On paper, fat loss is pretty simple.
Eat appropriately for your needs, move your body, train, get enough protein, eat plenty of nutritious food and create an energy deficit for long enough for your body to respond.
None of that is particularly complicated.
But if knowing what to do was all it took, far fewer people would struggle with their weight.
The difficult bit is actually doing those things consistently while also having a life.
Going to work. Looking after children. Going on holiday. Eating out. Having weekends away. Dealing with stressful weeks. Getting older. Sleeping badly occasionally. Celebrating birthdays and sometimes just wanting to eat the bloody cake.
That’s where fat loss becomes much more interesting than simply handing somebody a calorie target and telling them to try harder.
Sometimes We Actually Know Too Much
There has never been more information available about nutrition and fat loss, yet I think in many ways that’s made people more confused rather than less.
Fast. Don’t fast. Eat breakfast. Skip breakfast. Don’t eat carbohydrates. Eat more carbohydrates. Don’t drink coffee before breakfast. Take this supplement. Balance your hormones. Fix your metabolism. Walk 10,000 steps. Actually, apparently 7,000 is enough now…
Eventually you can become so worried about doing the wrong thing that you lose sight of the handful of things that actually matter.
Most people don’t need another nutrition hack.
They need a way of eating that is nutritious, enjoyable, appropriate for their goal and, most importantly, realistic enough to repeat.
The boring basics aren’t particularly exciting to sell on Instagram, but they work remarkably well.
The Scales Aren’t the Enemy, but They Aren’t the Whole Story Either
I use body weight as data and I don’t think we need to be frightened of the scales. But we do need to understand what they’re actually telling us.
Your weight can change because of hydration, food volume, hormones, carbohydrate intake, salt, bowel movements and inflammation from training, as well as changes in body fat.
A number on the scales is simply one piece of information.
This is where impatience can undo weeks of perfectly good work. You can be doing everything you need to be doing, step on the scales after a few days and decide it isn’t working because the number hasn’t behaved in the way you expected.
Then you change the plan, restrict harder, give up completely or go searching for something else.
Fat loss is rarely a lovely straight line downwards. We need enough data, over enough time, to see the trend.
Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is carry on doing exactly what you’re doing for a little longer.
You Don’t Need to Be Perfect — but the Overall Picture Still Matters
One meal doesn’t ruin your progress. Neither does a weekend away, a birthday, Christmas, a meal out or a glass of wine.
I absolutely don’t want people believing that successful fat loss requires them to opt out of everything they enjoy.
But there is an important flip side to that.
If the exceptions happen frequently enough, they’re no longer really exceptions.
That’s not judgement, it’s just maths.
You can make brilliant choices Monday to Friday and still end up around maintenance across the whole week. You can be eating really nutritious food and still be eating enough energy to maintain your current weight. You can exercise regularly and still not create an energy deficit.
None of those things mean you’ve failed. They simply help explain the result you’re currently getting.
And the answer isn’t automatically to become more restrictive. Sometimes it’s understanding what’s happening and then deciding whether the result you want is worth changing something else to achieve it.
Time Really IS a Factor
I’ve never particularly liked the “we all have the same 24 hours” argument.
Technically, yes, we do.
But we absolutely do not all have the same demands on those 24 hours.
Work, children, caring responsibilities, commuting, relationships, sleep and simply having some time to yourself all matter.
Someone working full-time with three children does not have the same available time as somebody whose life looks completely different, and telling them they simply don’t want their goal badly enough isn’t particularly useful coaching.
I’d much rather ask what can realistically fit into your life.
Perhaps that’s three hours of exercise a week rather than six. Perhaps it’s walking most days. Perhaps it’s two good strength sessions instead of constantly trying to train five times, managing three and feeling as though you’ve failed.
The theoretically perfect programme is completely useless if you can’t sustain it.
I’d take the slightly-less-than-perfect plan you can still see yourself doing next year over the perfect 12-week transformation plan every single time.
Your Life Cannot Permanently Be “On a Diet”
This one matters enormously to me because losing the weight is only part of the job.
At some point you have to live there.
If maintaining your results requires you to permanently feel deprived, miserable and as though you’re waiting for the diet to finish so that you can have your life back, we’re going to have a problem.
Food is nutrition, but it’s also birthdays, holidays, meals with friends, Sunday lunch, celebrations and enjoyment.
