Weight loss is something that about 80% of Americans wish they could achieve.
But is it really possible to lose weight fast? There’s so much conflicting information out there, that it’s hard to know what the truth is.
Ranging from the hard-to-believe “lose 10 pounds in 10 days” diet programs, to the “slow and steady” diets that never actually help dieters to lose the bulge, there has to be a middle ground rooted in fast, yet achievable weight loss principles.
Welcome to the guide that gets it right and lays out weight loss in plain language.
What you’re about to discover on this page, is a guide on how to actually lose weight quickly. And it’s based on real-world research and practical, hands-on experience.
Jump to Content:
- Three Main Key Pillars Of Weight Loss
- Four Best Weight loss accelerators
- Three Hunger curbing strategies
- 10 Tips For Faster Weight Loss
The key pillars of actual, real-world weight loss
Weight Loss Pillar 1: Keep a journal
The most common reason for the failure to lose weight is approximation.
At first glance it’s tempting idea, to have the freedom to mentally guess a slice of pie to be an extra 300 calories that you can make up for later by shrinking dinner.
It never works out that way though. In fact your body will actually play mental tricks to encourage weight gain, make you hungrier, and even slow your metabolism down
That’s why studies show that people who lose weight are those who record every meal. It’s the single most important thing you can do.
And thanks to calorie counting apps, old pen and paper methods have been automated into quick and easy calorie counting on the fly.
Weight Loss Pillar 2: Use your sleep advantage during the day
What do I mean by that? It turns up the body naturally shuts off our desire to eat during sleep hours.
What many people don’t know, however, is that this natural appetite suppression continues until you consume your first meal. At that point the body is triggered into its standard hunger cycle.
So what if you just waited to eat past the morning? Could you skip a good 600 to 1,000 calories worth of breakfast while minimizing enusing hunger? The answer is yes!
This little trick is known as intermittent fasting. Along with the weight loss diary and the next thing I’m going to teach you, intermittent fasting basically assures that anyone can lose weight because it eliminates a whole meal from your day with minimal effects on hunger.
Yes, there’s going to be some adjustment, but the adjustment comes quick. As in 1-2 days, a week at most.
This technique works for weight loss newbies and bodybuilding contestants alike.
Bodybuilder James Grage reveals this to be his secret to maintaining sub 6% body fat for a show effortlessly, saying
“I make sure to eat my last meal of the day at 6:30 pm. Then I wake up in the morning and do my cardio in a semi-fasted state, after thirteen and a half hours have taken place. Only after that do I eat my breakfast—the first meal I’ll have consumed since the night before.”
Weight Loss Pillar 3: Tidy up calorie burn with NEAT
While a journal keeps you accountable, and intermittent fasting allows you to take a giant meal out of your day fairly easily, mastering the acronym NEAT will help you ward off your body’s natural fat preservation tactics.
So what is NEAT?
Almost everyone unconsciously scales up or down their activity level based on how many calories they’ve taken it for the day.
This is one of the primary reasons why some people are naturally skinny despite eating like a regular person.
The culprit for their extra leanness is Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis a.k.a. NEAT. This includes behaviors like fidgeting, restlessness, and even the mental energy bursts our body offers our minds when we need to power through mentally draining work (as the brain consumes 20% of the body’s total energy). Mayo Clinic research says that NEAT related movements can vary your calories burned by up to 2,000 per day!
How to Use NEAT for Faster Weight Loss
As weight losers, what we need is a strategy for burning calories that isn’t hard or boring. While NEAT-style calorie burning is mostly unconscious, you can choose to override your body’s natural tendency to slow you down by doing some easy exercise of your own.
And remember, I do mean easy and preferably enjoyable too.
When I was over 100 pounds, I had tremendous motivation to go out out and run at first. But after a few weeks of it, I just about wanted to fall on the couch give up.
NEAT started working against me, as it had my whole life.
So instead of running, I found that by easing into a casual 20 to 45 minute walk depending on my free time, I could consistently burn calories and reliably lose weight — and stick to it.
And that’s what counts most when you’re looking to lose more than a couple of pounds. Weight loss is a walk, not a sprint.
Control NEAT instead of letting it control you, by slowing you down.
Keep your exercise easy and joyful. Go for a walk, ride a bike, take up hiking, jump roping, or anything else you would actually look forward to doing.
That’s how you can keep your metabolism from going into “diet mode.”
Weight loss accelerators
Don’t want to spend the next year skipping social gatherings to lose weight? Then let’s talk about a few extra tips and tricks to make the fat pounds burn off even more efficiently.
These are smaller tactics to be used alongside the core three above. Use them or don’t use them, as need and your schedule allows.
Weight Loss Accelerator 1: Green tea
A faster metabolism means more calories are burned effortlessly during the entire day. One study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that green tea was more effective than most other common weight-loss teas because of its exceptionally high level of catechins. Aim for 1 to 3 cups daily for maximum fat burning assistance.
Weight Loss Accelerator 2: Other supplements
Keep current on what supplements have good evidence of helping people lose weight. Supplements that tend to work are taken off the market quickly. Big Pharma almost certainly plays a role in this.
One example to illustrate my point: when I was undergoing rapid weight loss a few years ago, ephedrine had not yet been banned by the FDA.
It was proven effective in every study that tested it, and yet the FDA still decided to mark this exceptional calorie burner as unfit for the public use.
