How to lose weight: The important principles

Today I’m going to explain the important principles behind how to lose weight and make it perfectly clear what you need to do to be successful.

This will give you a great understanding about how to lose weight, what exactly it is you’re trying to achieve, and how it can best be done. This is important because you need to be crystal clear with these things before you go after them and try to get them.

If you misunderstand what you need to do then you are likely to waste months or even years of your life doing things that don’t get you the results you want.


The problem though is this

There’s so much information available about all the different ways of losing weight and different weight loss products that it’s easy to get confused and forget about these important principles or miss them altogether.

That’s why many people struggle to lose weight for years or put back on the weight they’ve lost. They are NOT following the principles that work and are very often distracted by what doesn’t work and the promise of quick results.


The formula for losing weight is very simple

To lose weight you need to burn more calories than you consume.

There are other factors that affect how much weight you lose such as the speed of your metabolism, what types of food you consume, and your genetics. However, these are fairly insignificant in comparison to the number of calories you consume and burn.

If you burn more calories than you consume then you will be successful at losing weight. Here’s a summary of what you need to know:

  • If your calories consumed is greater than your calories burned, then you will gain weight
  • If your calories consumed is equal to your calories burned, then you will maintain weight
  • If your calories consumed is less than your calories burned, then you will lose weight

We are looking to achieve the last one which is losing weight. But how do you consume fewer calories than you burn?

It all comes down to 2 factors which are nutrition and exercise. Good nutrition reduces the number of calories consumed while good exercise increases the number of calories burned.

The more effective your nutrition and exercise, the easier it is to lose weight, and the easier it is to keep the weight off.


How to reduce the number of calories you consume

The most frequently used way to reduce the number of calories you consume is to go on a diet.

The problem with diets is that they barely ever work because they’re used as a short term fix. So while you may lose some weight initially, you end up putting it all back on when you return to your normal lifestyle.

Yes, diets can be used to cut back on calories and help you lose some weight in the short term but you need much more than that to be successful. Plus, I expect that you don’t want to feel like you are on a diet all your life and have all the frustration that goes along with it.

The best option by far is to develop a healthy diet by having better nutrition which means having a balanced and varied diet. That way you can still eat plenty of food and enjoy your food but you don’t consume too many calories in the process.

By doing this you can also maintain your healthy eating habits due to enjoying your food and this helps you achieve long term weight loss success.


How to increase the number of calories you burn

Many people try to lose weight by only reducing the number of calories they consume. The problem with this is that they miss the vital exercise component which plays such a huge part in helping you lose weight and keep it off.

Exercise adds to the calories burned side of the weight loss equation, plus it also helps you to maintain more muscle while losing weight from fat. This is extremely important for long term weight loss success.

The more muscle you can maintain while losing weight from fat, the higher your metabolism will be after you’ve lost the weight. That’s because muscle burns more calories than fat. This means you can reach your desired weight and still be able to consume plenty of calories without putting the weight back on.

On the other hand, if you lose weight from both muscle and fat then you can still lose the same weight, but you would need to maintain a lower calorie diet to keep the weight off.

To increase the number of calories you burn you should also use types of exercise that burn lots of calories. You also need to exercise in the right manner so that you improve your fitness and calorie burning ability as quickly as possible. Check out my exercise classes for help with this.


Remember these main points

If you burn more calories than you consume then you will be successful at losing weight. To do this you should use a combination of a healthy diet and high quality exercise to get the best weight loss results.

That way you can get results that you are happy with now, and also results that will last for the rest of your life, rather than only getting results that disappear within weeks or months!

James Porter