How To Speed Up Your Fat Loss Results
Often the best way to speed up your results is to stop focusing on it. But before we can do that, it’s important to ensure you are actually in a fat loss phase.
Be sure to listen to episode 22 where we discuss the 4 steps to fat loss in detail. But for the context of this week’s episode, let’s quickly summarize those steps
Step #1: Prime your metabolic rate
Since this is the most important step, as well as most complicated, let’s briefly review.
We want to take care of our metabolism before entering a fat loss stage by strategically eating more food over time.
Those who are constantly yoyo dieting are likely still in a caloric deficit when they aren't dieting without even realizing it. Overtime, this really starts to have negative effects on your metabolism, making it more and more difficult to actually lose weight each time you go to diet.
A lot of people think they need to consume 1200 calories a day when they are dieting, and they are consistently eating this amount of food for an extended period of time.
This is not true at all, actually.
What often happens here is that those who consume this little of food over a period of time start to experience negative metabolic adaptations. This is where your body adapts to the need to consume 1200 calories a day just to maintain weight. This means that you would have to consume an even lower number of calories just to lose weight. Can you imagine eating only 900 calories a day to achieve your weight loss goals? I can tell you that in my experience that this is just not sustainable and 99% of people can't adhere to this. And because of that, we get wrapped in our heads that we are a failure, when in actuality, we really aren't when 99% of people can’t do it either.
It's unnecessary suffering to be honest.
So, if you aren't dieting but plan to in the future for maybe a wedding, vacation or a photoshoot... it's so important to take the time period before dieting just as seriously by priming your metabolic rate. This is where you implement what is known as a reverse diet so you can speed up your metabolism prior to the fat loss stage.
Yes, you need to eat more food to speed up your metabolism. Just like you adapted your body to maintain weight consuming 1200 calories a day, you can adapt it to maintain weight consuming 1600, 1800, maybe 2,000 or closer to 3,000?
Why do we want to do this? Well over time, it allows you to not suffer as much when you go to diet again. You may find that you can lose weight eating the 1200 calories a day, maybe 1600 or 1,800. Can you imagine if you were able to lose weight eating 1800 calories a day versus the torturous 900 calories a day?
This allows you to have an extended time period for dieting, as well as the ability to reduce any unnecessary suffering from consuming a dangerously low number of calories. This is why step #1 is so important.
Step #2: Drive a caloric deficit
When it comes to selecting a diet, it doesn’t really matter as long as you are in a calorie deficit.
I have found flexible dieting to be the most sustainable approach for me and all my clients. But it comes down what works best for you and your schedule, not what so and so is doing or what the latest fad is. What works for me, may not work for you.
Regardless of the plan and food choices you make, the only way to lose weight is by eating less consistently over time.
The timeframe varies for each person, so stay consistent with your caloric deficit
Step #3: Adherence and consistency
Step #4: Patience
These last 2 steps should be pretty self-explanatory at this point.
If we are truly implementing these steps for fat loss, it’s at that point where it’s often best to stop obsessing over our fat loss results to help you speed up your fat loss results.
Too often we are so focused and fixated on the rate of fat loss that we trick ourselves into thinking that results aren’t occurring fast enough or not at all and we think we have plateaued. When in actuality, we often aren’t practising step #4 in the steps to fat loss – patience
So, what can we do to shift our focus?
I am a big fan of goal setting! What does this look like?
Goal setting can be characterized as a process whereby progressively challenging standards of routine are pursued with a define criterion of tasks that increases the likelihood of perceived success. Systematic goal setting can simultaneously increase psychological development and routine for a number of reasons:
1. Goals direct one’s attention by prioritizing efforts
2. Goals increase effort because of the likelihood of the attainment of success
3. Goals increase positive reinforcement through feedback
Now you might be confused thinking “well I am setting goals for myself; I am setting fat loss goals.”
And those are outcome goals. I want you to focus more on process goals.
But firstly, what’s an outcome goal? These are goals one has little control over because the only focus is the outcome. If you’re only goal is to lose x lbs of fat, you have to understand that you have little control over that outcome, making it very easy to be disappointed. Excessive emphasis on just the outcome like this can cause such a narrow focus that all other factors that are necessary can often fall by the waist side. This is why obsessing day in and day out of what the scale reads is so ineffective because it’s distracting you from paying attention to other factors that are just as, if not more, important.
Whereas a process goal focuses on the actions necessary that often lead to the indirect results of your outcome goal. Meaning if you focus on the process of mastering your meal timing, drinking enough water each day, staying within your caloric ranges, getting in your daily activity that these things will indirectly lead you to your outcome goal of achieving fat loss.
The success of process goals depends strictly on the effort you put in, whereas you have little control of the success of your outcome goals. The success of your outcome goals depends on the success of your process goals.
