Losing weight is easy, actually

People usually think losing weight is about half diet and half exercise, but both of these combined are only about 25% of it. Another 25% is good quality sleep, and the other 500% is actually doing what you said you would. Luckily, if you start a diet right now, there is a way, an easy way, to make it almost impossible to fail. Step 1 is to get inspired. There's always a spark that makes you decide you want to change, and it's usually seeing someone else who's way more fit than you, or seeing yourself in a picture. Either way, inspiration is strong, but only ever lasts for a day, and then it's gone. So what you need next is a realistic goal that you can measure, as well as the time you need to achieve it by. For example, I'm going to lose 5 pounds by July 1st, and another 5 pounds by August 1st is something you can measure, and it even has a checkpoint to keep you motivated. Then, the next thing you need is a detailed and realistic plan that will get you to your goal. The plan might just be to replace your daily breakfast of milk, sugary granola, and a peanut butter jelly sandwich with instead a one mile jog, followed by a bowl of 15 big strawberries and 3 boiled eggs. Believe it or not, this one change is more than enough for you to lose multiple pounds of fat in just a few weeks. But having the plan is not enough. You need to set everything up so that you can easily follow the plan. You have to buy the strawberries, and boil the eggs the night before, and get your running clothes ready so that when you wake up, the easiest thing to do is to just stick to the plan. If you don't boil the eggs, and you keep buying peanut butter and grape jelly, and you keep putting them at the front of the fridge where it's the first thing you see, then that means you don't actually intend to stick to your diet. You're just looking forward to that one day when you give in and make your high calorie breakfast again. If you want to make it easy to eat healthy, then make it hard to eat junk food. Of course, that's easy to say, but no matter how much you try to avoid even looking at junk food, you need to expect that there will be hard times. Like when you accidentally trip and fall face first into a booth at IHOP, you see that every item is over 1000 calories, and you get the temptation to say 5 of the most dangerous words in diet history. You can pick from any of the following options. A. One cheat meal won't hurt. B. I'll actually start dieting tomorrow. C. I just won't eat later. Or D. Maybe I'll just start bulking. And it's times like this when you need willpower, which is the ability to tell yourself no. You can build up your willpower by anticipating all the excuses you're gonna make, and practicing saying no to all of them. You can even practice walking away from bad choices. But keep in mind that willpower isn't infinite, so you can't always rely on it. You're better off just avoiding the temptation in the first place. Finally, the real cheat code to motivation is doing something for so long that it becomes a habit. If you can get to the point where you wake up and automatically go outside for a jog, and you automatically reach for the strawberries and boiled eggs, then the plan becomes 100 times easier to follow, and it'll keep getting easier every day you do it. Eventually, you might even start to like eating healthy and exercising. At which point, like for many other people, it's no longer a lifestyle choice, but instead, your entire personality. And this is the ultimate goal. Anyway, let's move on to the basics of fat loss. There's no real accurate way to track it besides progress pictures and weighing yourself once a week. For the progress pictures, just know that you won't see much change in the first few weeks, and maybe not even in the first few months. Because your body first prioritizes losing fat from places that you probably can't see. But once you start seeing visual progress, it starts to become more and more noticeable very quickly. So to really measure your progress, you should weigh yourself maybe once every morning. Just know that it could fluctuate a lot based on water weight or the types of foods you eat. Which means you might lose a pound of fat, but your weight might not change right away. So instead of looking at your day-to-day progress, just look at your average week-to-week progress. So you've probably heard that to lose fat over time, you have to eat less calories than you burn. That means if your body burns 2,000 calories a day, then eating 1,700 calories a day will make you lose fat. That's because the body will use energy from fat and a teeny tiny bit of muscle to help cover the 300 calorie deficit. And if you drop your calories even lower to 1,500 or even 1,200 a day, you'll lose fat more quickly, but at the expense of it being way more difficult for you to maintain. The traditional, optimal way to figure out how many calories you should be eating is to use an online calorie calculator, activity level sedentary, YLI, and then eat around this number every day as a starting point to lose weight. But it's worth noting that this number can be way off since everyone has a different metabolism, and it can especially be off for people with hormonal problems. So the best way to know for sure is to start with this number and then see how your weight changes over the next few weeks. If you find that each week your weight is not changing, then you need to lower your daily calories by another 200 to 300. And if you ever reach a point where you haven't lost any weight for at least a week, you'll either need to reduce your calories again, or you could also just add in some more exercise. Now for some people, this method works perfectly, because in theory, you can't go wrong with it. The only problem is, you have to count exactly how many calories you eat per day. Using nutrition labels, calorie counting apps, mental math, and also food scales, which measure exactly how much of each food you're eating in grams. If you're American, you might not be familiar with the metric system, but you don't have to worry since the McDonald's menu already has calorie counts. Anyway, you can also just get away with roughly estimating your calories. But this only really works if you play it safe and round everything up like crazy. If you think it's 300 calories, it's probably 500. If you think it's 800 calories, it's probably 1000. And if you think it's too small to count, it's probably at least 50. So before we get into the method where you don't have to track anything at all, we need to talk about macronutrients. A lot of people want to know how much protein, carbs, and fat they should eat per day. And to be honest, for most weight loss purposes, all you need to look at is calories and protein. You need a certain amount of protein, a certain amount of fats, and then you can fill in the rest of your calories with anything. Just make sure for fats not to overeat stuff like oil, sauces, salad dressings, butter, nuts, and