If you’re not at a healthy body weight, you’re missing out:
Even OnlyFans girls and pizza delivery guys are in great shape nowadays…
But seriously, if you’ve decided that you’re going to lose weight and get in shape this year – kudos to you.
I’m thrilled for you to see just how much it can upgrade your life (more on that below).
In this guide, I want to provide you with a “Weight Loss 101″– a beginners guide to understanding weight loss, from the ground up.
There’s a mountain of information about weight loss out there – so my goal is to distill it all down for you.
It’s an actionable guide that helps build your understanding of what weight loss is, why it’s important, and how to do it.
I’ll also be driving home two of my core beliefs of about this stuff:
- Getting in shape is a set of skills you can learn.
- Losing excess weight, and getting in shape will upgrade your life.
Now look…
When I first brought my dog home as a cute little puppy, I fed her in front of my friend:
‘Do you want to hand feed her some kibbles?’ I asked.
‘No, that’s okay.’ He said.
‘Ah, no worries. The dog trainer just told me that hand feeding builds your bond with the dog’
‘Here – give me that food!’
That short story shows you how understanding the concepts behind something can improve your ability and willingness to participate in them.
So let’s learn the what and the why of weight loss first.
What is Weight Loss?
Weight loss is simple – it’s a reduction in your body weight.
Most folks choose to lose weight for one of the following reasons:
To lose body fat
To improve their physical health
To improve their lives holistically
No matter what your reasons are, you’re going to have to play by some of the fundamental principles of weight loss.
Your body doesn’t care if you’re losing weight to get shredded for a bodybuilding stage, or because your doctor told you that you’re pre-diabetic.
The principles are fundamentally the same.
The methods you use, and the experience you have, will vary… but you still can’t ignore the rules.
How Does Weight Loss Work?
Your body is a machine.
Think of it like a badass post-apocalyptic vehicle, Mad Max style.
Out there in the nuclear desert, it takes fuel to get around.
But gas stations aren’t easy to come by, so you best be bringing some fuel along with you.
You can see that fuel strapped to the back of the vehicle.
In your body’s case – that fuel is calories.
Calories are the literal energy source for everything that you do.
All food contains calories.
Some foods are densely packed with calories (like mayo).
With some foods are less-densely packed (think broccoli)
Walking around, shopping for groceries, or lifting weights -EVERYTHING you do costs you calories.
Those calories come from the food you eat.
Your digestive system breaks down the broccoli, mayonnaise, beer, and Cheetos into usable energy.
Pretty miraculous, right?
But here’s the cool part – your body also carries reserves around with it (in case you can’t get to a ‘gas station’ on time).
Just like those reserve tanks.
Those reserves come from stored carbohydrates (called glycogen), and body fat.
Glycogen is readily available for use, but you can only carry around about 2400 total calories worth of it.
Body fat carries around 3500 calories per pound.
And if you’re a 250lb man made up of 25% body fat… that’s 62.5 lb of fat – or 218,750 calories!
So here’s the goal for weight loss:
1. Reduce the fuel you’re providing your body in a measured way.
2. Continue being active and burning plenty of fuel.
3. Eventually that extra energy has to come from somewhere – so your body begins to tap into those body fat stores.
4. Do this for long enough, and you’ll see significant visual changes. Both on the scale and in the mirror.
Weight loss myths and misconceptions
Where there is money to be made, there is always going to be someone telling you that their way is the best way.
Or to put butter in your coffee and buy their proprietary mushroom powder blend.
Because that’s how marketing works.
But that leaves a messy trail of misunderstanding in the minds of a lot of people..
Here are just a few examples:
Importance of fuel type
Your body is extremely well equipped to survive.
A common misconception is that there is a ‘backdoor’ method or ‘cheat code’ to burning more fat by exclusively providing your body with certain food types while excluding others.
It’s not that simple.
Luckily for you – your body will convert the energy it receives (from any type of food) into usable energy.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul doesn’t work.
