I Wish I Knew This Before Losing Fat

At the time of this video, I've been a fitness coach for over 9 years and have helped over 25,000 people with their fat loss journeys. If I went back in time knowing the lessons I know now, here's exactly what I would do differently. Lesson number 1: eating more calories helps you lose more weight. When I first started coaching clients on fat loss, I would see the same pattern over and over. Someone would come to me and say, Eric, I've been eating 1,200 calories for months, but I'm not losing weight. But then I would look at their tracking, and I realized the problem. They were eating 1,200 calories a few days out of the week, but then on the weekends there was no tracking happening. Or when we dug deeper into their tracking, they said sometimes they wouldn't track the snacks they eat or the treats they would have at night. And the issue wasn't that they didn't have any discipline or willpower; the issue was they were eating too few calories, and it was causing them. To be inconsistent. This is our client Jen. When she first signed up, she was trying to eat 1,200 calories per day but felt stuck. So after adjusting her calories up to 1,700 calories per day, she started to see the fat drop and the scale drop week over week. Why? Because instead of eating 1,200 calories Monday through Thursday, But then eating 3,000 calories Friday through Sunday, she just ate 1,700 calories per day every day and was way less hungry. She wasn't over-restricting her foods anymore, so she didn't feel the need to binge on the weekends, and she ended up eating less calories over the course of the week by eating more calories per day. And that's how Jen's been able to lose over 30 pounds thus far with us, and how you can lose more fat too if you stop trying to eat too few calories. And if you're like, Eric, how many calories is the right amount for me? Click the link in the description of this video below. There's a totally free calorie calculator you can use. It's the same one I use with our online coaching clients. Which brings me into the next lesson. Lesson 2: Lose more fat by doing less cardio. You've been conditioned to think cardio equals fat loss. If you sweat, burn a bunch of calories, then surely you'll lose fat and the scale will drop, right? But then you're doing it, you're working really hard, and you're not losing any fat. Here's what's happening. Cardio burns calories in the moment, but it doesn't build anything long-term. It's like working an hourly job. You get paid when you clock in, and that's it. Also, cardio, especially high-intensity cardio, is like adding gas to a fire. It adds to your hunger and your cravings, which makes it more difficult to stick to your calorie deficit that we just talked about. Whereas lifting weights and building muscle, that's like investing into the stock market. It might be less of a return in the moment, but over time it pays off big money even when you're sleeping and doing nothing. One of our clients, Victor, came to us never lifting weights in his life. He was a runner and could do cardio all day but never touched a weight. So I told him immediately, we're switching this up. You're going to start lifting weights 4 days a week and only running 1 to 2 days a week. At first, he was pretty scared because he was like, Eric, I'm gonna burn less calories and I'm gonna gain weight. But once we made this change, he started to build more muscle, he was less hungry, could stick to his calorie deficit better, and he started noticing his body composition change drastically. So stop using cardio as your main tool for fat loss. Cardio is a bonus, not the foundation. Your priority should be number one, lifting weights 3 to 4 times per week. Number 2, walking at least 6,000, as close to 10,000 steps per day as you can. Number 3, hitting your calorie and protein target. And number 4, adding in extra bonus cardio if you enjoy doing it. Which brings me to my next lesson. Lesson 3, eat bigger, higher calorie meals. Most people trying to lose fat think the less I eat during the day, the better. So So you skip breakfast, maybe have a 250-calorie lunch, and you're like, man, I'm doing great today. But what happens by the nighttime? All you can think about is food. You're hungry, you're craving things, you're snacking, you're grazing, you're overeating at night because you just can't seem to get yourself full, and you blow your calorie deficit way out of the water. And you think it's because you don't have any willpower at night. That's not why. It's because you're not eating big enough meals during the day and it's causing you to snack all day and night long. Our client Leanne is a great example of this. She came to us not being able to stay on track with her calories, but when we looked over her daily food logs, we noticed all of her meals were less than 300 calories. This led her to constantly snack throughout the day and eventually overeat at night. So we made a rule that each of her meals had to be at least 500 calories. And for extra, we got her to have at least 25 grams of protein at each of those meals. This almost instantly cured those snacky cravings. She didn't feel the need to graze on things in between meals anymore, and she just kept herself to her 1 to 2 pre-planned snacks per day. This made it almost easy to hit her calorie deficit goal, and she ended up losing 16 pounds in 8 weeks. So stop trying to eat tiny meals or thinking you're doing good by not eating all day. If you don't give your body fuel during the day, it will make up for it through snacking and overeating at night. Try to have 3 big meals— breakfast, lunch, dinner— with at least 400 to 500 calories and at least 25 grams of protein. Watch your snacking disappear. Which brings me into the next lesson. Lesson number 4: eating clean doesn't equal fat loss. I used to have clients come to me all the time saying, Eric, I'm eating so clean. I don't understand why I'm not losing weight. And I would ask them, hey, how many calories are you eating? And they would almost kind of look at me confused, like, well, I don't know, but I'm eating all healthy food. I don't drink soda. I don't have junk food, so I should be okay. Wrong. Your body doesn't care if the calories come from organic quinoa or Pop-Tarts. If you're eating more calories than you burn, you're gonna gain fat. That's like saying, but Eric, I only spend my money on groceries, my mortgage, and my phone bill, so I should have some money left over. I'm not buying Gucci handbags. No, if you're spending more money than what you make, you will not save money. One of our clients, Jason, had this happen. He came to us eating healthy— eggs for breakfast, salads for lunch, protein and veggies at dinner. But he wasn't tracking his calories. He just knew what he was eating was healthy. So after joining coaching, we tracked a day of calories for him— over 3,000 calories per day. He was shocked. So we had Jason eat the same foods he was eating, just decreasing the portion sizes. This adjusted his calories down to about 2,300 per day. And within the next 6 months, He lost over 50 pounds. So here's the lesson: food quality matters for your health, and it also matters because those healthy foods will keep you more full, more satisfied. They have more nutrients. But fat loss comes down to your calories. You can eat the cleanest diet in the world, but if you're eating more calories than you're burning, you will still gain fat and not lose fat. And on the flip side, you could eat pizza at every meal, And if you're in a calorie deficit, eating less calories than you burn, you're going to lose fat. Here's the framework we like to use for our online coaching clients. 