In part 1 of the article “Your step-by-step weight loss program”, we already discussed the dangers of rapid weight loss for sports performance and health, and I showed you how to calculate your macros for your safe weight loss program. In the second part, we will discuss the step-by-step weight loss strategy. We will cover topics like how to set realistic goals, monitor your progress, keep a food log, reduce your calorie intake properly, why cheat days are important and so on. Now, let’s start with our step-by-step weight loss strategy.

Step 1: Set realistic goals.

Before starting your weight loss plan, write down your goals. These goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-framed). For example, instead of saying: “I would like to lose some weight”, write down: “I will lose 5 kg of body fat in the next three months”. Remember that to lose weight safely without losing muscle tissue, you must decrease calories by approximately 500 kcal (or 15-20%) from your normal daily calorie intake. Reducing your calories by 15% will give you weight loss of roughly 0,5kg a week, 2kg a month. So, if you look realistically, you will lose 5 kg after 2,5 months. So, please write down your goals, be specific and set realistic numbers and time to achieve them.

Step 2: Monitor your progress.

To achieve your weight loss goals, you must track your progress. For this purpose, you can use scales, measuring types and callipers. Using just scales is not the best idea because they measure your overall body weight (fat mass + fat-free mass). Standing on a scale, you will not see how much of your weight is fat and how much your muscles are. Because of this, you should use a measuring tape together with scales. By measuring your body composition using measuring type (measure chest, waist, hips, arms, and legs), you will see if your body fat is decreasing or not. In addition to these two methods, you can also add skinfold thickness measurements using callipers. Callipers will help you to estimate your body fat percentage. You can read more about measuring your body fat in my article: “What is the best body fat measurement method?”.

Step 3: Keep a food log.

As you track your weight changes, you should also record your daily food and drink intake. It will help you see exactly what you are eating and show your eating habits. You can do it by using some app like MyFitnessPal, or you can do it by hand. More about eating habits and how to create a nutrition diary, you can read more in my article: “A step-by-step guide to creating your own nutrition diary and why it is so important”. The main idea is to write down everything you eat and drink for at least three days, better 7. It is essential not to change your usual diet during this time and be completely honest with yourself. People think they know what they are eating, but when they start a nutrition diary, they realise their diet is not as ideal as they thought. All in all, I recommend trying a nutrition diary.

Step 4: Cut your calorie intake by 15%.

Decreasing your calories by 15% will allow you to lose body weight without slowing down your metabolism and help you prevent the loss of muscle tissue. It can be very tempting to reduce calories even more to lose weight faster. But it is not the best idea because you will also lose some muscle tissue. Your body will go into survival mode, trying to save energy.

Step 5: Reduce your carbs by 15%.

Reducing carbohydrates by 15% doesn’t mean you must have a low-carbohydrate diet. If you still want to maintain your usual training volume and intensity, you must eat a minimum of 4g/kg of body weight of carbs. A low carbohydrate diet combined with high-intensity training can result in depleted glycogen stores, muscle loss and reduced performance. You can exercise in the morning on an empty stomach, but it should be low intensity cardio training, which will help you burn fat. But if you plan to do high-intensity training, you better eat carbs before training to have enough glycogen in your muscles and replenish your glycogen stores. At other times, you can reduce your carb intake. More about carbohydrate intake you can read in my article: “The importance of carbohydrates for sports performance“.

Step 6: Increase your protein intake to offset muscle loss.

When we cut our calories by 15%, we are doing so to save more muscles during weight loss because if you reduce your calories too drastically, it can affect glycogen stores, and the body will start burning more muscles for energy. So, even when we cut calories just by 15%, we still can lose some muscle tissue during fat loss. To reduce muscle loss even more, we must increase the amount of protein in our diet (1.8-2.7 g/kg of body weight) and add resistance training. Protein can also help control your appetite and reduce hunger. The main problem when you are decreasing your regular calories (you are getting calorie deficit) is a feeling of hunger. Therefore, many diets fail because, at some point, you can’t stand this hunger anymore, and you want to eat something sweet or processed. More protein in your diet will help you control your hunger levels, and like these, you will stick to your diet more. You can read more about athletes’ protein needs in my article: “The importance of protein for sports performance”.