High carb. No carbs. All fat. No fat.
Doesn’t matter.
Spot reduction
Some folks believe that they can reduce the fat in their belly or love handles exclusively.
That’s generally not true.
Your body will pull fat from all parts of your body, including your face, fingers, and toes.
But normally it will be in a pattern of regular distribution (like pretty much every other biological system).
So men naturally seem to store higher concentrations of fat around their midsection.
And women store more in their chest, thighs, and butt.
Your body will usually pull from those largest stores first, and work it’s way down all over your body.
You may find that you lose weight in certain areas first, and some areas are more ‘stubborn’.
For example, my abdomen gets lean fairly quickly, but my thighs and lower back always tend to hold onto fat quite a bit longer.
Turning fat to muscle
Did I ‘turn the fat to muscle’ in these pictures?
Nah.
I’m around 200 on the left.
145 in the middle, and 185 on the right.
Fat loss and muscle gain are two separate processes.
They can happen at the same time, but aren’t influenced by one another directly.
You can, however, do all the things that help you build muscle–training for muscle growth, eating enough protein, sleeping, etc.–WHILE you are pursuing weight loss.
So it can seem like fat is turning into muscle, but really you’re just doing both simultaneously.
Once you get more advanced, this becomes tougher – and you’d do best by separating your diet into distinct cutting (fat loss) and bulking (muscle gain) periods.
But more on that in another post.
Lose fat without losing weight
Your goal is to encourage your body to tap into its reserve energy stores (body fat).
Those stores carry a physical mass with them.
The most powerful tool you have access to for losing fat is a hypocaloric diet – more on this below – which will cause your body to lose weight over time.
As you begin feeding your body less food than it needs to maintain its current weight, it will be forced to tap into your fat stores for extra energy, they are reduced in size and weight.
I’m sorry to say it, but if you’re 5’10 at 275 lb and obese… you won’t end up as a 275 lb muscle monster with 10% body fat.
What do you have against losing weight, anyways?
Eating too little to lose weight
Some folks might think of this as ‘starvation mode’.
Starvation mode is a real thing.
It’s called starvation.
Your body will literally continue to get smaller and smaller (which reduces the number of calories you burn each day), until you die.
In terms of weight loss and fat loss however, this is not something you need to worry about.
Your only concern should be eating the right amount of food in order to lose weight each week while being able to stick to it for long enough for it to matter.
If your body weight is not trending downwards, you’re eating more food than you need to be in order to lose weight.
Weight loss is the most powerful tool you have to lose body fat.
You make weight loss happen by eating fewer calories than you need to maintain your weight.
That’s a hypocaloric diet.
Hypercaloric diet = weight gain
Isocaloric diet = weight maintenance
Key Components of Weight Loss for Beginners
There are a handful of different weight loss strategies that you could follow to help you lose weight (and keep it off).
The 2 key components of weight loss for beginners are the following:
#1 – Do what works
There is nothing more motivating than results.
If your weight loss plan isn’t showing you visible progress – you’re going to have a hard time adhering to it. And why would you? The whole idea is to get results.
If something isn’t working, it’s time to change it.
So ensure that the plan you’re running with is actually working by tracking your progress and looking to see that you’re making tangible steps in the right direction.
You shouldn’t be wondering if it’s working.
Or whether or not you’re just building muscle and that’s why the scale isn’t moving.
If you’re not losing weight over time, it’s not working.
The beginner is in a special moment. Things are exciting. They’re putting in effort and trying new things.
That’s when you need to be rewarded most.
And that’s why I recommend taking a slightly more assertive approach at the beginning.
Not reckless, but assertive.
Relatively fast and obvious progress in the right direction can be a massive springboard to the beginner.
Chase results.
Goals transform a random walk into a chase.
– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#2 – You can stick to it for a while
Here’s something most folks get wrong about weight loss.
Weight loss is inherently unsustainable.
If you dieted for weight loss continuously, you would die.
