5 Simple Principles For Losing Weight

This was created by me. A human named Craig, not an AI. Yeah. I am actually typing right now... 

I lost 120 pounds, so I know what I am talking about. I am not a doctor, and this is not medical advice. I am just a normal guy who has been where you are. I know that you are willing to work hard, it is just that you do not have trust that the effort you are going to put in is actually going to yield results, right? I get it, and usually that comes from a sensation that you have tried *everything* and NOTHING has worked. I think correcting that mindset first is necessary. Just take a breath. Recognize that there are simple principles that you have to follow, and then commit to actually following them. 

Principle 1: Do not eat refined, processed carbohydrate.

I am writing this in 2024. If it is 2124 right now when you are reading this, I will make the assumption that the human body has not dramatically changed its physiology and food companies are still hacking the blood glucose system of our bodies by making insanely delicious foods we can not resist. If you are a cyborg that never gets fat eating Twinkies, you are good. You can stop reading. Everyone else, this is for you. 

Anything that is made from flour needs to be avoided. I am not going to get into the mechanism, because it doesn't matter. What matters is your behavior. Just don't eat refined, processed carbohydrate-rich foods. Period. If you just do this, it will have a higher impact on your fat loss than any of the other principles below. In other words, you can keep reading and implementing all of the things below, and doing all 4 of the other ones may not add up to the same impact that this one has. This is just my experience. I lost 120 pounds. That counts for something, right? I do not believe I am some anomaly, I think my body behaves normally, just like yours, and it is intelligent and stores energy in muscles and fat when it comes from these foods. If you are onboard and commited to this first principle, move to principle 2. If you are not committed yet to principle 1, fix that, then move on. 

Principle 2: Do high intensity, multi-joint, functional movements and constantly vary them

I do CrossFit. I am not telling you to do CrossFit, but I am telling you that walking around the block for 30 minutes is dramatically less effective on creating the stressors on your body required to get it to adapt than doing 100 Air squats with full range of motion as fast as you can...just an example, I am not telling you to go do that if you are not yet at a place where you can. I know I couldn't when I was fat. If you are already walking, I am also not telling you to stop walking. Walking is functional movement. It is just not "high intensity". What does that mean? It means doing stuff fast that makes you sweat a lot, breathe hard and make your heart beat hard - (again...I am not a doctor, do what your doctor tells you to do, if they have told you not to do this kind of exercise) - For me personally, I was pre-diabetic and 285 pounds and a 5' 8" male, and once I started stressing my body this way, the pounds started flying off...to be honest, I did not execute Principle 1 for years after starting CrossFit, and I did not see the results that I could have seen, had I dialed in my nutrition first. But you do you.

Like Principle 1, if you are not doing Principles 1 & 2, and you just immediately start implementing Principle 3, it is not "bad", it is just not "optimal". How sub-optimal is it? I can imagine a scenario where you implement Principles 3,4,5 perfectly, and actually GAIN fat by not implementing Principles 1 & 2. That is how important 1 & 2 are...that is why they are first in the list.

Principle 3: Clean up your diet more

Ok, if you have not done Principle 1, go do that first. Assuming you have, now it is time to clean things up even more. If your meals look like this:

Breakfast:

- Breakfast potatoes

- 4 Eggs in oil

- 3 slices of Bacon

You could clean that up to...

- 12 oz organic blueberries

- 4 pasture raised organic eggs in grass-fed butter

- 6 oz chicken breast

...just an example. By doing this, you are biasing toward a higher protein content, and lower carbohydrate content. The breakfast potatoes are a starch that pushes your Macronutrient ratios out of whack, and what you are looking for is a breakdown close to 40% Protein, 40% Fat and 20% Carbohydrate for the day. Focus on increasing the quality of the food first. In my experience, I focused on the quality of the food, and the quantity took care of itself. What?! Yep. So if you had not done Principle 1, and were still eating refined, processed carbs, then you would have a heck of a time keeping your calories low enough and your Macronutrient ratio might be something like 10% protein, 30% fat, and 60% carb. For me, that ratio was pathological. So once I got to the point where I had cut out the processed carbs (Principle 1) and I dialed in the quality, then here is what happened: My body naturally stepped into an intermittent fasting rhythm. So people are all chasing intermittent fasting, but in my experience, intermittent fasting was a SIDE EFFECT of dialing in the quality of my food. That is bonkers. So maybe some knucklehead looked at the output of people who were eating right, and said "Hmmm...interesting. These people are all jacked and shredded, and they eat 2 meals a day, one at 11am and one at 6pm. That means they are fasting for about 16 hours, and therefore that MUST be the cause of them being jacked and shredded." Science 101 folks. Correlation is not causation. Anyway...you know better. On to Principle 4.

Principle 4:  Consistency wins.

Do 10 minutes 5x/week rather than 50 minutes one day a week. You have many good habits and many bad habits. We all do. A habit is just a low-effort solution that we execute regularly without having to exert willpower. I would imagine that doing something once a week takes more willpower and is also a higher stakes game to play because if you miss that workout, you would literally miss your entire workout experience for the entire week. On the other hand in the 10 minutes 5x/week scenario, if you miss a day, you still got 80% of your workouts done for the week. I just used 10 minutes as an example...I personally do a 1 hour CrossFit class 5x/week. Again - you do you.

Principle 5: Some habits are more important than others

It is good to have good habits. However, you need to prioritize the habits that are going to move the needle the most. If you have a choice between a habit that supports Principle 1 vs. Principle 2, choose principle 1. That's just the way it is. Our primary function as humans is to make choices, and the quality of choices is dictated by our ability to keep the main thing the main thing. Simple concept, difficult to implement. Do the most important thing consistently, and magic will happen. Sorry. No 5 minute abs here. You just gotta put in the work, and make good choices. You've got this.