter end of the spectrum. Now, we talked earlier about TDEE. What TDEE means is just total daily energy expenditure, basically how many calories your body is burning throughout the day. And when it comes into play how many calories you need to eat, obviously your TDEE is going to play a role, and we'll talk about how many calories you should eat here a bit later on in this video. But I want to explain this so you know how to optimize this. I just told you that if you're a bit shorter, your body's going to burn a bit less calories. If your body burns a bit less calories, that means you have to eat less calories in order to lose weight. If you have to eat less calories, that's harder. It's more difficult. It's more difficult to do. It's more difficult to stick to, be consistent with all those things, right? So how can you make sure you optimize your body's calorie burn throughout the day to make sure You know, let's say, let's say somebody who is not optimizing all these things here we're going to talk about, let's say their maintenance calories are 1,600, right? 1,700. That person would have to eat very low calories in order to lose body fat, right? But let's say you optimize all these things we're going to talk about here and your maintenance calories go from 1,700 to 2,000, which is very possible by the way. That makes a massive difference in how many calories you have to eat in order to lose body fat. And so if you optimize these things we're going to talk about, you're going to raise Your TDEE. You're gonna raise your maintenance calories and that will help you not have to eat such few calories in order to lose body fat. So, let's talk first about your— something I didn't write down here— your BMR. I don't know why I didn't write it down. Your BMR. I'll write it down over here. Your BMR is your basal metabolic rate. This takes up 70% of how many calories your body burns throughout the day. Okay? So, that's your BMR. It's basically how many calories your body burns at rest from doing nothing, just from laying in bed all day long. If that's all you did, that's how many calories you would burn. So, that takes up 70% of your TDEE, how many calories your body burns in a day. Next comes your NEAT, which is your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And, I don't know if you can hear this through the mic, but somebody's power washing outside my door. So, if you hear that, I apologize, but I'm gonna keep going. Your NEAT is your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And basically what this means is just all the extraneous movement you do throughout the day that is not like a dedicated workout. So me doing all these hand signals, that's NEAT. You walking from your apartment to the car, that is NEAT. You walking around at work, that is NEAT. Walking to the store, that is NEAT. Like all of these things are NEAT. So essentially what you can think of NEAT as for the purpose of this video is how many steps you get per day. So, we're gonna talk about that here in a second. So, that is NEAT. That takes up roughly 15% of how many calories your body burns throughout the day. Next comes your TEF, which is your thermic effect of food. This just means how many calories your body has to burn to digest the food you eat every single day. Your body has to burn calories to digest food. And so, that's how many, you know, that takes up about 10% of how many calories your body burns during the day. And last but not least, we have exercise activity thermogenesis, EAT. This is how many calories you burn through exercise. It's 5%. Takes up roughly 5% of how many calories your body burns throughout the day during exercise. And this is where like people will ask me, oh Eric, I have to burn 2,000 calories in my workout? No, no, no. Your work— don't focus at all about how many calories your body burns during your workout at all. It's not relevant. It takes up so few of how many calories your body burns throughout the day. And then you're going to ask me, well, Eric, how do I know if I'm in a calorie deficit if I don't know how many calories my body is burning? Here's how you know. You're going to watch the rest of this video. We're going to talk about how many calories to eat later on, and you're going to eat the calories, track your calories, and track your progress. If you're tracking the calories you're taking in and you're tracking your progress, you're tracking your measurements, you're tracking your body weight, you're tracking your progress pictures, how your clothes fit, you will know if you are in a calorie deficit or not because If you're seeing progress, body weight trending down over a period of time, measurements going down, progress pictures looking different, clothes fitting different, clearly you're losing body fat and you're in a calorie deficit. If you're not seeing those things, you're not in a calorie deficit. And so that's how you would know. You would track your calories in based upon what we're going to talk about later here in this video, and then you're going to track your progress because you will know if you're seeing progress, guess what? You are in a calorie deficit. So that's a side note. But with all this being said, that's how your body burns calories. So we need to optimize this. How do we do this? Great question. I'm gonna start with BMR, NEAT, TEF, and then EAT. Just spoiler, I'm not even gonna talk about EAT because it's not worth it because your body does not burn— actually, you know what? No, we will talk about EAT. I'm gonna talk about it right now. Your BMR, how do you increase and optimize your BMR? Phenomenal question. You build lean muscle mass. What this does is the more lean muscle mass you have on your body, the more calories your body has to burn because lean muscle mass requires more oxygen to get pumped to it. The more oxygen that, excuse me, your body has to pump, that basically