10 weight loss tips

In a world where we are bombarded with information pertaining to weight loss, it’s easy to be allured by the new fad on the block, or be totally overwhelmed and confused by what is really helpful, research-based information, versus stuff made up by people who just want to make money—to the detriment of your pocket and maybe even your health.

I’d like to share with you my top 10 tips on how to lose weight—no more wondering how to lose weight, what's the best way to reduce fat, why you’re not losing fat, no more confusion, just clarity and results! These are tried and tested, by both my clients and I, as well as being little changes/strategies you can incorporate into your lifestyle with ease.

Without further ado, here are my top 10 weight loss tips:

1. Create a caloric deficit. This has to be the undisputed number 1 tip. You may have recently read my very informative and entertaining article named - How to lose weight, which goes into detail around this exact topic. In a nutshell, you need to burn more calories than you consume while focusing on losing 0.5 to 1% of your body weight per week. There are many ways you can do this, and following some of the following tips will definitely aid this process.

2. Have a goal and a plan to get there. Goals and plans are a very effective tool in giving us a vision of where we want to be and a roadmap on how to get there. They break the journey down into easily digestible chunks and are a great way to hold yourself accountable. This will undoubtedly increase the likelihood that you will stick to your weight loss goals and ergo lose that weight you dream of shedding.

3. Get tracking. You can’t achieve tips 1 & 2 without understanding what is going into your body, what activity you are doing and what results you are achieving without tracking. By tracking, I mean recording your food intake, activity levels and the progress you are making towards your goal, for example, weekly measurements of weight, body fat percentage or circumferential body measurements. Tracking all this information not only allows you to understand whether you are taking the right steps to meet your goals, but will also act as a strong motivator when you are seeing consistency and that weight dropping off at a healthy weight. Paradoxically, tracking can be motivating when results slow down—when one morning you wake up, and you’ve somehow gained weight. As overtime, we realise that these fluctuations are normal, therefore no longer become disheartening, we simply accept it’s part of our journey and continue to make overall progress. Get yourself a FitBit, Apple Watch or use MyFitnessPal, you will soon see how they become a way of life and really encourage good habits and consistency. 

4. Get a training buddy. Having a little partner in crime along for the ride really benefits many people. It brings a social and support aspect to your training which can not only make training more enjoyable but also gives you a support network with a friend who is going through the same journey with you, offering you support when you may want to fall off the wagon or feel you can’t do something and allowing you to offer that same friendship and support to them. Creating a social aspect and having regular support, with which comes mutual encouragement will absolutely make it more likely you’ll enjoy it and stay consistent.

5. Do something you love. I am a massive advocate for the gym—for me, it’s the optimal place for you to reach and even surpass your goals and ideally should be part of your weekly exercise plan. However, I am also a huge advocate for being healthy, in general, and if the gym isn’t for you, then that’s cool. You can still reach your goals outside of the gym, or really ramp things up by both hitting the gym and using leisure time to indulge in other forms of exercise. A surefire way to lose weight and hit those goals is by engaging in something you really love doing. Something that doesn’t feel like a chore. Cycling, walking, running, yoga, martial arts, swimming, dancing! Do it and do it regularly to see those calories just burn away.

6. Find something that motivates you. If you want to have long term weight loss and life long health, you really need to cultivate motivation from within. Short term motivation is good for kick-starting us, like a wedding, for example, but once you’ve rocked up to your wedding looking a million dollars, what happens next? What motivates you to carry on? You need determination, and you need to find that thing that keeps you moving forwards. For me, it’s longevity and setting a good example to my children which keeps me moving forwards alongside other short term goals—like enjoying feeling awesome each and every day. Have a think about what would motivate you.

7. Integrate healthy habits into your lifestyle. This is a good one, especially for those that find they yo-yo, losing weight, followed by weight gain, usually putting them back further than when they started. If you can work on the integration of small little habits that improve your lifestyle, any of these tips would be a good place to start, then over time you will do those without thinking about it and gradually lose weight. We are all creatures of habit—we do many tasks using our subconscious because they are second nature, you can cultivate healthy habits until you do them without thinking and that’s when you really see long term change.

8. Get educated. Please, please, please don’t blindly follow a plan. Avoid following meal-replacement programmes, avoid following set meal programmes that literally tell you exactly what to eat at each mealtime without any information as to why, avoid very restrictive diets and most importantly, if you make the very wise choice to work with a Personal Trainer, do you upmost to research them before you hand over any cash. All of the above areas to avoid will not educate you and will not teach you how to be self-sufficient, the likelihood is, they will not be sustainable long term, and when you fall off that health wagon, you will very likely fall back into old habits as you haven’t been taught otherwise. You will yo-yo. This brings me very nicely onto my next tip...

9. Get an Online Personal Trainer. So you can do one thing, which will drive you picking up all the great habits we are talking about. You can get an online PT. A good Personal Trainer will create a nutrition and exercise plan, tailored to your needs and lifestyle—they will help you surface up a focused and achievable goal, giving you the roadmap to success. They will assess your tracking and work with you to stay on track, offering support, friendship and motivation, lifting you up when you need it. They will encourage and offer guidance on how to integrate good habits into your lifestyle and most importantly, an effective Personal Trainer should be educating you, so at some point, you have the knowledge and power to sprout your wings and continue on your fitness journey without them, if that’s what you wish to do. I have a huge sense of pride when a client hits their goal and feels they can continue on their own with the knowledge I have given them—I want my long term clients to stay with me because they want to, not because they need to.

10. And finally...It’s ok to fall off the wagon from time to time. Please don’t beat yourself up if things go off track. Enjoy it, dust yourself off, reassess your goals/motivation and get back on. If you are too strict or too hard on yourself, you won’t enjoy it, and you won’t have overall consistency. Health and fitness shouldn’t be a chore—it should be an integral part of your life that you enjoy.