12 Proven Strategies for Lifelong Healthy Fat Loss
Weight loss shouldn’t be a restricted one-off, one-time, defined set period of time. It doesn’t work that way. If you start a 21-day challenge or 12-week fix, you are essentially telling your mind that after X number of days, you’re done with your “healthy lifestyle.”
The better approach is to stick to a specific of flexible “rules” or principles that provide you with consistent weight loss, promote health, and still give you the body you desire.
Here are 12 proven strategies I’ve used in my own life and thousands of clients to achieve lifelong what I call “healthy fat loss”:
1.) Have protein for breakfast – it will reduce your appetite for the entire day.
Protein is a calorie-burning, muscle-building nutrient that takes time to digest and is thermogenic. Protein for breakfast takes longer to digest and leaves you more full than a bagel or muffin, and will keep you feeling satisfied.
Protein stimulates the secretion of peptide YY, a gut hormone that triggers feelings of satiety. One study in particular found that dieters who increased their protein consumption to 30 percent of their daily calories ate nearly 500 fewer calories a day less and lost 11 pounds in 12 weeks.
Starting your day with a protein rich breakfast will set you up for fat-burning all day.
2.) At meals, always eat vegetable and protein first
As you know vegetables improve all levels of health and promote weight loss. Being high in fiber, vegetables control blood sugar and insulin release and when you lower insulin, you help the body release stored body fat.
Eating a salad with every meal, or 2-3 servings of vegetables will not only provide you with vital nutrients and minerals for a fat-burning metabolism, but they will keep you overeating desserts and other not-so-ideal food choices.
Combine this with a high-quality protein and you’re setting yourself up for a healthy fat loss meal.
3.) Say no to breads, pastas, and pastries.
If you want to be fit, then you have to avoid those fat-free muffins, low-fat cakes, and the pre-dinner bread basket. To your body, these foods are no different than eating tablespoons of sugar at a time. When you eat foods like this, your bloodstream is flooded with sugar, which causes your insulin to spike, which leads to insulin resistance, cravings, and fatigue.
The best carbs balance insulin, boost glucagon, support thyroid health, and optimize your metabolism by providing you with constant energy. Carbs like vegetables, fruits, starches, gluten-free grains, natural sugars, etc…Trust me, there is an abundance of carbs available for you to eat.
Don’t torture yourself with thoughts like “I can never eat cookies again” or “I can’t pasta or pizza.” Instead set mini-goals for yourself, like I’ll treat myself to a cookie or piece of cake every now and then.
You can also find adequate bread, pasta, and sweet substitutions to make your healthy fat loss lifestyle transition easier. This is something I help my clients with inside my private client group, The 3-Week Metabolism Diet
4.) Snacks are great, but avoid eating too much after dinner.
Strategic snacking is important to keep your blood sugar stable. Snacking is optional for healthy fat loss, but a snack-free is no life at all.
Snacks can make or break your weight loss efforts. Most women get snacking very wrong, grabbing a sugary coffee drink, pastry, bar, or not snacking at all, leading to not consuming enough calories.
It’s important to be aware of your calorie intake (not count) but more importantly focus on your snack quality and feelings of hunger. Only snack when you are hungry, make sure to eat high-quality foods, and be sure to prepare your own snacks to avoid impulsive eating.
Enjoy snacks like fruit with cheese, nut butter with vegetables, full-fat organic yogurt, organic beef jerky with a banana, olives with cheese, avocados with fruit, or a hard-boiled egg with fruit. Try to avoid snacking ONLY with high-glycemic carbs, including fruit unless you’re about to or just finished exercising.
Notice strategic snacking involes a balanced snack with a protein, fat, and carbs.
5.) Avoid eating food that comes in a box.
We hear it every day – avoid processed food and junk, so what the heck is processed food?
The short answer: virtually anything you find in a box. Also known as convenience food, it’s just the stuff you typically think of on the shelves of stores. I would say the biggest mindset shift that has the fastest return on your weight loss efforts is focusing on eating real food.
When you commit to eating whole foods 80-100% of the time, you’ll instantly start feeling better. The fact is, boxed food is dead food. And dead foods don’t provivde you with life. Food should give you nutrients, minerals, enzymes, and, that’s right LIFE.
The first thing I have my clients do in the 3-Week Metabolism Diet is go on a 7-Day real food diet of sorts, eliminating the most inflammatory foods. Many women instantly lose 4-8 pounds in the first 7 days and they are hooked.
So, I’ll say it again. Get rid of processed, boxed, junk food.
6.) Avoid drinking too many calories
You already know that most people are getting much of their added sugar from beverages, including soads, energy drinks, sweetened teas, and fruit juices. There are low-nutrient food choices that not only drive your weight up, but overload the liver, inflame digestion, and slow down your thyroid/metabolism.
Drink water, tea, coffee with a pinch of organic sugar (if any) or honey and organic milk, coconut milk, or rice milk. Learn to enjoy water again. Try carbonated water to replace your sodas and diet sodas.
7.) Limit alcohol intake
Alcohol can be part of a healthy fat loss lifestyle, but it would be wise to limit your alcohol intake to 2-4 drinks per week. And definitely, get rid of the daily glass of wine. Alcohol doesn’t provide your body with any nutrition and you’d have to drink a few dozen bottles of wine to see any antioxidant benefit.
