For many, weight loss is a constant battle. In this post and video, I share with you 3 important things you must get right to lose weight and keep it off.
The common sense secret to keeping your weight is not eating less and exercising more. Yes, that’s important, but that’s only part of the picture. Your body is not a straight line math equation but rather a chemistry lab where many things interact. The key to weight loss success is protecting your muscles and metabolism and managing your hormones so you lose fat, preserve your muscles, and not risk stressing your adrenals.
How to Lose Weight Video
In this short video, I talk about 3 important things to get your weight loss unlocked.
Need More Help so You Can Lose Weight and Keep it off?
I thought so. This topic is loaded and I want to share more details with you. I’m hosting a live webinar this Thursday, 4/13, at 8 pm EST.
Make sure you join in! Register HERE or click on the image below!
Prefer to read? How to Lose Weight and Keep it Off:
Hi there, this is Nour Zibdeh, functional nutritionist and dietitian, and you are here because you want to learn something new so that you can eat better and feel amazing, so let us get started.
Today’s video, I’m going to share three things that you have to get right in order to lose weight and keep it off for the long term.
Now, weight loss statistics are a bit discouraging. They find that weight loss success is only 20%. What that means is that people who are able to lose 10% of their weight and keep it off for one year, were only 20% of people who try. When they look at how new people are able to keep it off for two years or more, the number drops to 5%.
I know that’s not encouraging. I also know that there are some interviews with people who kept their weight off. They have to constantly restrict how much they’re eating and put in a lot of hours of exercise in order to keep the weight off, and that can be not sustainable.
What I have for you today is three things that you have to get right so that you don’t end up in this situation. Our goal is that we want to build muscle, lose fat, and we want to preserve your metabolism, so that your weight loss long term can be more effortless.
Learn how to identify the REAL causes of your gut problems.
The first thing you have to do is to get the diet right. Now, some people like to crash diet and they get excited about being able to restrict their calories. But, this is not going to help on the long term. Weight loss is not just about calories in versus calories out. There’s so much more to the equation, specifically hormones and your metabolism.
You might lose weight if you crash diet in the beginning and restrict how much you eat. Eventually, you’re going to get tired and bored and you’re going to mess up your metabolism, your adrenals, and your thyroid will get tired, and then you’ll quit and then the weight comes back.
Usually in these types of diets, you lose muscle as you lose the fat and unfortunately you end up gaining the fat back. So, we don’t want to end up like this. Your body is not a math equation, it’s more like a chemistry lab where a lot of things are playing a role and impacting it.
The diet has to be something that is wholesome and clean foods and real foods. We want to make sure that we’re eating a good amount of proteins that is going to help protect the muscles. We want moderate fat. We want some carbs, but not too much, so getting that right balance. We also need enough fiber from cabbage, and cruciferous vegetables, and things like asparagus, and onion, and garlic, that feed your healthy gut flora because they will also impact your weight loss.
The second thing that we have to get right is exercise. Let’s get this straight. Exercise is only 20% of weight loss picture, so 80% is what you eat, and you have to get this right before you move onto the exercise. When you’re ready to move on to the exercise, it’s not about how many hours you can put in in the gym, or on the treadmill, or elliptical. It’s not about how many calories your watch or device show that you burned.
There are people who are working out hours after hours, days after days in the gym without seeing results, and this is frustrating. It takes a lot of time, it’s not efficient. What we need to do for exercise, we have to get resistance training where you work all of your body at least twice a week. With resistance training, we want to do high-intensity interval training, sometimes referred to as HIT or HIIT. Two to three sessions a week, 30 minutes each. That’s a good starting point.
What that does is that is does not drain your hormones and your metabolism. It does not drain your muscles, so you can tone up, build muscle and burn fat. For you ladies who are worried about bulking up, you’re not going to bulk up when you do a weight resistance twice a week. You will tone, and that’s what you really want.
The third thing we have to get right is sleep. Studies find that people who don’t sleep as much, they typically tend to eat 400 calories more, on average, a day. Other studies that look at brain scans, they find that people who are sleep deprived, their reward centers in their brains, they get activated when they’re sleep deprived. What activates them, what fires them up is when they show them pictures of burgers and fries and other sugary foods. It’s not the broccoli or the cauliflower.
Other interesting study found that people who slept eight and half hours lost 50% more fat, protected their muscles by 60% more compared to people who slept five and a half hours. Even when both groups ate the same amount of food and did the same amount of exercise. So, sleep by itself is going to impact your weight loss.
Learn how to identify the REAL causes of your gut problems.
If you’re one of those people who stay up late, watching TV, browsing social media, or getting work done, I know sometimes there are things that you have to do. Do your best to shift things in your schedule. Plan things differently so that you can get to bed a little earlier.
If you’re one of those people who go to bed early but then you toss and turn and just can’t fall asleep, there are certain routines like meditation, taking a bath and a few other things that you can do, as well as some nutritional supplement that can help calm your brain and shut your brain so that you can actually fall asleep.
These were the three tips: Getting the right type of eating plan, the right type of exercise, and getting quality and quantity of sleep. I know these tips are really simple and straightforward, but when it comes to the day-to-day life, it’s a bit more challenging. There are more steps to it plus there’s so much details that I want to give you on each one of those tips.
So, what I’m doing is I’m hosting a webinar on Weight Loss Success: How to lose fat, preserve your muscles, and protect your metabolism.
I would love for you to join me to that webinar. The link to register is below. I hope to see your name on that list, and thanks for watching.