It’s controlled starvation.
Guys think that they need to lose weight forever. But that’s not true.
It’s actually a short-term intervention. Get in, get it done, then get out.
Lose weight while you’re losing weight, then stop and maintain your new weight.
Your BIG goals may take a while to achieve.
But they should be broken down into ‘bite-sized’ weight loss goals that are more short to medium term.
Being able to stick to a weight loss diet for ~8-12 weeks is a fantastic step in the right direction.
This reflects the simple nutrition approach I lay out in ‘On-Demand Fat Loss’
Most guys lose around 15 – 25 lb in their first 12 weeks.
So I’m not saying you need to be able to stick to your weight loss diet forever.
But if you can’t do it for more than a week or two, it sucks.
That’s just not long enough for any meaningful changes in how much tissue your body is carrying.
Even for the most aggressive diets.
Real, tangible changes in body composition take time.
Not years and years.
But definitely not days.
A Successful Weight Loss Plan
As a case study, let’s draw up what a successful weight loss plan actually looks like.
We’ve got a man who is 242 lb at 5’9.
He knows he wants to carry less body fat and have more muscle, but isn’t quite sure exactly what his goal weight would be.
So we start off with a solid goal of losing 10% of his weight or 24 lb.
We know he’s relatively new to weight loss, so we keep it simple and decide to just track his calorie intake, since we know that his overall energy intake is the primary driver of his success.
We keep track of his body weight to be sure that it is moving in the right direction week after week.
After 12 weeks, he’s down around 16 lb, which is awesome!
It’s not been coming off as fast as we’d anticipated, but after looking a bit closer, we can see that his adherence to the calorie goal hasn’t been as regular as it could have been.
So we refocus on that for another 6 weeks, since he’s feeling highly motivated.
We hit 24 lb lost. Then we take a 8 week break from dieting.
At this point, he’s eating a bit more food, and allowing a bit more flexibility in his diet.
This gives him the chance to ‘freshen up’ physically and psychologically for another bout of weight loss.
Dieting is fatiguing psychologically and physiologically.
It makes you hungrier, moodier, less energetic, and less restful.
Taking breaks like this is a great way to mitigate some of those unwanted effects before pushing again into the weight loss diet.
After the break, we do another 12 week diet push and end up around 201 lb.
41 lb lost over a 7 month period.
Incredible. Life changing.
Now we can take another break and reevaluate our next steps.
Do we want to lose more weight, maintain our weight, or gain weight for a muscle gain diet?
That’s up to you.
Real-Life Weight Loss Success Stories
This exact weight loss outlined above happened in 2023.
All those numbers are real and were accomplished by my client Everett.
42 pounds lost over a 6 month period here.
He told me that he had started waking up feeling more rested.
His confidence was through the roof. He made some personal breakthroughs and was closing real estate deals more than ever.
We used a simple, structured approach to weight loss and it paid off hugely.
You can even see the beginnings of how weight loss can upgrade your life.
It happened to me.
And I see it happen with all the guys I work with who lose a good chunk of their body weight while building muscle along the way.
5 Ways Weight Loss Can Transform Your Life
Check this out…
Losing weight and getting in shape will make your life a lot better.
It’s not just about looking good on the beach.
Here’s how:
Improved Physical Health
We know that BMI is a strong predictor of health-related outcomes. (Aune, 2016)
Body Mass Index (BMI) measures your weight relative to your height, and indexes you according to that value.
You can be underweight, normal, overweight, or obese.
Bringing your BMI from the obese range into the healthy range is a sure fire way to reduce your risk of all-cause mortality. A host of unwanted health complications occur far more often in people who are overweight and obese.
Your physical health also has a meaningful impact on your daily quality of life.
For example, if you’re always getting out of breath going up and down stairs, or if you have a hard time putting your socks on without ramming your belly into your thighs… that makes life harder.
Additionally, sexual dysfunction is a common ailment in folks who are overweight and obese.
