How can I burn fat and keep it off?

How can you burn fat and keep it off? So this is going to be the topic of tonight's video because it was a question that came in 2 days ago now, um, and basically it's from a, from a person I know who's on my Facebook list who has said, oh, I've been struggling with my weight for a while, been using various diets, you know, trying things over the years, but nothing I seem to do allows me to maintain the results that I've gotten. So how can I lose the fat and then actually keep it off? So there are a couple of things that we have to consider. Now, what most people realize is that, well, when they try a diet, it works, as in it helps them lose weight 9 times out of 10. And that's all good, you know, you've tried this diet, it helped you lose weight. The catch-22 for most of us is it doesn't give us the tools needed to maintain that weight loss And like I've said in many of my posts before, what often happens is when we try to go back to our previous lifestyle, we end up stuck back where we were. We end up gaining all the weight back and often even more. And of course, this isn't the lifestyle that most people want to lead. So there are 3 factors that you have to consider if you want long-term weight loss. Now, the first thing that we have to do is have a mindset shift. Now, I talk about mindset all the time because mindset is very important. It's part of the foundation of this whole game. Of being healthy, having the body we want, losing body fat, maintaining strength and muscle and all those types of things. We have to have the right mindset if we want to actually achieve our goals and then maintain them in the long run. So the first shift that we need is to stop focusing on weight loss and instead focus on getting healthy. What we often end up doing, and not necessarily from a conscious level, but we end up chasing weight loss hoping to get healthy rather than chasing health, knowing that it will then also lead to weight loss. So the first thing that we need to do is have a foundational mindset of, I'm doing this because I want my body to be healthier, to function better. And as a natural byproduct of chasing health, what we find is that weight loss often comes as a byproduct of that. But before we even consider the weight loss, there is a second factor that we need to, to insert first. So first off, the base of our pyramid is health. Now on top of that, what we actually want to chase or go for, aim for, is performance. So the first thing I'm looking for is to improve my body's health. The second thing I'm looking for is to improve my body's performance. Now I'm talking in terms of strength as a foundation of that performance. We want to get stronger, but we also want to— where where possible, become more athletic, more dynamic, and so on. We want to improve across the board. Now, this doesn't mean you have to chase every single facet of function. That doesn't mean you need to do it all. But it does mean that generally speaking, we want to improve performance across the board. We want to be fitter, we want to be stronger, we want to be faster, we want to be more powerful, more flexible, and so on. So the various biomechanical, or sorry, biomotor abilities, we want to improve them all, at least to a degree. Now, of course, there is going to be nuance. If there is a specific sport I'm involved in that requires me to emphasize certain aspects of those biomotor abilities, then that's absolutely fine. Obviously, you would focus on those. But what we're doing, if we establish a good foundation of health, that provides the perfect platform that we need to build performance on top of. And then what we find is that as a natural byproduct of chasing performance, the aesthetic tends to come along naturally. So I don't have to chase weight loss or muscle building necessarily, because it will come as a byproduct of that. If I'm fueling myself properly to achieve my health goals, and I'm fueling myself properly to achieve my performance-based goals, 9 times out of 10, we get the aesthetic that we want, or we start to significantly move towards it. We see changes, we see body fat dropping, we see muscle mass at least maintaining and even increasing, and we start to get the shape in the body that we want. Now, sometimes we might find that actually I've been doing this, I'm, I'm actually getting healthier, my health markers are improving, etc., I feel a lot better, my energy's up, and so on, and my performance is also improving, but my body doesn't seem to be changing in the way I want. So now we can start focusing also on the aesthetic. Now, this might be in terms of food ratios. So we might be looking at, okay, well, actually I'm eating a good number of calories to support my health and to support my performance, but maybe what those calories is made up of needs to change in order to support more of the aesthetic result that I want. Or it could be a case of we need to tweak the training. Maybe the training that we're doing is specific to one particular type of outcome. And we need to change it. Maybe there's not quite enough conditioning involved, maybe there's not enough resistance training involved, and so on. There are various factors that we can look at. Now, the advantage that most of us have, particularly if we haven't trained for, for an extended period, and if we've been sort of doing the unhealthy thing for a long time, then often even the simplest of changes makes big differences in the beginning. So we start to improve our diet, we see that our body starts to lose weight and/or lose fat, and we start to do some exercise, and we see that our body shape changes, and the way that we feel and the way that we function also begins to improve because we get what we call newbie gains. Anytime we take an extended period off, or if we've never done this stuff before, we always get some accelerated adaptations in the beginning, which is awesome because that is what helps to build the momentum that we need to carry on. Now I understand that many of us get stuck in this place where we just feel desperate for a result. It's like, I hate my body, I'm disgusted with it, I hate the way it looks, I'm embarrassed by it, and so on. So therefore, we want to just dive straight into fat loss. And I'm not saying you can't immediately get fat loss results. I'm just saying you shouldn't aim specifically for fat loss alone or for weight loss alone and so on. Now, if we're going for specifically fat loss, that tends to not require such an extreme result as weight loss, because weight loss is just, I need to see the scale weight go down. Fat loss, however, says I'm not really bothered about what the scale says, but I do care what my skinfold measurements or my, my bioimpedance measurements say. That's what, that's what I'm bothered about. I'm concerned about my body fat percentage reducing, not my body weight, which is a totally different mindset and mind shift again. But of course, many of us just think, oh well, if I get on the scale and I'm heavier than I used to be and my body now looks out of shape compared to what it was, the only thing I need is weight loss and I'll get back to where I was. Which of course in some cases can be true, but doesn't necessarily paint the whole picture. So what I'm ultimately saying is you can have weight loss and you can start on it immediately, but do it from the mindset and the frame of I'm trying to get healthier. I'm going to improve my performance, and as a byproduct of that, my aesthetic will start to, to, um, to show. The thing that I'm after, the weight loss, etc., will come as a natural byproduct of me trying to get healthier and to perform better. And then of course, as I need to or want to, if I want specific aesthetic results as I get closer to my goal, then I can tweak and change things in diet or in exercise or in recovery and so on. That can help me get a more specific result that I might be looking for once I've actually gotten into the game, gotten into a groove, and actually found what is going to work for me long term. So that's what I'll leave for you guys tonight. If you have any questions, like I always say, drop them in the comments below. And if not, I look forward to chatting with you all in my next video. Take it easy, people.