Exercise is incredibly important, but it should support your life rather than become punishment for having eaten.
None of this means every decision needs to be the one you’d most like to make in that particular moment. Pursuing any goal requires some compromise. But there needs to be enough enjoyment and flexibility in the way you live that you can imagine still doing most of it years from now.
Because maintaining weight loss is often harder than losing it.
During the losing phase you’ve got a goal, progress, numbers changing and something tangible to work towards. Maintenance doesn’t give you the same little rewards.
You’re essentially doing lots of the same things to stay where you are, and psychologically that can be a much harder place to sit.
Be Careful What You Decide Is “Just You”
“I’ve always struggled with my weight.”
“I’m terrible around food.”
“I have no willpower.”
“I always fall off the wagon.”
“I can’t lose weight now I’m older.”
Repeat something often enough and it starts sounding like a fact.
But sometimes it’s simply a description of what has happened so far.
Rather than asking “What’s wrong with me?”, I’m much more interested in asking:
“What keeps happening?”
Because once we can identify the pattern, we have something we can actually work with.
Maybe every time life gets busy your training disappears.
Maybe you restrict too hard, become ravenous and then overeat.
Maybe Monday to Thursday is incredibly controlled but every weekend becomes a free-for-all.
Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that anything less than perfect isn’t worth doing.
Or maybe you’re actually doing a huge amount right and your expectations of what should be happening simply don’t match reality.
Those are all very different problems, which means they need very different solutions.
And Sometimes You Reach a Different Kind of Difficult
This is probably the part of fat loss that I think we talk about least.
You can lose a significant amount of weight, improve your nutrition, become more active, learn how to train, understand your habits and successfully maintain all of those changes…
and still want to lose more.
At that point, the question may no longer be:
“Do I know what to do?”
Because actually, you probably do.
The question becomes:
“What would getting the next result require from me, and am I willing to do that?”
As you lose weight, you’re maintaining a smaller body and your energy requirements change.
The changes that created your original weight loss may now be the things maintaining your new weight.
Creating another deficit might require eating a little less, moving a little more, training differently, being more consistent or giving up some of the flexibility you’ve gradually built back into your life.
And sometimes that feels hard because it is hard.
I don’t think the answer to that is automatically “you just don’t want it enough.”
There are absolutely times when we need to challenge ourselves and recognise that wanting a result without wanting to do what it requires isn’t going to get us very far.
But there’s also a perfectly legitimate conversation to have about how much of your life you’re prepared to give to pursuing a particular number on the scales.
If you’ve already lost 20kg, exercise regularly, eat well most of the time, enjoy meals with friends, go on holiday, have a social life and have successfully maintained those changes for a year, perhaps losing the next 5kg requires a level of restriction you’re currently not prepared to live with.
That doesn’t mean you can’t lose it.
It means there’s a trade-off to consider.
Maybe you decide it’s worth it and you’re ready for another focused period of fat loss.
Maybe you decide you’d rather maintain for now.
Maybe your priorities change six months from now and you go again.
None of those decisions need to be labelled as success or failure.
This Is Why Coaching Is About So Much More Than Calories
Of course calories matter. Nutrition matters. Exercise matters.
Energy balance doesn’t disappear because we’d rather talk about hormones, metabolism or mindset.
But people aren’t calorie equations.
Expectations, environment, habits, hunger, time, enjoyment, relationships, priorities and the compromises you’re prepared to make all sit around that equation.
That’s why two people can know exactly the same things about nutrition and have completely different experiences trying to implement them.
My job isn’t to make every person as light or as lean as they could theoretically become.
It’s to help somebody understand what their body needs, what their goal is likely to require and what they’re realistically prepared to do, then find the best possible balance between those things.
Because losing weight isn’t the only measure of success.
Losing weight, learning how to look after yourself, getting stronger, moving more, eating better, understanding your own patterns and then being able to live well in the body and life you’ve created?
That’s a result worth keeping.
Want More From Me?
I write regularly about training, nutrition, fat loss, health and finding ways to make all of those things fit into an actual life.
And right now I’m also building LOW.STUDIO — Live Optimally Well, a new Reformer, movement and training studio opening in Ellesmere.
If you’d like to hear more about the studio, classes, opening weekend and what’s coming next, join the LOW.STUDIO mailing list