Step 7: Don’t cut fats too drastically.

We are cutting some fats in our weight loss program because they give 9kcal per 1g of fat. As to protein and carbs, you are getting just 4 kcal from 1g. So, eating too much fat can make you fat just because they provide lots of calories. But we still need fats. We need them because they provide essential fatty acids, stimulate hormone production, absorb and transfer fat-soluble vitamins and many more. Also, fat gives us feeling of satiety. That’s why we aim to consume at least 20-25% of fat in our diet. Going below this number can badly affect your health, so it’s not recommended. Fats you eat must be mainly from unsaturated fatty acids, saturated fats must be no more than 11%, and trans fats must be as close to zero as possible. More about fats, you can read in my article: “All you need to know about fats“.

Step 8: Control you blood glucose.

It is essential to control your blood glucose because a rapid rise in blood glucose will lead you to fat storage. When you are eating high GI (glycaemic index) carbohydrates, it provokes a fast release of insulin. The more insulin you have in your bloodstream (in response to high GI carbohydrates), the more excessive carbohydrates will become fat. So, eating a low-GI meal is better to keep your insulin levels low. Also, it is essential to know that adding protein, fat or soluble fibre to carbohydrate meals will help reduce the speed of absorption and produce a lower blood sugar rise. So, in practice, it is always better to eat carbs with some protein sources, healthy fats, and some vegetables to reduce a rise in blood sugar. More about GI you can find in my article: “All you need to know about carbohydrates“.

Step 9: Eat more fibre.

It is actually an obvious step after step 8. Fibre in your diet can help keep your insulin levels low and give you a feeling of fulness, which will help control your appetite. Also, fibre in your diet is important because it helps reduce your risks of various cancers and heart diseases. So, eat more fibre.

Step 10: Take some days off from your diet (cheat days).

One of the reasons why diets fail is because you forbid yourself from eating your favourite comfort foods. To lose weight, you need to reduce high sugar and processed foods. You must reduce calories by 15-20% and try eating healthy. But on other hand if you exclude all your comfort foods completely, it can ruin your diet. Many people find that a day off from healthy eating or dieting once a week can satisfy their cravings and motivate them to eat healthy all other time. Knowing that you can eat some of your favourite food every week (chocolate, ice cream or an extra-large hamburger) will help you stop thinking about these foods as forbidden, and you won’t overeat on them. Occasionally, eating your favourite food without feeling guilty is a successful strategy for maintaining weight loss. So, you can use a cheat day strategy to make your diet more sustainable, or my favourite is to afford yourself a cheat meal (for me, it is some small chocolate cake) after difficult resistance training. After a difficult resistance program, your glycogen stores are depleted, and even if you eat some small chocolate cake, all these sugars won’t go to fat; they will go to replenish your glycogen stores.

You must organise all your cheat meals to satisfy your cravings, keep you well-motivated to eat healthy all the time, and make your diet more sustainable. But you must also understand that too many of these cheat meals can also ruin your diet. So, first of all, don’t use cheat meals as an excuse to eat more unhealthy food, and organise them so that you can burn all these extra calories the next day.

Step 11: Eat regularly and frequently

Eating regularly and frequently is not mandatory to lose weight because the total amount of calories is what matters. For example, a man whose daily calorie intake is 3000 kcal (to maintain weight) needs to start eating 2500 kcal to start losing weight. And it doesn’t matter how many times he eats a day (2 or 6 times). It is the number of calories that matters. If he eats two meals a day and gets 2500 kcal, he will still lose weight. However, not looking at that, eating meals more regularly and frequently (4-6 meals a day) can give additional fat loss benefits.