The good news is when you a healthy whole food diet, you automatically reduce the negative consequences alcohol has on your liver and thyroid. When you keep your liver free of excess toxins, you’re able to detoxity alcohol and you won’t any thyroid lowering effects most people do from drinking too much.
When you do drink, avoid sugar-laded alcoholic beverages and beer. Stick to wine or spirits without mixers.
8.) Avoid artificial sweeteners.
Artificial sweeteners contrary to popular belief are not healthy substitutes for sweetening your drinks. You think you’re helping your body lose weight, but actually your assisting your body in GAINING weight. Research proves people who drink diet soft drinks, had a greater risk of obesity.
Diet drinks also tend to lead to overeating, because of biochemical disruptions due to the neurotoxic effect of artificial sweeteners and because people think that because they are drinking “diet” they can eat more food.
Replace your diet drinks with stevia sweetened drinks, organic teas, lemon water, coconut water, or plain water. Use sweeteners like honey, stevia, a small amount of organic sugar or coconut sugar.
9.) Learn to cook, so you limit eating out.
We are a busy society and spend very little downtime at home. As a result, we tend to eat out more frequently. This leaves us dependent on others to prepare our meals and to an extent gives someone else power of what we put in our mouth. This is a blessing and a curse, because while we all enjoy being fed delicious cuisine, eating out can be (and usually is) detrimental to your weight-loss efforts since you have no control over the ingredients, cooking oils, quality, amount, etc…
The solution is to eat at least 80% of your meals at home or meals that are prepared by you. This way, you have at least 80% control and responsibility over what you eat and you still get to enjoy the freedom of eating out.
Part of a healthy fat loss lifestyle involves flexibility and sustainability, but it’s still good practice to avoid too many refined carbs, excess sugars, trans fat, etc…when eating out.
10.) Exercise
Diets or weight loss programs that promise you miraculous weight loss without exercise will ultimately deceive you. Give up the notion that you can achieve the body of your dreams without some form of exercise. I want you to be healthy and in order to achieve optimal health, you have to exercise.
Exercise will do more than help you lose exces weight. It will positively affect your energy, endurance, and performance. It raises serotonin, your happy hormone and it boosts your fat-burning hormones, growth hormone and glucagon.
The fastest wat to results is a minimum of 4 times per week of somewhat high-intensity exercise for 20-20 minutes. Adding walks, stretching, and yoga in between your main workout days has many benefits as well.
I have my metabolism diet clients do 4 20-30 minute metabolic workout videos every week, ranging from bodyweight exercises to using dumbbells, for added resistance.
11.) Keep a daily log of what you eat, drink, and how much you move.
You’ll find it easier to stay on track if you keep a daily log on your smartphone or on paper. Dieters who keep a record of what they eat are more successful.
When you pay attention, you’ll see results, because you’ll know where you need to fine-tune and adjust course.
Many of my clients hate to record what they have eaten, so we recommend they eat a low-carbohydrate diet. If you’re following a carb-controlled diet, counting calories becomes unnecessary, because cutting inflammatory carbs like, sweets, pastas, pastries from your diet leads to significant hormonal changes that promote weight loss.
You can eat limitless amounts of protein, vegetables, fruits, and high quality fats and control your portions without counting calories.
12.) Measure your progress
I made sure to include a “Progress and Measurement Success Guide” for new members in my programs since assessing progress is important for any weight loss program. Measuring your progress doesn’t necessarily mean weighing yourself every day. Some of my clients find it motivating to check their weight every day and others find it discouraging.
If you find it discouraging, I would avoid the scale completely, since it doesn’t always tell the whole story.
You can measure progress in other areas other than weight:
- Tape measurements (tricep, chest, hips, waist, and thigh)
- How your clothes fit
- Pictures (front, side, and back)
- Performance (strength, endurance, and level of energy)
- Health (cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, etc..
The fact of the matter is you need to track your progress, just like you need to track your daily actions.
13.) If all else fails, hire a coach.
Asking for help is never easy in any area of life. We all believe we can do it all, and while we can to a certain extent, sometimes it just makes sense to invest time, energy, and money into someone who “gets it” and who can take you from where you are to where you want to be in a short amount of time.
We can’t be experts in everything. If you are reading this article, you probably are needing some form of guidance in your weight loss and healthy journey, right? Unfortunately, reading weight loss tips and strategies is rarely enough to be successful.
Action, accountability, and coaching is what seperates people who are successful and those that jump from program to program, have rebound weight gain, and are constantly looking for some magic fast weight loss fix.
My Healthy Fat Loss Diet and Inner Circle will work you because it was designed with you in mind. Inside the Inner Circle we focus on balancing your hormones so you finally:
- drop up to 14 pounds in less than 30 days
- look and feel younger
- never feel hungry or count calories
- eat carbs and fats again
- find substitutions for foods you thought you have to give up
- have more energy, feel and look so much better…
To accomplish this, I provide weekly meal plans, metabolic workout videos, access to a growing database of success templates and guides, weekly Q&A coaching, accountability, and anything else you need.
Before you eliminate inflammatory foods you need to make yourself aware of the 5 “metabolism killers” that are even worse than food sensitivities. Read more about these killers on the next page: