Let’s be frank. Anyone who has ever had to lose weight has had to deal with frustration, exhaustion, and being overwhelmed by the entire weight loss process.
The Internet is an utter mess. One day you have a fitness influencer telling you to wake up and run five miles before the sun, and the next day you have an article talking about how one slice of bread is going to defeat your entire weight loss process. It is truly enough for anyone to just give up. It is difficult.
What if you knew weight loss didn’t have to be all about suffering and punishing yourself? You really need to cut this idea from your mind that weight loss means you have to starve, or spend every waking moment in the gym. You simply have to learn about the real force that controls what you see on the scale—your metabolism.
The Campfire Inside You
Now before we discuss weight loss, we should really learn what metabolism actually is.
Metabolism is like a campfire that is constantly burning inside of you. You can think about the food that you consume daily as being the wood that goes on your campfire. If you have a high metabolic rate, your campfire is bright and hot and is constantly burning wood and creating energy. If you have a low metabolic rate, your campfire is small and wood goes on but is not being burned, and in a human body, that wood is actually extra weight.
Your goal is not to stop eating wood. Your goal is to build a bigger, hotter campfire. Here is how to do that, step by step, without losing your mind.
The Magic of “Invisible” Exercise (NEAT)
The first thing that comes to mind for most of us when we think about losing weight is exercise. Exercise, of course, plays a big role, but it’s only a small part of a much larger equation.
Have you heard about NEAT? NEAT stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. And that’s exactly what it sounds like: all the calories you burn doing normal human stuff.
The truth is, that hour you spend at the gym is the least important hour of your day.
You can build a bigger campfire and keep it hotter throughout the day just by moving around more in your daily life. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk to the store instead of driving. Pace in your living room instead of sitting while on the phone. Take a break from sitting while scrolling or watching stuff to do some light household chores like dusting or sweeping. All of this will add up to a lot of energy burned, and you can add gym heavy sessions once your body gets used to it.
Please, Eat Enough Food
Here’s a hard truth that diet culture has tried to cover up: you can’t starve yourself into a healthy body.
Women have been told for decades that they should consume a thousand two hundred calories a day in order to lose weight. Let’s talk about how misleading that is. One thousand two hundred calories is nearly equal to the energy requirements for a toddler. If you consistently consume such a small number of calories, your body panics. Your body goes into survival mode thinking it’s in the middle of a famine and will start breaking down muscle tissue to use for energy and will slow your metabolism down significantly.
Starving yourself is similar to dumping a bucket of water to extinguish a fire that you have been working on building.
Rather than the other approach where you try to minimize the amount of food you consume, try to maximize the amount of healthy food you are consuming. Rather than a sugary pastry for breakfast, try a protein-packed breakfast. Protein is often called a super food. This is due to the fact that it keeps you feeling full throughout the whole day avoiding unnecessary snacking. Lastly, it raises your metabolism.
The Truth About Water and Fat Loss
If you want to lose weight and actually keep it off, you should stop your habit of drinking a lot of sodas that are loaded with sugar and drink water.
You probably came across some of those ancient articles about how drinking ice-cold water increases metabolism by your body working extra to warm it. It might come as a shocker to some to learn that even though the body uses energy to warm the water, it is modern science that shows the calorie burn to be a few. That’s right, a few calories at best.
Even with the ancient articles at hand, we know that water is the real magic elixir. There is a microscopic process where the actual breaking down of fat in your body occurs and it is called lipolysis. Lipolysis also requires water to happen. If you are dehydrated, your body becomes incapable of breaking down fat efficiently.
The Missing Link: Sleep
You absolutely cannot ignore sleep on your health journey. You can eat clean and walk your 10,000 steps, but sleeping only four hours a night means you are stacking the odds against yourself.
Insufficient sleep increases the stress hormone cortisol. High cortisol levels indicate that the body will start storing fat, especially in the abdominal region. Lack of sleep ruins your insulin and causes unhealthy food cravings. So, sleep is the seventh and eighth hour of the weight loss plan.
Breathe Deep and Unwind
Chronic stress floods the body with cortisol, the hormone that grounds inflammation, and works against a fast metabolism. This is a result of the lack of sleep and constant daily stress. We get it. Asking you to “just stress less” is irritating, and looking for ways to cope with the daily stresses is important.
Coping with stress involves finding a hobby to occupy your brain with something relaxing. Reading, breathing deeply, and taking five minute breaks outdoors, away from the screens, are good examples of relaxing, brain occupying hobbies. Stress relief is important, and your metabolism will thank you.
Be Mindful With the Drinks
Now, alcohol. Alcohol is inflammatory and dehydrating, and alcohol works against a restful metabolism. The body views alcohol as a toxin, and when alcohol is present in the body, the liver halts fat metabolism until the alcohol is fully detoxed from the body.
You do not have to stop drinking completely. Occasional champagne or beer are not harmful. But nightly, sit-on-the-couch, half a bottle of wine drinking is not good for your weight loss goals. You can have fun and be mindful.
Weight loss does not mean making perfect choices and doing everything “right.” It means making small improvements, being kind to yourself, and staying consistent to keep the metabolism flowing. One step at a time is all it takes.
