Forget About Quick Weight Loss

There are countless very specific short-term diets, most often designed to achieve very fast and targeted “weight loss”, usually caused by a drastic reduction in energy intake and often also by eliminating many foods. These are typically one-sided diets that carry the risk of deficiency in one or more essential nutrients, vitamins or minerals. Be careful! Weight reduction does not always mean fat reduction!

The result is a decrease in weight, which is, however, paid for by the loss of muscle mass, dehydration, and a slowdown in metabolism. The effect usually lasts only until one returns to their original eating habits. This can lead to the so-called YO-YO effect.

To illustrate the direction you definitely should not take, here are a few examples of popular diets: pineapple, grapefruit, and cabbage diets. I certainly do not need to emphasize what I think about such diets. A sharp reader will understand from the instructions alone that this is miles away from a rational approach to nutrition. Forget about quick weight loss; let’s rather talk about shedding the excess kilograms of fat that have accumulated around your waist, thighs, and hips over the years. After all, you primarily reduce weight to look better (the truth is that losing weight should also be for health), to be more attractive, physically fitter, and more self-confident – and I consider that a proper goal, a proper motivation to address the question "how to lose weight?".

I remember how, at the beginning of my competitive career, I considered the advice "don’t eat – you’ll lose weight" to be the most effective way to "shed" excess fat. It is true that many athletes also solve weight management this way to fit into a pre-planned weight category. However, over time I realized that despite the many destructive fasting and excessive training, weight loss always stopped. I understood that reducing calorie intake and increasing energy expenditure through regular training is only one part of the "puzzle," the result of which is fat loss and the expected decrease in weight. Simply put, there are other factors that influence weight loss, and you should accept this fact if you do not want weight changes to be only short-term – training and starving is not the best way to achieve lasting changes.

So the question is, how should you proceed so that your weight loss (sorry, body fat reduction) is successful in the long term? What should you focus on and what should you strive for? What principles are there?

Real effective methods for weight loss

• Prevent metabolism slowdown.
• Regular aerobic activity (running, walking, cycling, skating), but especially anaerobic (strength training, various forms of functional training) physical activity throughout the day, incorporating suitable sports activities into your daily routine.
• Change in diet, reasonable restriction in calorie intake.
• Application of nutritional supplements capable of assisting in fat loss and weight management with optimal dosing.

A bit more about metabolism speed

The amount of energy your body uses to maintain all vital functions (digestion, breathing, temperature regulation, maintaining heart, nervous system, lung, kidney, liver functions) while lying down, at rest, at neutral ambient temperature, without performing any activity – this is basal metabolism – a decisive component of overall energy metabolism, which is the alpha and omega of your success in weight loss. Why?

If you visit the gym 3 times a week, where you will exercise for an hour, and swim or cycle for an hour twice a week, you have given your body 5 hours of activity that burns calories. That’s "ONLY" 5 hours out of 168 (i.e., the number of hours in a week). Thus, thanks to basal metabolism, you burn significantly more calories during the week than just through "ONLY" sports activities. Sports activities can significantly facilitate and enhance weight loss, yet your primary effort in weight loss should be to maintain basal metabolism at a high level. If you add energy expenditure from daily activities (walking, work activities, housework, etc.) and from sports activities to the energy consumed through basal metabolism, and you also reduce calorie intake (not through starvation, just by lowering the energy value of your meals by choosing suitable foods), you have before you the basic formula for successful weight loss. You no longer need to solve anything, search, or suffer.

But what can influence your metabolism, what speeds it up, or conversely slows it down?

What slows down your metabolism?

• Skipping meals – for example, skipping breakfast and not eating until lunch means you have subjected your body to at least 12 hours of fasting, which can slow your metabolism by up to 40%.
• Improper distribution of nutrients consumed from meals throughout the day – minimum in the first half of the day, maximum in the second half.
• Excessive calorie intake – especially in the last meal of the day, before nighttime sleep.
• Heavy meals with high content of unsuitable fats – do not allow fats to make up more than 30% of your daily energy intake, but remember that "good fats" are essential for the body.
• Lack of sleep.
• Insufficient fluid intake.
• Lack of sports activity, i.e., a daily routine without sufficient physical activity.
• Overweight, obesity, high body fat percentage.
• Age and the associated natural loss of muscle mass – with increasing age, without suitable sports activity, muscle mass loss occurs (which acts as a furnace for burning energy), which over a decade (i.e., 10 years) can reach values of up to 5%; less muscle mass means a smaller "furnace for burning energy".

What speeds up your metabolism?

• Sufficient muscle mass – don’t be afraid of muscles! – Even successful models today train in the gym and do not have muscles like bodybuilders! You simply need regular strength training, using sufficiently high training loads (even those with which you can manage a maximum of 6–10 repetitions or functional training with your own body weight), supplemented with aerobic activity.
• Quality breakfast or meals in the first half of the day, regular intake of meals with a share of proteins.
• Sufficient sleep, which is uninterrupted.
• Intake of specific compounds (it doesn’t matter whether we call them supplements, foods, or snacks) that can positively influence metabolism.
• Moderate fluid intake – i.e., regular water, not mineral, sweetened, milk, beer, or alcohol.

Conclusion

The main thing is to persevere, not to deviate from the set path to your goals, even when it seems endless. You have often accumulated fat reserves over several years, so give your body time to respond to the change so that physical activity and healthy eating become natural and eventually desired. This is the path not only to a nice figure but also to health.

I wish you much success in the fight against excess fat reserves!