means the more work your body has to do. The more work your body has to do, the more calories your body is going to burn. So, in order to optimize your BMR and, you know, make it as best as you possibly can, which again, Your BMR takes up 70% of how many calories your body burns throughout the day, you build lean muscle mass. How do you build lean muscle mass? Through your workouts, through your eat, right? You do not focus on doing a whole bunch of cardio, and we're gonna talk about cardio here in a second, but you don't focus on doing a whole bunch of cardio because that's, number one, it's very short-term and you honestly don't burn that many calories even through doing cardio. But number two, you wanna focus your workouts on building lean muscle mass. You wanna focus your workouts on getting stronger, Lifting weights, building lean muscle mass to help optimize your BMR. This is so important, especially for shorter people, in order to optimize how many calories your body is burning. And I don't mean don't do cardio, and we're going to talk about that here in a second. I just mean you need to make sure you are building, doing your workouts to build lean muscle mass, to build strength, to get stronger, to do those things, because that's going to optimize your BMR and it's going to help you automatically burn more calories. Optimizing your BMR is done through building lean muscle mass, which is done through your workouts. That's number 1. Number 2, when talking about NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, again, this is basically how many steps you get per day. How do you optimize this? Get more steps. If you are on the shorter end of the height range, you want to be pushing to get at the very, very least 5,000 steps. And honestly, where my head is going is 7,000 to 10,000 steps per day. It's a lot of steps. 10,000 is a lot of steps. If you can get like, shoot for 7,000. If you can get around 7,000 steps per day, the more the better to an extent. I wouldn't go like freak yourself out and get 20,000 steps per day. That's probably gonna backfire. But like 7,000 to 10,000 steps per day, if you can do that, man, you are golden. That is awesome. And you're just, you're getting more movement. You're parking farther away at the store. You're getting a walk during lunchtime at work. Like you're getting more steps. Steps in during the day. Okay? That's how you optimize your NEAT, which again is you're optimizing your calorie burn. Like you are allowing your NEAT to be higher so you're able to burn more calories. And so you're raising, you're raising your maintenance calories, you're raising your TDEE. So that's number 2. Number 3, TEF, thermic effect of food. How many calories your body burns digesting food. Protein has the highest TEF. So, more so than carbs and fats, your body has to burn more calories eating protein than it does carbs and fats. So, how do you optimize your TEF and make sure you're burning as many calories as you can? Eat a high protein diet. What is high protein? I would try to take your goal body weight in pounds and multiply that between 0.8 to 1. So, let's say for example, if your goal body weight is 150 pounds, Try to eat around 120 to 150 grams of protein per day. If you're in that range, you are going to optimize your TEF, which is going to again increase and raise your maintenance calories, increase and raise your TDEE, which again is going to help you burn more calories, not have to eat such few calories, so on and so forth, right? So those are the 3 main things you need to look at optimizing if you are on the shorter end of the range. Again, BMR, which is by building lean muscle mass, NEAT, which is by getting more steps, try to shoot for 7,000 per day, and then eating a high protein diet. All of those things are gonna help you build— I'm sorry, all those things are gonna help you burn more calories. It's gonna raise your maintenance calories as opposed to your maintenance calories being, you know, 1,600. You're gonna try to raise that to 1,800, 1,900, and you'll be able to not have to eat such few calories and still seek— And still see weight loss progress. And so that is how you would optimize your TDEE in order to help yourself lose weight more effectively. Now I talked about cardio. What I've seen with shorter people sometimes, again, it all depends on how well you optimize this stuff, right? If you know me and you follow me, I'm not the biggest cardio fan for weight loss because so many people, they try to do endless amounts of cardio and they don't focus at all on their nutrition, which is like Your nutrition is going to take care of a lot of the fat loss, which again, we'll talk about here in a second. But for someone who is on the shorter end, you may have to add in, you know, 1 to 2, nothing crazy, 1 to 2 times per week, 3 max of like, you know, 15 to 30 minute cardio sessions per week. Nothing crazy, nothing intense. You don't have to kill yourself. I'm thinking more of like you're going on the bike and you're doing, you know, some, a 20 minute bike ride or, You know, you're going on the elliptical or the stair stepper or whatever the case may be. Like sometimes you may have to add in those things. I would focus on making sure you focus on diet first, optimizing your TDEE. And then from there, yeah, you may have to add in 1 to 3 cardio sessions per week, but I really wouldn't make that the focus. I would make the focus on the things we just talked about first and the nutrition we're going to talk about right now. All right. So again, cardio isn't bad and you should do some for your heart health and your cardiovascular health and all those and your mental health and all those things. But Focus on the other things first, 'cause that's gonna optimize what you're doing that much more, because you really don't burn that many calories through cardio. You just don't, alright? So, now, heading