More blood flow to all your happy parts is a really good thing.
These things all add up to dramatically alter your life experience, whether you like it or not.
Someone who’s obese is less likely to enjoy regular outdoor activity.
Less likely to have a great sex life.
Less likely to live a long, and healthy life.
Less likely to be fit for work and more likely to earn less.
Less likely to be playing with their kids in the jungle gym.
These are all painfully real examples of how your physical health can impact your life.
But the opposite is also true.
Being physically fit opens you up to a world of opportunities.
A longer life.
A catalog of hobbies.
And those changes are highly noticeable when you begin to make improvements in your fitness.
Enhanced Mental Health
This paper (Veronese, et al 2016) reviewed 20 studies on the effects of weight loss on cognitive ability in folks who were previously overweight or obese.
They found significant improvement in attention and memory abilities.
A higher ability to focus and remember important information.
They also found an improvement in executive function and language skills.
Executive functions are a set of foundational mental skills that support your ability to plan ahead, meet goals, display self-control, follow directions, and stay focused despite distractions, and much more.
Obesity has also been known to influence the course of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia – those are called neurodegenerative diseases.
Obesity also has a reciprocal link with depression.
That means that obesity can cause an onset of depression disorder (and depressive symptoms) and depression can lead to obesity.
It’s a bad cycle to be caught in.
But hey – let’s look on the bright side again here.
Getting to a healthy weight is just as likely to lead to the opposite of all this.
Better brain health.
Less depressive symptoms.
A sharper mind that functions at a higher level.
What impact might that have on your life?
Could that mean earning more money?
Or having the ability to pursue something meaningful in your life?
Or could it affect your ability to find a romantic partner?
I don’t know.
More Energy
Sleep quality and quantity seem to dip in folks who are overweight and obese.
They experience increased rates of Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS), have poorer motor functions, and short-term memory.
Heavier dudes are also at a higher risk of developing Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) which is a sleep disorder that causes you to stop breathing in the middle of the night.
It’s bad news.
But let me drive this point home without science and health scares.
Imagine carrying around a 50 lb backpack all day.
How tiring and annoying would that feel?
How sweaty would that make you?
It’d get old pretty quick.
If you literally lose 50 lb of body weight, that’s the difference you’ll feel.
For most guys I work with, that’s night and day.
That’s why I created Fifty for Fifty – It’s coaching program that will help you lose 50+ lb and keep it off this year.
No keto. No fasting. No cardio. No supplements. No BS.
This is the systems, community, and accountability I WISH I had when I was losing weight.
How You’re Perceived
Whether or not you maintain a healthy weight has an impact on how people perceive you.
The stigmatization of obesity is everywhere.
Obese people are discriminated against. Widely.
There are harmful weight-based stereotypes that overweight and obese individuals are lazy, weak-willed, unsuccessful, unintelligent, lack self-discipline, have poor willpower, and are noncompliant with weight-loss treatment.
Leaner people might even be seen (Berry, 2010) as harder-working, more intelligent, more sociable, and likeable.
All those beliefs have negative physical and psychological health impacts on the individual.
That fucking sucks.
We need to do better as a society.
And if you discriminate against someone because they’re overweight, you’re a dickbag.
If someone does it to you, they’re a dickbag too.
But that doesn’t mean that you can’t be aware of reality.
People are more likely to discriminate against you if you’re overweight or obese.
Being seen as lazy, unintelligent, and unsuccessful will make your life worse.
That’s part of what’s called the Pygmalion effect.
It suggests that how others see you impacts how you see yourself, which leads to behaviors in accordance with that view.
Going from being perceived negatively in general (due to your weight) to being perceived positively for being fit is a big deal.
It’s just one of the many ways that getting in shape has upgraded my life.
Is it shallow? Yes.
Sorry – that’s humanity for you.
Boosted Self-Confidence
I’m not even going to dive into the science behind this.
When you set a big goal for yourself, and accomplish it, you change.
