Here’s the Skinny (get it?)

Bad news, if you’re looking for a magic weight loss secret here – there isn’t one. There’s not a pill or a five minute workout that will “melt fat” or

“tone” your body. Our goal here is to simply cut through all the crap out there and lay out a foundation for guaranteed weight loss. None of what you’ll read here is groundbreaking or unconventional. If you want to wrap a couple yards of plastic around your gut or a 23 DAY CHALLENGE, there’s plenty of other sites out there. Most weight loss challenges fail because they don’t teach you the proper mindset and understanding to maintain after the magic number of days is over. In fact, many people gain whatever weight they lost back and then some because they slingshot back to their old habits even worse. The key to sustained weight loss is mental. You need to decide that the way you’ve been living your life got you to your current state and you’ll have to change who you are as a person. Choking down some kale for lunch won’t make a difference if you’re still drinking a bottle of wine every night when you get home. If you want to learn how to create a sustainable lifestyle for fitness and health – keep reading.

Let’s start with the basics. Here are the scientific facts behind why people gain weight and how to lose it:

Fat – What is it:

Fat – in terms of bodyfat – is stored energy. It’s your body’s job to survive, and it does so off of fuel. Food is fuel for your body, and when you give it extra fuel (surplus) it stores it in the gas tank. The average person with an internet connection to read this today is lucky enough to live in a time where we have surplus everywhere. Every kind of food you could imagine is a few miles and a few dollars away, all you have to do is go and buy it. We’re also lucky enough to have so much free time on our hands that eating can be a source of entertainment as opposed to survival. Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell your body it doesn’t need to save this surplus, so it just keeps right on prepping for the zombie apocalypse and storing energy as fat.

Fat – How to lose it:

Here’s where the pitch comes in. BUY OUR SUPER LIGHTNING FAT EVISCERATOR AND LOSE 30LBS IN 30 DAYS!!! It’s an easy way to make money selling a pill along with common diet and exercise tips. Don’t get me wrong, fat burners can help, but they are supplements. Let’s take a look at that word for a second

All food is made up of three macronutrients (macros): Carbohydrates, Protein, and Fat. None of these are inherently bad, regardless of what diet fads throughout the years have imprinted on us. Fat doesn’t make you fat and carbs don’t give you cancer. Macros can be split into two categories: energy sources and building blocks. The body uses Carbs and Fats as slow and fast burning energy, respectively. The danger to these macros is that anything not used is stored for later use as (body)fat. Protein, made up of all types of amino acids, is what the body uses to repair and build muscle. For our purposes here, you cannot have too much protein. Protein is the leanest food source you can have, weighing in at 4 calories per gram. Carbs also have 4 C/g, but that energy burns much slower. Fat is the densest of the three, with 9 C/g. All macros roll up into Calories. At the end of the day, weight loss or gain is determined by our consumption of calories, regardless of the source. Energy In vs. Energy Out is as simple as it gets. If you take in less than you burn, you’re at a deficit and will lose weight, and vice versa.

Why this matters for Weight Loss

Like I said, no macro is inherently evil. However, your lifestyle determines the macros you need to be intaking to function and lose or gain weight. For your average white collar, office worker, carbs are the least needed. Your body is in a calm state with a slow heart rate and no physical stress. Why then would you want to intake carbs for long lasting energy that you’re not going to burn? Therein lies the issue: carbs are cheap. Every meal you order out, get delivered, or get at a restaurant will be mostly carbs. Heavy pasta dishes, fries on the side, and thick bread. Restaurants base everything around carbs because they’re far cheaper than protein and can make everything taste good. So your standard office worker goes out to lunch, loads up with enough energy to run a marathon, then sits back down at a desk for four more hours. Extend this logic to getting home from work, relaxing with a couple beers (pure carbs) or wine (pure sugar) and you’re banking more and more energy that you’ll never burn. All this matters because your diet has to fit your lifestyle. Crossfitters take in carbs all day because they constantly burning through their energy working out, while Inuit survive off whale blubber (fat) because they’re hunting and using thousands of calories a day to generate body heat.

Tie it all together

If you sit at a desk all day, then go home and sit, you need almost no carbs. If you’re working out regularly, you need some carbs. The trick is to intake the carbs when they’ll serve you the best for energy and get burned up without getting stored as bodyfat. You’ll see in the diet plan below you’ll take in the bulk of your carbs at lunch or in the afternoon, gearing up for an after-work gym trip and getting you through the rest of the day. If you decide that you want to work out in the morning, then we’ll adjust accordingly. This is a good starting point, however, and will establish a baseline. Carbs are not the enemy, they’re a tool to be used correctly. 

What’s next?

Interested in a personalized diet plan? We offer many types of online fitness coaching plans, with or without exercise guides as well, personalized exactly to your goals. If you want advice, a little extra guidance, or have no idea where to start, contact us below.