cheese. Because even though these are healthy in moderate amounts, fats have 9 calories per gram, which means one pack of trail mix has about 3 times the calories of a dying neutron star. Also, if you've ever heard weight loss experts say that carbs cause weight gain, they're not talking about fruits and vegetables, and fiber, and whole grains. They're talking about refined, highly processed carbs that are usually very delicious, and are stripped of most, if not all of their nutrients when they're being processed, especially foods with lots of added sugars. Here are some examples. You'll notice that this is basically the entire grocery store. The problem with these is that they're unnaturally delicious, easy to overeat, they have lots of calories, and they just end up making you hungrier. Of course, you can still have them every day, and you'll still lose weight if you're in a calorie deficit. Which is why some people like to brag about how they can eat a family-sized box of Reese's Puffs every day and still lose weight. What they don't tell you is that they have an empty void in their stomach for 23 hours a day, their blood work comes back with just a giant crying emoji, and simply adding milk to their cereal takes them out of a calorie deficit, so they have to use water. And that brings us to the method of how to lose fat without counting calories. The number one trick is to just start slowly eating more minimally processed foods. Avoiding junk, chips, sugary desserts, stuff with lots of refined carbs. Instead, swapping that out for fruits, vegetables, lean dairy, lean protein, healthy fats, and whole grains. You'll find that these foods are so filling and nutritious that you can eat in a calorie deficit every single day without having to feel that hungry. If you don't believe me, this is 200 calories of Oreos, and this is 200 calories of strawberries. Another tip is to just stop snacking and only eat during meals. Most people snack on high-calorie, tasty junk food because they're bored, stressed, or thirsty, not because they're hungry. So cutting out snacks is actually one of the easiest things you can do, since the body doesn't really need them anyway, and over time, you'll just stop getting the urge to snack. Ideally, once this happens, you'll start to slowly develop a feeling of I'm better than everyone else, which should be enough to keep you going till the end of your diet. But in case times get hard, here are some more tips. Number one, start drinking lots of water. Water is very filling, and half of the time when you're hungry, a quick drink of water will get rid of the feeling. Just keep a big water bottle next to you, and you'll never forget. This will also prevent you from craving high-calorie drinks like soda, juice, bubble tea, and milkshakes. Number two, if you keep saying, Today doesn't count, the real diet starts tomorrow, then it'll never start. Number three, avoid liquid calories. It's way easier to drink lots of calories in the form of sugary drinks than it is to eat them. Number four, low-fat shredded cheese, keto bread, cauliflower rice, egg whites, and even peanut butter powder are low-calorie swaps you can make. Number five, you can make healthy meals like this and this, taste good with zero-calorie condiments and spices and sauces, and zero-calorie sweeteners, but don't overuse them. Because in general, the tastier your food is, the more cravings you'll get for tasty food. Number six, use zero-calorie diet sodas to your advantage if you have sweet cravings. Number seven, these are some examples of high-volume, high-fiber foods that fill up your stomach but are low-calorie. Number eight, eat around three to five meals a day, since it helps you avoid long periods of feeling hungry, and it's usually easy to fit into your lifestyle. One big meal a day might also work, but people tend to give up on that diet very quickly. Number nine, save your biggest meals for times when you tend to get the hungriest. Number ten, many people find it easy to be in a calorie deficit when doing intermittent fasting. It involves only giving yourself a 48-hour window to eat, and then not eating the rest of the day. It might sound hard, but just know that when you don't eat, you won't just be constantly hungry. Hunger comes and goes in waves, so if you just wait a little bit, the hunger goes away. Number eleven, eat more protein, because protein makes you feel satisfied. You also burn about 20 calories just to digest 100 calories of protein. Number twelve, speaking of protein, protein powder is good, but it's processed, and it's a powder that you drink, so it's not really as filling as other protein sources. But if you need it to meet your protein requirements, then drink it with water. Number thirteen, if you want to, try black coffee or tea, since caffeine slightly boosts your metabolism and slightly suppresses your appetite. Number fourteen, use smaller plates, smaller bowls, and smaller portion sizes, because it tricks you into feeling full quickly. Number fifteen, if you mess up, don't take it as an excuse to start eating tons of junk food, because even though messing up wasn't part of the plan, giving up was never part of the plan. Now on to exercise. It burns some calories, it improves your health, and once you experience what it really takes to burn 200 calories, you're probably less likely to pop open a 200-calorie bag of chips. So here are some tips. Number one, lift weights. This will not only increase your metabolism, but it will burn calories, and it helps you build muscle. You can use this website to get ideas for exercises. Number two, walk more. Getting at least 10,000 steps a day is basically a cheat code for burning extra calories and losing fat. Number three, do more cardio. While diet is more important than exercise for losing fat, cardio will make it easier. If you find it boring, you can try high-intensity interval training. Or if you like, you can do circuit-style workouts, which you can find lots of on YouTube. Some gym bros like to claim that 15-minute YouTube workouts don't work, but remember that they watch hour-long videos of other people working out. Number four, be less sedentary. Not many people talk about this because it's hard to explain, but getting up and moving around and just doing stuff throughout the day burns way more calories than you would think. This includes activities that you don't normally think of as exercise, like taking the stairs, cleaning your house, pressure washing your driveway, cooking, fidgeting, standing, walking around, carrying groceries, and touching grass. Basically, anything except sitting or rotting in bed. Lastly, a fat loss tip that everyone thinks doesn't apply to them is to get good quality sleep. Sleep regulates your hormones, and when it comes to fat loss, these hormones pretty much determine everything. Now, you might be thinking, well, I don't have to worry about that, I already get good sleep. Anyway, please donate and subscribe to fund the next video.