This is why I said the best way to speed up your fat loss results is to stop focusing on it. Because let’s face it, we can all do a little bit better with our process goals, am I right?
How has your water intake been really? Are you really consuming an adequate amount that you need to each day?
How has your protein timing been? Are you really consuming enough during the day? And are you spacing out your protein evenly with each meal?
How has your micronutrient and fibre intake been? Are you really consuming enough fruits and vegetables each day? Are you making an effort to hit your fibre targets each day?
How has your adherence been on the weekends? Are you tracking that glass of wine or pretending like it never happened? Are you following through with sticking to your plan on the weekends?
I think you get my point.
We are getting so upset with the slowness of our results and think there’s something wrong with us or our bodies versus just taking a step back to actually analyze our habits. If we focus on cleaning these things up and focus more on becoming a master of the process, you’d probably be surprised to see how much quicker your fat loss results are.
So now let’s quickly go over some process goals you can look at setting for yourself, assuming your outcome goal is fat loss.
Process Goal #1: Weighing and accurately tracking your food
To maximize your fat loss results, you have to stop eyeballing and guesstimating. I don’t care how long you have been tracking your macronutrients, no one is ever 100% accurate when it comes to guessing how much something weighs. Now remember, we are setting this process goal with the assumption that fat loss is your outcome goal. If you are happy with your body composition and are in a maintenance phase, yea chill out and guesstimate your macros and give yourself some flexibility. But when you have strict fat loss goals, you have to remember that the more accurate you are able to be, the quicker you are going to see the results you are looking for.
Think about it. If you search for the macros for a small banana, the carbs will be ~20g. But you can’t guarantee you are going to eat a small banana each day. If you weigh your bananas the macro change is quite significant. A 3oz banana is 19g of carbs (76 calories). Whereas an 8oz banana is 52g of carbs (208 calories). That’s a 132-calorie difference that you might not be aware of because you think you are consuming a banana that has only ~19g of carbs in it every single day. That adds up over time and if this is happening with other food sources, you might not be in that caloric deficit that you need to be in, in order to lose weight. I know it seems tedious and time consuming to weigh every single little thing that you eat. But just remember that this is not forever.
There’s going to be a point where you are happy with your body composition and you CAN be more relaxed with your macro estimates each day. But if you have a goal in mind and really want to transform your body, you have to put in the effort to weigh your food. Just like you HAVE to floss in order to avoid getting cavities. It has to be done. Nobody wants to do it, but it’s necessary!
Process Goal #2: Track everything that you consume
It’s very easy to have a couple of almonds here, a few chips there, a couple of licks when you are baking your kid’s birthday cakes. But those all add up. Just because you aren’t tracking the macros on these items doesn’t mean that your body isn’t.
Process Goal #3: Limiting how much you eat out to _______
I left the amount to eat out blank because that’s going to be subject to the person and honestly how serious you are with your fat loss goals. Only you can fill in that blank for yourself. I am not asking anyone to be a hermit and not to have a social life. But if you are going to eat out you have to understand that there is going to be a trade-off, which is slower results.
“But Krysten, the restaurant has the macros online.”
That may be so. But I can guarantee that the chef isn’t weighing out your food like you do when you are the one prepping your meal. Just because the macros are available doesn’t make your meal accurate. The macros for a stir fry may call for 100g of basmati rice, but the chef isn’t weighing that. You may have 200g maybe even a 300g serving in front of you. I promise you when you step on the scale the next day, the increase is not just from the sodium.
Again, I am all about enjoying your life and having that balance. But if you are going to eat out, be sure you limit it to a maximum of once a week when you are dieting versus multiple times a week.
Those are the primary process goals that I recommend focusing on mastering.
There are several other process goals that you can look at implementing, which have already been mentioned
1. Drinking enough water during the day
2. Spacing out your protein evenly with each meal
3. Consuming enough fruits, vegetables and fibre
4. Getting ________ amount of exercise each day
To name a few. But I encourage you to take the time to list and map out some process goals for yourself and let go of that outcome goal a little bit. I promise you if you take the time to focus on not only mastering but loving the process, the outcome is the by-product, the outcome is the reward.
Remember that these are goals, meaning that mastering them isn’t going to happen overnight. There will be mistakes and slip ups along the way and that’s ok. So be kind to yourself and allow yourself time to grow and to get better at mastering these goals over time.
With that in mind, you have to remember that the time it takes you to master your process goals is directly correlated with the rate of fat loss you will see. So, if it takes you longer to master these goals, that’s ok. But don’t get upset when the scale isn’t moving as quickly as you would like. Instead of freaking out and looking for drastic measures to take to speed things up, focus your efforts on continued mastery of your process goals and as you improve, the rate of fat loss will follow.
Hope this helps
♥ Krysten
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