I Lost 20lbs Before Summer And Learned This

If you actually want to lose weight before summer, the odds are stacked against you. 80% of people try and end up failing. But there's 7 simple science-backed tips that have helped me and several of my clients beat the odds and lose fat in a sustainable way. Before I share with you the first tip, I need to talk about a realistic timeframe for your progress. I've coached tens of thousands of people over my 8+ years of coaching, and most people fall within losing 0.5 to 2 pounds per week on average. So let's say you give yourself 12 weeks to really dial it in before summer. That's somewhere between 6 and 24 pounds. Now, of course, the results would depend on how consistent you are with your journey, but most people just vastly underestimate how long it's going to take for you to lose weight in a healthy and sustainable way. You could lose a lot more weight much faster by cutting out all of your carbohydrates Doing 1 to 2 hours of cardio per day and only eating 1,000 calories. You could also hate your life doing that, but I promise you'd rather lose weight slower in a sustainable way so that you can maintain your results and not have to do some crazy restrictive diet. And even if you aren't going to lose all the weight you wanted to before summer, that's okay because I still think you'd be happy weighing 5, 10, 15 pounds less than what you weigh right now. Right? Tip number 1, your diet is going to be the number 1 thing that's helping you lose weight. When you eat fewer calories than what your body burns, AKA eating in a calorie deficit, your body is forced to use stored body fat for energy to help you lose weight. So my first tip is finding the right amount of calories for you to be in a calorie deficit. You can do that by using my totally free calorie calculator that I have on my website, or there will be a link for it below in the description of this video. I highly recommend you track your calories and use a food scale to weigh out your food in portion sizes. I track my calories every day in an app that I have actually built where I can just scan barcodes, I can input the foods I'm eating, and it calculates how many calories, how much protein I'm consuming. Everything is taken care up. If you want to check out that app, there's a link in the description of the video as well. And tracking those calories also helps you be more accountable and be more aware of the food you are eating, which results in you making better choices with your diet. But just knowing your calorie deficit goal isn't enough. To actually hit and stick with your calorie deficit, you have to fix something that we call your food environment. For example, I know if I have donuts in my house, I am going to eat them. I won't be able to say no over and over and over again. So set yourself up for success by removing and keeping your trigger foods out of your house, and instead lay out foods like apples, bananas, oranges, or have Greek yogurt or cheese sticks When you open up the fridge. These are healthier foods that you can easily grab and go with to help you stay on track. You want to make it harder to not stay on track and easier to stay on track. Combined with that, you want to make sure you're practicing what we call mindful eating. Eating in front of the TV or glued to your phone makes it harder to notice your fullness cues, leading to you overeating much more. So instead, try to get rid of distractions at least for a 5 to 10 minute period of time. Slow down when you eat. Your stomach and your brain will talk to each other, and you will notice you are more full than you may think you are. Once you've set up your food environment for success, what foods should you actually include in your diet? Let's start with arguably the most important food for fat loss, Which is gonna be protein. By eating protein, your body is going to burn more calories, stay fuller for longer, and you'll have less nighttime cravings. How much protein should you eat? Research shows us if you take your goal body weight in pounds, multiply that number by 0.7, that's how many grams of protein you should eat per day. So if you want to weigh 150 pounds, That times 0.7 equals 105 grams of protein per day. Now, what are the best high protein foods? I can put some on the screen here right now, and I'll also give some options for vegan and vegetarian protein sources as well. I know it might be harder to eat more protein if you are vegan or vegetarian, but you can absolutely do it. I mean, this is one of my coaches, Coach Judy, right here who you can see. She's jacked and she only eats vegetarian. So it's certainly possible. And by the way, if you'd like to try out this brand of protein powder, it's the company I work with and I trust. They taste great, super low calorie, and you can try it out for 20% off if you use my code ERIC at checkout. Just head to legionathletics.com or there'll be a link in the description of this video as well. Now for tip number 4, protein is important, but it's not the only food you should be focusing on. In addition to protein, you want to be focusing on high fiber foods as well. Fiber is a slow digesting nutrient that helps keep you fuller for a longer period of time. A good goal to shoot for per day is at least 15 to 20 grams for women and at least 25 to 30 grams for men per day. Once again, I'll also put a list of my favorite high fiber foods here on the screen. And what we encourage our clients to do is pick 2 to 4 of these high-fiber foods that you enjoy eating, or at the very least you don't hate, and eat 2 to 4 of them per day. For me, for example, I eat raspberries, blackberries, oatmeal, and banana pretty much every single day, and it helps me hit my daily fiber goal. For tip number 5, now that you have protein and fiber, the next superfood is what we call low-calorie, high-volume Foods. Think of your stomach as a big bowl. When you eat a piece of chocolate, you put it in this big bowl. As you can see, there's not much in there, correct? But if, let's say, you fill the bowl with a ton of veggies and a salad, there's a lot more food in that bowl now. Which one do you think is gonna keep you more full? The craziest part, all of this salad is the same amount of calories as this one chocolate. So find foods you can eat a lot of without eating a lot of calories and minimize the foods that you can't eat a lot of because they are very high in calories. Again, I will put a list of my favorite high-volume, low-calorie foods here on the screen. And once more, what we coach our clients to do is pick 2 to 4 of these and have 2 to 4 of these foods per day, every single day. For me personally, most days it's raspberries, strawberries, Greek yogurt, and salads. Thus far, we've talked