into number 3, hopefully all this made sense. Any questions, drop that below. Heading into number 3, diet tips. This is where, again, you're gonna have to be really consistent and really on point. My 2 cents would be absolutely counting calories. Not forever. You don't have to count calories forever, but legit counting calories using your food scale, weighing your food in grams, it's gonna make the world of a difference. If you don't know how to count calories or if you're not using a food scale, the amount of people who are not using a food scale to count calories is just mind-boggling to me. And, that doesn't— if you're not using a food scale, you're not counting calories. You're just guessing. So, you're not actually counting calories. So, if you wanna learn how to count calories correctly, I'll put a video here above. Literally free guide I send my clients, the same exact thing I send my clients, and so please go watch that. I would definitely, number one, start learning and counting calories using a food scale and weighing everything out. Like, all of these things, because you're on the shorter end and because your maintenance calories are a bit lower, everything counts, man. Bites and snacks count. Like, all of these things count. It's really, really important for you to understand and internalize this because— Every single thing you do is going to count. And like, again, you want to optimize as much as you can because it is harder. It is harder to lose weight if you're shorter. So you kind of got to be a bit more on point and you know what? Like it just is what it is. And so making sure you're counting calories correctly, that's number one. Now, how many calories should you eat? I did a whole video on how many calories you should eat in order to lose weight. So I'm going to link that here above. The short answer is goal body weight multiplied by 10 to 12, and that's goal body weight in pounds. Now, again, typically speaking, shorter people have a lower goal body weight, right? So you're going to try to think, oh, I should go to goal body weight times 10 because he said I have to eat less calories and that's da da da da. No, take your goal body weight times 12. Try that for 4 weeks, 4 to 6 weeks. See how it goes. You're probably going to lose weight from that. You're probably going to lose weight from that. If you don't, you can always lower. Like, that's totally fine. But take your goal body weight times 12. Try it for 4 weeks with 90% consistency. I promise, promise, promise you are going to see results, especially if you are optimizing what we just talked about here. So that's number one. Again, if you want more in-depth on that, check out that video. Feel free to check out that video after we get done with this video. Now, once you have your calories set, you need to optimize how many calories you're eating. So all of this is really about optimizing things because it is, like we said, it's going to be harder. So you have to make sure you're doing everything you can to optimize this. And if you do have to eat a, you know, a bit fewer calories, like you want to make sure the calories you are eating are— you're getting a huge bang for your buck for that. Like you need to make sure the food you are consuming is keeping you full, keeping you satisfied, not leaving you super hungry. And so a few things we're going to talk about here. Number one, protein. Protein is the most satiating nutrient and like we talked about above, it is going to raise your maintenance calories. It's going to raise how many calories your body's burning. So it's going to keep you more full and it's going to burn more calories. Don't you think that is good if you are trying to lose body fat? Yes, I think it's very, very good. 2 thumbs up. So make sure you are eating a high protein diet. I've done videos here on YouTube. I'll link one here above on how to get more protein into your diet. Feel free to check those out, but it's really important. Really, really, really important. So please make sure you are doing this. And again, I know it can be harder. It's harder. I get it. It's harder to get more protein. Now what? Like, we've decided it's harder. We got to do the things that we— you have to do the things you have to do in order to see progress. And so finding a way to get more protein in your diet is gonna help you, number one. Number 2, eating real food, eating nutrient-dense whole food. There's nothing wrong with processed food, but you need to make sure the food you are eating is very nutritious, very nutrient-dense, whole Whole foods. I call them one-ingredient foods. Banana, very nutritious, one ingredient. Oatmeal, very nutritious, one ingredient. Steak, very nutritious, one ingredient. Like one-ingredient foods. Stop trying to snack all day long. These pretzels and these cookies here and there, they're not bad. You can have them, nothing against it. But if you're looking to optimize how many calories you're eating and make sure you stay full, stay satisfied, help yourself stick to this calorie deficit, You need to prioritize real food. I did an entire video on how to kind of like make your own grocery shopping list. Feel free to check out my channel. I would definitely watch that because that will help you, but prioritizing real food, following the 80/20 rule. 80% of your food choices should be coming from nutrient-dense whole foods, one-ingredient foods, steak, chicken, eggs, spinach, salad, those kind of things, right? 