In this personal vlog, fitness coach Eric Roberts recounts his experience of losing 20 pounds in eight weeks by maintaining an aggressive ~1,000‑calorie‑per‑day deficit to achieve a very low body‑fat percentage. He describes the rapid weight loss as initially rewarding but soon accompanied by severe strength loss, chronic fatigue, brain fog, irritability, obsessive thoughts about food, poor sleep, low libido, and a slowed metabolism. Realizing the detrimental impact on his physical and mental health, Eric stopped the deficit, returned to maintenance calories, and subsequently regained about 25 pounds. The weight regain restored his energy, strength, sleep quality, mood, and relationship with food, allowing him to enjoy social meals and pursue cardio for health. He uses his story to warn against the fitness industry’s aesthetic standards and the hidden costs of extreme leanness, critiques influencer‑driven marketing that sells appearance‑based products, and advocates a slower, sustainable fat‑loss approach. He briefly promotes his free calorie calculator, a follow‑up video on fat‑loss advice, and his online coaching program, emphasizing that his services focus on individualized, health‑first transformations rather than appearance alone.
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I lost 20 pounds in 8 weeks leading up to my vacation earlier this year. And you might hear that and think, damn, Eric, that's awesome. Well, it wasn't for me. And I wish I knew what I'm about to tell you before I did that, because looking back, I shouldn't have lost 20 pounds. And here's what I mean. You see, the fitness industry has set these standards for what we're supposed to look like— jacked, ripped, shredded, big juicy glutes or biceps or both. So inevitably, that's what I was chasing. I wanted to be the lowest body fat percentage I could, and so that's what I set up to do. I went into a pretty aggressive calorie deficit. Typically, a normal calorie deficit is 500 calories per day, so that's 500 calories minus your maintenance calories. I was in about a 1,000 calorie deficit per day. And by the way, if you need to know how many calories you should be eating per day, There'll be a free calorie calculator in the description of this video. So week over week, I was losing 2 pounds, 3 pounds plus per week. And you might hear that. And I thought that was awesome. I was killing it. And to be honest, it was pretty easy for me to do that. All things were going well until they weren't. And here's what no one tells you in the fitness industry, but I'm about to. Things started to take a turn for the worse. How? To start, I was losing strength in my workouts. And this wasn't just like, oh, it's a little bit harder to lift the weights and I'm not as strong. I had to drop down 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds from what I was normally lifting. And if my workout program called for 3 sets of an exercise, I was only able to do 1 set before I was fatigued, exhausted, and I quite literally couldn't do any more. It really sucked if I'm being honest, but the scale was going down and I was looking leaner. So I was like, screw it, I'm just gonna keep going because I'm doing good. But then it wasn't just my workouts where I was suffering. My energy levels throughout the day were awful. I had constant brain fog. I could barely focus on a task for more than 30 to 60 minutes at a time. I was tired, yawning all day. I was very irritable and in a bad mood. I wouldn't say I had depression by any means, but I certainly would go throughout the day and just like not enjoy my day-to-day. But the scale kept going down week over week, and my progress pictures were looking better week over week. And so that dopamine just kept hitting me, and I said, fuck it, I'm gonna keep going. But the last straw was this. I'm someone who has a very healthy relationship with food. I'm conscious of it, but I don't over-obsess over it. I don't think about it all day long. And in fact, sometimes I almost like get pissed that I have to eat because I want to do other stuff, but I know I should fuel my body properly. But as I was losing the weight, it got to a point where all I thought about was food. How many hours until my next meal? How many calories do I have left for the day? Ah, there's no way I can eat this peanut butter because it's not going to fit within my calories. I'm going to get done dinner and be starving. The food noise. was so loud. And this is what no one in the industry is telling you. Yes, being 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds overweight isn't healthy. You're going to have health complications. You're going to have heart problems, diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure, all of those things. We can agree it's not healthy. But what people don't talk about is getting too low of a body fat percentage Getting too lean isn't healthy either. Your energy tanks, you lose muscle mass, you lose strength, your relationship with food suffers, your metabolism goes down, your mood goes to shit, you don't sleep well, you have no libido. There comes a point where losing more weight isn't healthy either. And that's exactly what happened to me. So eventually I said, fuck it, I'm done losing weight. I not only brought my calories back up to my maintenance calories, but since then, I've actually gained 25 pounds back. Now, I know what you might be thinking. Eric, you're a fitness coach who helps people lose weight, but you gained all of your weight back? Yep. And guess what? My energy is at an all-time high. My workouts are awesome. I was throwing around 130-pound dumbbells the other day like it was nothing, and I felt great. My sleep is great. My relationship with food is so much better. I don't even think about food throughout the day until I have to eat, and I eat and I'm done. I even started a new cardio journey to improve my overall health, which I wouldn't have been able to do if I was eating such few calories. I go out to eat 1 to 2 times per week with the people I love without guilt. And honestly, I just feel so much better. My quality of life is so much better. And now some people are going to leave in the comments section, Eric, you look better now. Eric, I prefer you with 20, 25 extra pounds. You didn't look good then, didn't look healthy when you were leaner. And personally, I think I should probably fall somewhere in between. At some point, I probably will lose about 10 to 15 pounds to drop some body fat, because don't get me wrong, I, like all of us, like seeing my abs a bit more. I like seeing my muscle definition a bit more. I can be vain at times. I just don't like that stuff as much as I like eating food and not having to worry about it. But I wish I knew I shouldn't sacrifice my physical or mental health to get there. So if I had to do it all over again, I probably would have lost 10 pounds max, and I probably would have taken a slower, more sustainable approach so that I didn't have to go as aggressive with my calorie deficit and get all of those negative side effects that came along with losing those 20 pounds the way I did. So when you see influencers who look a certain way, there are side effects that come along with that that nobody talks about. And quite frankly, it's usually because they're trying to sell you shit on how they look. They sell you supplements or their workout programs or enter the thing here based on how they look. That's why I don't need to sell you on how I look. In fact, I get comments every day with people being like, This guy Eric doesn't even work out. How are you talking about fat loss? How are you talking about muscle building? You look like shit. I don't care. You can leave those comments if you would like. I'm not here to sell you on how I look. I'm here to educate you and empower you so that you can live a better quality of life. I'm not selling you on sex. And I really hope that this video did that for you. And if you're like, man, this guy Eric is good. I want him to help me with my journey. Well, I do just that with our online coaching program. And yes, this is me selling you something, But it's not selling you based on my body. It's selling you based on your body and helping you get to where you want to be. So if you're interested, you can click the link in the description of this video to learn more. Or if you just want more education and information, you can check out this video here next on 9 years of brutally honest fat loss advice that I can give you. I'll see you there.