a lot about nutrition, and rightfully so, because if you don't get your nutrition in check, you will not be able to lose fat. But we've left out some key tips around exercise, so let's dive into those now. Most people think cardio is the best way to lose weight. This has actually proven to not be true. Research shows a calorie deficit plus strength training is the most effective routine for fat loss. Lifting weights is the best modality for fat loss because unlike cardio, where over time the more cardio you do, the less calories you burn because your body gets used to it, with strength training you build muscle, which is actually going to help you burn more calories over the long haul. Building more muscle also leads to that toned, defined look that you're going for. You don't just want to lose weight on the scale, you want to look a certain way. If you don't have enough muscle, you're not going to look the way you want to look. And last, lifting weights is going to help you build that muscle so your body can't use your muscle for energy when you go into a calorie deficit, and it's forced to use your stored body fat instead. You don't need to be a bodybuilder, but aim to get 2 to 4 strength training sessions per week. For around 30 to 60 minutes. And if you'd like a workout program that is written entirely for you, click the link in the description of this video to check out our coaching, or I even have a totally free workout program below. Now for tip number 7, although strength training is king for fat loss, that doesn't mean you should just be a sloth the rest of the day. One of the main reasons people fail at losing weight is because they subconsciously move less and burn less calories throughout their day when they go on a calorie deficit. To avoid this, track how many steps you're taking per day. You can either wear a watch or your smartphone tracks your steps for you. That's personally what I use. And make sure you're hitting your daily step goal. Now, what should your daily step goal be? You've probably heard before you have to walk 10,000 steps in order to lose weight. I'm here to tell you That is not true. What we coach our clients on is take where you're at right now. Let's say you're doing 4,000 to 5,000 steps per day and try to add 2,000 to that. So you would try to get 6,000 to 7,000 per day. If you're at 6,000 to 7,000, try to get 8,000 or 9,000 or maybe even 10,000 per day. You don't really need to go past 10,000 to 12,000 per day for fat loss. It's not going to yield you that much more calorie burn, and it's not going to yield you more fat loss. And I'm actually going to give you one more bonus tip that I don't hear a lot of trainers talking about, and I'm not quite sure why, because it's one of the most important things you can do. There are 2 hunger hormones in your body. One is going to be leptin. This is the hormone that tells your body, I'm full, I don't need any more food. The other hormone is something called ghrelin. This is the hormone that tells your body, I am starving, I need more food. Do you know what decreases leptin and increases ghrelin, which is not good if you're trying to lose weight? Inadequate sleep. Research shows sleeping less than 7 hours per night can throw your hunger hormones out of whack. So try your damnedest to get at least 7 hours per night. I promise you will immediately notice less hunger, less cravings, and it'll be incredibly easier to stick to your calorie deficit. So now that you know what to do, just go execute it. It's simple, right? Right, but simple doesn't mean easy. Why? Well, because life. You have social events you have to go to. You have your kids. You have work, travel events. Trust me, we coach people every single day who have a real life going on around them, and they can't just dedicate their entire life to fitness. Maybe like you. I'm gonna tell you exactly what we tell our clients: You don't have to be perfect. Most people fall into the all or nothing perfectionist mentality. If you can't do something perfectly, then why do it at all? Or if God forbid you go off track one day and you have maybe one. Too many chocolates. That means you clearly ruined all of your progress. You might as well say fuck it and keep going with it. Any of that sound familiar? This turns into a never-ending cycle of never making progress. So instead of doing that, I want you to aim to be 80% consistent with your plan. This means if you used my free calorie deficit calculator and your calorie goal is 1,800 calories per day, then 25 out of the 31 days of the month, that is how many days you need to hit your calorie goal to be 80% consistent. If your goal is to get 7,000 steps per day, hit that number 25 out of 31 days. And if your goal is to work out 4 times a week, get at least 13 of the 16 workouts for that month. I promise, if you're at least 80% consistent on your journey, you will see progress. Just like one of our clients Mariah did right here, or just like one of our clients Vince did right here. Just keep going and I promise you will see the progress you want to see. And speaking of seeing progress, here's the number one mistake people make when it comes to that. You want to lose weight, but don't fall into the trap of only looking at the number on the scale, especially if you're losing fat and building muscle at the same time. The number on the scale might not change that much, but you and your body composition will look completely different. Here's a great example of that. This is one of our clients, Sarah. Look at these pictures and ask yourself, how many pounds do you think Sarah lost in between these 2 pictures? I'll give you a second. The correct answer? Zero. Sarah lost zero pounds on the scale in between these 2 pictures. But as you can tell, her pictures look completely different. Her stomach is more defined, her legs are more defined, her arms are more defined. It's not all about the number on the scale. So make sure you are taking your progress pictures. This is what we do with our clients. Progress pictures are every 4 weeks, and then your body measurements, primarily your waist measurement, is every 2 weeks. Along with tracking your strength training program as well and making sure you're lifting heavier weight, which is really cool too. to see, you give yourself other opportunities to notice and see progress other than just the number on the scale. This in turn keeps you motivated, which keeps you consistent, which allows you to be one of the 20% of people who will end up losing weight before summer. If you're interested in becoming a client of ours, you can click the link in the description of this video. Or if you'd like to watch exactly what I did to lose 25 pounds in 60 days, You can watch this video right here.