20% can come from things you enjoy. Cookies, treats here and there, totally fine, whatever. But that should not be the majority of your diet because you're not going to be able to stick to the calories you are eating and it's going to be harder for you to lose weight. And so make sure a lot of your food choices are very nutrient-dense whole foods. That includes the weekends. Okay? So following that 80/20 rule, especially on the weekends. I know the weekends are tough for you, especially on the weekends. Okay? That's number 2. Number 3, High volume, low calorie foods. And again, I've done videos on this before, but some low calorie, high volume foods. What does that mean? It means a lot of food for not a lot of calories. For example, let's take watermelon, for example. For a whole pound of watermelon, it's like roughly 150 calories. It's either 140 or 160, so we'll go with 150. For a whole pound of watermelon, 150 calories you get from like half a serving of ice cream. So, there's a half serving of ice cream or there's an entire pound of watermelon. Think about that going into your stomach. Think about half a serving of ice cream or a whole pound of watermelon in your stomach. Half ice cream serving, whole pound of watermelon. It's gonna fill your stomach up more. You are going to be more full, be more satisfied, and not want to eat as much, which means you're going to stick to your calorie deficit better. Let's think about spinach, for example. For like 2 cups, 3 cups of spinach, it's like 20 calories. For all this fucking spinach, like 20 calories. For one Oreo, it's 110 calories, whatever it is. One Oreo in your stomach, 2 cups of spinach in your stomach. Again, low calorie, high volume foods. You're filling your stomach up for lower calories. You're filling your stomach up with a lot of food for not a lot of calories. Once again, it's gonna help you stick to your calorie deficit. So some of my favorite low calorie, high volume foods are watermelon, Strawberries, spinach, cauliflower rice, big-ass salads. Like, having one big-ass salad per day. Something that Jordan Syatt talks about all the time, and if you don't follow Jordan Syatt, please start following Jordan Syatt. Something Jordan Syatt talks about all the time, and it's such a great thing because you are going to fill up, man. I vividly remember one of my clients, Stephanie. Shout out Stephanie. Stephanie, I challenged her to have a big-ass salad every single day. The next day she emailed me and she was like, Eric, I couldn't even finish this salad. It was so big. It kept me so full. I'm like, yep. Like, don't you think that's going to help you stick to your deficit? And she did and she saw great results and so on and so forth. So, you know, doing things like that to help yourself have more food, fill your stomach up more for not as many calories. So high volume, low calorie foods, number 3. And number 4, having an eating schedule, eating around the same times every single day. This is helpful because your hunger cues and your hunger hormones run on a schedule. So let's say you eat at 6:00 AM, 9:00 AM, noon, 3:00 PM, 6:00 PM every day. Your body is going to get hungry around those times. After you do that for like 1 to 2 weeks, your body's going to get hungry around those times. Guess what? You're going to eat around those times anyway, so it falls right in line. So again, it will help you stick to your calorie deficit that much better. Let's say you eat one day at 6, 9, 12, 3, and 6. Next day you eat at 9, 2 PM, 4 PM, 6 PM, 8 PM. Next day you eat at 4 AM and then 10 AM and then 2 PM and then 4 PM and then 8 PM. It's like your body has no clue when to expect nutrients. That's what hunger is. It's expecting nutrients, right? Your body has no clue when to expect nutrients, so it's gonna be hungry all day long. And you're gonna snack here and there. You're gonna grab this, you're gonna grab that. You're gonna be super hungry throughout the day. And again, it's gonna be harder to stick to your calorie deficit. So finding an eating schedule that works for you. I'm a huge fan of 3 meals and 2 snacks. So like having breakfast, lunch, dinner, having 2 snacks throughout the day. This gives you a constant source of energy throughout the day and a constant source of calories. 'Cause what happens a lot of time is you don't eat throughout the day and then you get super hungry at night. So even though you don't eat a lot throughout the day, which by the way, people think this is a good thing. That's not a good thing if you don't eat a lot throughout the day. There's this notion of like, oh, I haven't eaten all day. I'm definitely going to lose weight. No, because at night it always backfires because you come home, you're starving. You eat this, you eat that, you snack here, you snack there. You have some desserts at night. You overeat at night because you're not eating enough during the day. So I'm a huge fan of 3 meals and 2 snacks. Having food every 2 to 4 hours doesn't mean crazy, but like, especially if you have protein every 2 to 4 hours, oh man, you're going to be full. You're going to be satisfied. You're going to be burning more calories. Huge, huge, huge help. And so having an eating schedule that can help you stick to your calorie deficit. If you want more help on this, I have a video on how— I have actually a video on how to— I think it's called How to Not Be So Hungry, How to Stay Full on Your Calorie Deficit. I'll link it here above as well. Feel free to check out that video as well if you want to. But that right there, guys, is the entire guide you need on how to lose weight if you are a shorter individual. And again, it's gonna be a bit harder. Yes, you are absolutely right. But it's not impossible. You're just gonna have to be a bit more consistent. You're gonna have to be a bit more dialed in. You probably might have to put forth a bit more effort. But like, you know what? That's good because when you put more effort into things and you see the results from it, you feel better about yourself. You feel more proud. You feel more accomplished. You feel like you're kicking ass. So go out there and do it. If you have any questions, drop them below. Let me know. I'll be happy to help. And thank you for watching. Hope this entire video helped, and I'll chat soon, okay? Bye.