80% of your calories should come from nutrient-dense, whole, clean, healthy food. And then 20% of your calories per day can come from treats and foods you enjoy. This way, you're still getting all of the health benefits and you're keeping yourself full and satisfied. But also you can still work in 300, 400 calories per day of treats or fun foods that you enjoy. This gives you the best of both worlds because it allows you to stay consistent because you're full and satisfied, but also stay consistent because you're not over-restricting your food choices and still eating foods that you like. And by the way, if you're looking at some of our clients and their progress and you're like, man, I want help doing the same thing, Click the link in the description below of this video to learn more about our online coaching program. And this brings me into the next lesson. Lesson number 5, don't weigh yourself once a week. Most people will do a weekly weigh-in to see if their weight is trending down or not. I think this is a massive mistake. Your weight can fluctuate for so many reasons. If you ate more carbs, ate more sodium, if you're a woman on her period, If you had a really hard workout the day before, if you didn't use the bathroom in the morning. So if you're only weighing yourself once a week, you only get one data point to look at. So what if on Monday you weigh in and your weight spiked up that, but the rest of the week your weight was actually down? You'd think you're not making any progress when in fact you were making progress. You just didn't see it because you only weigh yourself once a week. One of our clients, Lindsay, struggled with this at first. She came to us doing weekly weigh-ins. And we changed that to weigh in every day, which I know sounds crazy, but stick with me. At first she was like, Eric, I'm gonna freak out if I see this number on the scale every single day. But we told her it's just data. We get all of the weigh-ins over the course of the week, and then we average that out. So whether it goes up, it goes down, or it stays the same, we don't care what you weigh on Tuesday to Friday. Just get all 7 days worth of weigh-ins, and we'll take the average for that. And then week over week, we can look at the average weigh-ins. So when we did this, her weight went up and down throughout the week, but now instead of thinking she wasn't making any progress, she saw her average weight over the course of the weeks was trending down, just like you can see on this graph right here. And this actually helped her get over her fear of the scale and made it less emotional and more data-driven. So for you, although it may seem scary, I would recommend weighing yourself every single It's like if you were getting an average temperature for the month of December. If 2 days out of the month it was 70 degrees, but the other 29 days it was 25 degrees, your average temperature would still be cold as shit. 2 hot days doesn't mean it's summer, just like a couple of days of your weight spiking up doesn't mean you're not making progress. Do this and you'll find you're gonna see more progress as well as be less emotional about the scale, which will motivate you to keep going. Which leads me to my next lesson. Lesson number 6: the whoosh effect on the scale. I can't tell you how many times this has happened. A client starts our program week 1, they're lifting weights, they're hitting their calories, getting their steps, and week 2 rolls around and their weight hasn't dropped or it's They're like, uh, Eric, what the fuck? This is when we explain this is normal. When you first start lifting weights, especially if you haven't been lifting weights for a while or you've never really followed a proper strength training program before, your muscles experience inflammation and your muscles store more of something called glycogen. Just think of glycogen as energy for your muscles. Inflammation and storing glycogen both need water, which will lead to short-term water weight. So even though the scale goes up— So the scale might stay the same or go up even though you're burning fat underneath. It's like renovating your house. For the first couple of weeks, it looks worse. There's dust everywhere, tools are scattered around, there's chaos. But that doesn't mean you're not making progress on your house. It just means you're in the messy middle. Let me tell you about one of our clients, Brian. When Brian first started coaching with us, he started on a proper strength training program, and for a little while he didn't see a huge change with the number on the scale. He was feeling better, he had more energy, his clothes were fitting different, but he didn't see that big drop that he was looking for. And so we told him, Brian, Just keep going. Trust the process. This is gonna happen for you. And then after about week four hit, he had what we call the whoosh effect. And this is where your weight doesn't really go down for a couple of weeks, but then it'll drop down four to seven pounds in one week, and it will stay off for the rest of time. And what this is, your body holds on to that water weight for a little bit. It masks the fat loss because the scale doesn't go down. But once your body gets rid of the water weight. Weight and you've been losing fat over the course of the first couple of weeks, that's when your scale will drop down 4, 5, 6 pounds and stay off. Because the entire time you were making fat loss progress, it was just not showing because you were storing some extra water. And so when you first start on this fat loss journey and you're lifting weights, it's normal for the scale not to go down for the first 2 to 4 weeks. So for the first couple of weeks, ignore the scale. You can still track your body weight, but just know as long as you're hitting your calories, getting your steps in your workouts, progress is happening. It just might not show up right away. Trust the process and don't quit, because if you quit, you'll never get to week 4 or 5 where you'll have this big whoosh effect and you'll just end up going back to what you were before. I've seen this pattern with hundreds, if not thousands of clients by now, and the ones who trust the process end up losing 20 pounds in 8 weeks like Brian did because they just stuck with it. And now that you know the biggest things I wish I knew before losing fat, if you're interested in getting personalized help on your fat loss journey, click the link in the description below to learn more about our online coaching program. And after you do that, you can watch this video here for 9 years of brutally honest fat loss advice.