Studies show that your metabolic rate increases by approximately 10% for a short time after eating a meal. This happens because our body needs to burn some energy to digest food. So, each time you eat, you are not just ingesting calories from food but also burning some calories to digest this food. And if you eat more frequently, you burn more calories for digestion, and like this, you increase your metabolic rate for a while. It doesn’t mean you can’t lose weight by eating just two meals a day. It all depends on your lifestyle; how busy you are, and how many times you can eat a day according to your work graphic. It’s not mandatory for weight loss, but if you can eat your meals more regularly and frequently, it will help you to lose weight a little bit faster.

Step 12: Reduce your alcohol consumption.

If you didn’t know, alcohol is not just water. 1 g of alcohol provides us with 7 kcal, which can significantly increase your total calorie intake if you consume large quantities. Also, many alcoholic drinks contain sugars and other carbohydrates, which increase the calorie content further. Together with alcohol we always have temptation to eat some snacks. The worst part is that since alcohol cannot be stored in the body, it must be oxidised and converted into energy. While this is happening, fat and carbohydrate oxidation is suppressed, and all these fat and carbs will go to fat storage. This means that while your body tries to eliminate alcohol, it can’t properly work with fat and carb oxidation.

That being said, you should reduce alcohol consumption on your weight loss program quite drastically. According to the Department of Health, safe drinking levels for both men and women are no more than 14 units of alcohol per week and the less alcohol you are using, the better. According to them, you should have no more than two units per day, which is about a 150 ml glass of wine. On a fat loss program, it should be even less. I would suggest not more than 150ml glass of wine per week. Just put your alcohol consumption (150ml glass of wine per week) on a cheat day. More about alcohol and safe consumption of alcohol you can read in my article: “All you need to know about alcohol“.

Step 13: Make gradual lifestyle changes

For some people, it will be ok to make quick changes in their diet, especially if they have a massive motivation for that. For others, small, gradual changes will work better. The thing is, we are doing everything by habit. And unfortunately, it is difficult to change these habits quickly. Long-term weight management can only be achieved by making gradual changes to your eating and exercise habits that are comfortable for you and that you can stick to. Too drastic changes can make it difficult to follow your weight loss plan.

Before you start making some changes, you need to find out your bad habits and then think about how to change them. The best way to find your bad habits is a food diary. We already discussed this in step 3 about keeping a food log. The main idea is to write down everything you eat and drink for at least three days, better 7. It is essential not to change your usual diet during this time and be completely honest with yourself. After you create a nutrition diary, you will see all your good and bad habits and what you need to change. From there, you can start gradually changing your bad eating habits.

Step 14: Do the right type of exercise.

In step 6, we already discussed how calorie reduction in diet can affect muscle loss. There, we spoke about increasing protein to preserve muscles during a weight loss program. Here, we will talk about the type of exercises we need for weight loss and saving more muscle tissue during a weight loss program. So, when we cut our calories by 15%, we are doing so to save more muscles during weight loss because if you reduce your calories too drastically, it can affect glycogen stores, and the body will start burning more muscles for energy. But, even when we cut calories just by 15%, we still can lose some muscle tissue during fat loss. And to reduce muscle loss even more, we must increase the amount of protein in our diet and add resistance training.

I am writing more about what exercise is the best for weight loss in my article: “What is the best exercise for fat loss“. Here, I will explain everything shortly. The best way to lose fat is to use a combination of cardio and resistance training. First, if you want to save more muscles during your weight loss program, you must do resistance training. Resistance training helps increase your RMR for about 36 hours post-exercise, due to body fat oxidation. This means that even when you already left the gym, your body continues to burn calories. Also, weight training acts as a stimulus to muscle retention. The more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism and the more calories you are burning at rest. The best cardio exercise for weight loss is HIIT training. HIIT training will help you lose more calories faster than steady-state cardio. Moreover, HIIT training can help you burn calories even after you’re done exercising. Like resistance training, due to the intensity of the workout, HIIT can elevate your RMR for hours after exercise. Also, HIIT could shift the body’s metabolism toward using more fat for energy rather than carbs.

Hopefully, you enjoyed this article. I wish you the best in reaching your weight loss goals!