You develop self-efficacy.
Self-belief.
Undeniable proof that you are the person who you want to be.
There’s no better feeling than that in life.
Weight Loss Strategies
There are 4 main approaches to losing weight that people will take, and I’m going to focus on 3 of them in this post.
Weight Loss Drugs
Weight loss drugs have skyrocketed in popularity over the previous two years.
And for good reason.
They’re going to save the lives of millions of people.
But some folks are taking these drugs to help them look good on the beach in a bikini too.
Which is totally cool – if that’s what you want to do, and you have your doctor supervising you.
I just don’t know enough about ozempic / wegovy / GLP agonists to share an expert opinion on it.
So I’m going to leave it at that.
Workout Interventions
Some people decide that they want to start working out in order to lose weight. They’ll start going for runs, hitting the gym, or take up group exercise classes.
This is a great starting point.
It has powerful health benefits, and is a great way to start a habit that can last a lifetime.
But exercise-only interventions are only laying down one piece of the puzzle.
They’re often not enough on their own to drive meaningful, lasting changes.
Think about it – you might spend an hour doing a grueling, sweaty workout and burn around 500 calories.
You can eat that back in less than 2 minutes without realizing it.
It’s a misconception that working out alone will transform your body and melt slabs of fat.
But your workouts will definitely build muscle… which is a big deal.
We use 2 or 3 workouts per week at 30 minutes a piece.
That builds muscle you can actually see and feel.
Nutrition Interventions
Now we’re getting closer to the money!
By taking control of how much food you eat, you’re going directly to the source of your primary weight loss driver.
Your energy balance.
If we know that you need to burn more calories than you consume for an extended period of time, then we ought to pay attention to how much we eat, right?
This is a powerful strategy, and a level that many people never fully reach.
Holistic / Combo Interventions
Now we’ve got the full picture.
The complete package. Like when you get the car wash with the wash, wax, and shine.
This person is improving what they eat, exercising, and applying some lifestyle changes to help them lose the weight and keep it off.
If you are able to make workouts happen, become more active each day, take control of your food intake, and build a lifestyle that supports your goals – you’ll succeed.
Your body is like a garden.
Give it everything it needs to flourish.
And it will.
Starting Your Weight Loss Journey
Here’s what I’d recommend, when you’re ready…
1) Define Your Weight Loss Goals
Throw an anchor into the future by setting a meaningful goal for yourself.
This outlines your path and will help you align your priorities and life in accordance with it.
I recommend shooting for 10% of your total bodyweight as a weight loss target.
So if you’re 250 lb, shoot for 25 lb to start.
Large enough to be exciting and meaningful, but not enough to be a mental mountain.
2) Choose a Strategy
A strategy is an algorithmic approach to solving problems.
Losing 20, 25, or 30 lb is a series of problems that you’re going to need to solve.
I recommend that you track your calorie intake to start making progress right away.
No macros.
No supplements.
Just calories.
If you want to hit a protein goal for bonus points, that’s cool too.
Around 0.6g of protein per pound of body weight each day should suffice.
But never at the expense of hitting your calorie goal.
3) Track Your Progress
Nothing is more motivating than results.
You need to keep track of your progress.
Daily:
Step on the scale first thing in the morning, right after using the bathroom (in minimal/no clothing.).
Monthly:
Take 3 progress pictures. Front. Side. Back.
You can also track your waist measurements if you’d like.
Right around your belly button, once per month.
If things aren’t moving in the right direction, something needs to change.
Keep tracking progress no matter what happens.
It’s all data that will push you in the right direction.
Final Word
Now go get started on losing this weight.
You’ll quickly see how simple it is.
And before you know it, you’ll feel your life getting significantly more enjoyable.
Until next time,
Matteo
PS: Next week, we’ll be reopening intake to Fifty for Fifty – our coaching program for guys who want to lose 50+ lb and keep it off this year.
Join the priority mailing list so I know to contact you when we open.