The good news is that new supplements are constantly coming out. Not all work though! Keep your eyes open and stock up quick when you find something that does; unfortunately weight loss for you and me is not the highest priority for the government.
Weight Loss Accelerator 3: Water
I rank this one lower than green tea because water is more of a gap filler.
After you’ve had your 1 to 3 daily green teas, use water to pick up the slack and keep yourself hydrated. Most people have a difficult time telling hydration and thirst apart, and there’s never a better time to ensure proper hydration than when you’re on a caloric deficit.
In the short-term, water will also give you a temporary feeling of fullness, another good technique for holding back hunger.
Read: How much Water You Should Drink A Day to Lose Weight
Weight Loss Accelerator 4: Exercise with music
As you start nearing your ideal weight, you may be tempted to push a bit harder than the easy/fun variety of exercise mentioned with NEAT.
This is where music can really elevate your mindset and performance to match your goals.
Studies show that music brings out the best in us, and makes us actually want to get physically active. The mechanisms are not well understood, but the influence of music is well documented and a great tactic to add to your weight loss arsenal.
Hunger curbing strategies
Yes, there will be times ahead when you feel like blowing off what your weight loss journal tells you to do, and jump into a daylong binge that takes you a few days backward. The following tips and techniques are designed to take the edge off and make dealing with hunger a lot more manageable.
Hunger Management Trick 1: Plate Balancing
Interesting research shows that mixed meals perform better than single macronutrient heavy meals.
In practice this means that it’s better to have a bigger meal than several small ones throughout the day.
You’ll get a lot more out of having a side of eggs to go with your cereal than eating each one independently, because the fats and carbohydrates keep you full for a greater period than the sum of each part.
Hunger Management Trick 2: Snacking
This one seems almost contradictory to the above, but studies also consistently find that small snacks help us keep us content, possibly because snacks keep our blood sugar more level throughout the day.
Contentment is necessary to avoid those situations where you lose your will and scoff down a monster 1,500 calorie meal in one sitting.
So know that it’s okay to snack, so long as you keep the calories relatively low for the snacks you do eat.
Hunger Management Trick 3: Dark sleep environment
This hunger management trick goes to show that weight loss truly is a lifestyle, not just a thing you do 3 times each day during your meals.
One interesting study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that those who sleep in darker rooms experienced 21% more weight loss over the course of their diet program, compared to those who slept in rooms that leaked in more light.
Researchers speculate that the difference in results has to do with the body’s natural circadian rhythm, which controls our sleep-wake cycle and likely contributes to our natural hunger cycle as well. If you can seal off your bedroom from light, then do so.
10 Tips For Faster Weight Loss
- Eat smartly- What you can plan is get smart and start eating in small plates. Eating in smaller plates automatically urges people to eat less. As it implies that you are already having too much and you don’t need to eat more. You shall automatically start eating less, still feeling that you have filled your stomach.
- Hydration or drinking water helps a lot- Drinking water before meals is recommended and a very helpful tip for individuals looking for quick weight loss. Drinking at least half liter of water before meals, will reduce 44% more weight.
- Be more active like by doing exercise or work outs- You must do proper exercise altogether to be in a good shape.As a quick weight loss method and also being fit, you can do power exercises, like quick push ups and pull ups and other cardio exercises too. Exercises also help you to keep your metabolism high, which helps to burn more calories.
- Eat planned meals- Make sure you plan your daily meals, so that you get enough amounts of nutrients and carbohydrates. Focus on preparing your own meals and eating more at home.
- Avoid beverages and alcohol consumption – Cold drinks and alcohols are known to increase fats content in the body. Intake of alcohol does help to digest the proteins, however too much alcohol can act as a weight gainer.
- Get Good Sleep- Sleeping is a very essential part of weight loss, it is important to sleep well and sleep right. While we sleep our body tends to regenerate itself from the whole day long work and it needs enough time for that.
- Start doing Yoga – Yoga not only helps you with health and fitness, but also keeps you mentally prepared and focused. It is very easy to deviate from the weight loss track, so meditation and yoga play an important role in keeping you in the right state of mind.
- Focus on having a balanced diet instead of looking for low calorie- You must focus on having a balanced diet, which includes enough vitamins, carbohydrates, minerals, nutrients and proteins and optimum amount of calories too. A balanced diet will help you lose weight with giving energy to your body.
- Get a heavy breakfast – According to studies, it is found that you should never skip your breakfast as it leads to overweight.
- Ride less and walk more – Walking is the easiest method of reducing weight. As the more you walk the more calories you burn. Avoid using vehicles for shorter distances and give preference to walking.
Losing weight is a process that anyone can control
Weight loss is simple in practice, and yet requires continual adherence to get to any meaningful goal.
It’s a process you can deal with and indeed even start to enjoy as you begin to master it, so long as you focus on the 3 critical pillars that ensure weight loss does happen. You will not lose weight if you do not keep track of calories consumed each day.
The same applies to skipping breakfast for that easy deficit in the morning, and using fun exercise to stop the body from slowing down.
There are several more techniques listed here to ease the process even further, helping you both lose weight a bit faster while holding your hunger urges low.
Use every tools in your fat burning toolbelt for maximum effectiveness and adherence, and your goal weight will be reached in a shorter time than you think.
