The Secret to Fat Loss Nobody Talks About

We all know exactly how to lose weight: burn more calories than we consume. It sounds so simple, so why is it that so many of us struggle to burn body fat?

In my opinion, that is the exact reason why people have difficulty losing body fat: calories in vs. calories out is far too simplistic. Throughout my fitness journey, I’ve read countless articles that gave me the following steps to losing weight:

Again, sounds simple enough right? All you have to do is eat less and move more! The problem with this formula is that it’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to fat loss. Think about it this way:

If you wanted to become rich and I told you to save more money than you spend, would that help you become a millionaire? Didn’t think so.

Now you’re probably expecting me to tell you all about the importance of nutrition, strength training, and cardio for the rest of this article. Yes, they are absolutely critical components of fat loss, but why would I focus on them when every single fat loss article out there covers these topics? I’d be wasting your time if all you took away from this article was to lower your caloric intake, strength train, and do HIIT.

Instead, I’m going to focus on the single most important aspect of losing fat and keeping it off:

Making small, incremental behavioral changes.

I know, I know. It’s not as sexy or exciting as going keto or blasting through grueling HIIT sessions each week. Yes, they work in the short-term, but rarely do they provide lasting results for the majority of the population — they are simply unsustainable. In my year-long health and fitness journey, I’ve found that making small, incremental behavioral changes truly is the best way to achieve your ideal body and health. Let me elaborate.

When I first decided I was going to drop the body fat and try to get my abs to show, I jumped straight from a typical east Asian diet — large amounts of starchy carbs (white rice and noodles) and vegetables accompanied by a moderate amount of animal and plant protein — to the stereotypical bodybuilder diet (chicken breast, sweet potatoes, brown rice, and veggies). I wasn’t tracking my calories at the time, and so my daily caloric intake plummeted (those of you who have tracked calories on this type of a diet will know that it’s near impossible to overeat on these foods). In addition to the drastic caloric reduction, I performed 3 HIIT training sessions each week because that’s what every fat loss article told me to do. Of course, I saw drastic results in the first two or three months, but I soon began to experience many of the symptoms of chronic underfeeding: my weight loss efforts came to a half, I always felt cold, and I was constantly fatigued. In addition to these symptoms, I had developed a poor relationship with food. I’d see every meal out as an opportunity to binge, and I constantly felt deprived of foods that I wanted to eat. I knew something had to change.

I devoted endless hours to finding the best methods for sustainable fat loss, and these next three principles are the ones I found most beneficial for achieving your ideal body.

I made the fatal mistake of starting by restricting my calories. I ultimately ended up eating about 1800–2000 calories each day; not much for a 6 foot 175 lb male. I never felt satisfied with my meals and constantly craved food. Cutting is never easy, but it is a much more enjoyable process when you have more calories to play around with. I won’t go into the nitty-gritty details, but the best way to do this is through building muscle. Muscle is much more metabolically active than fat, so by adding muscle to your body you’re increasing the number of calories you burn at rest. Now if exercise isn’t a regular part of your lifestyle, do not jump straight into three hour-long workouts a week. It may sound good, but how likely are you to follow through? Instead, start with easy exercise goals you know you can achieve. Set aside 15 minutes twice a week to do some body weight exercises. As you meet your goals, you’ll build confidence and momentum, which will make moving on to more challenging goals much easier.

In addition to exercise, and I know this will sound counter intuitive, you should begin by eating in a caloric surplus. You’re probably thinking, “But Daniel, my goal is to lose body fat! I need to eat less than I burn!”. Unless you’re overweight, in which case your excess fat stores will serve as your primary source of energy, or a complete beginner, it’s very hard to build muscle in a caloric deficit — you need the extra calories to create an anabolic environment to feed your muscles the necessary nutrients to grow. With a proper strength training program, the majority of nutrients will go toward building muscle and fat gain will be minimal. Now this doesn’t mean you should just pig out and eat everything in sight — your muscles can only grow so fast and ‘dirty bulking’, essentially eating anything and everything in sight, is a surefire way to pile on more body fat. Instead, simply add an extra serving of a clean source of fuel (rice, potatoes, half an avocado — it’s up to you!) to a meal and I can guarantee that you’ll gain muscle and put yourself in a great position to begin cutting the body fat.

In addition to building your metabolism through weight training, increasing your non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), or the energy you expend on all activity that is not related to exercise, will greatly aid your fat loss efforts. If you are not hitting at least 10k steps each day, I would recommend that you cut out all cardio and focus on increasing your NEAT instead.

Personally speaking, this played the largest factor in helping me achieve and maintain my fat loss goals. When I initially started tracking my steps, I realized I was getting about 3000–4000 steps a day — this wasn’t surprising given I was working a desk job and rarely got out of my seat throughout the day. I began to set small, incremental goals for my daily step count: each week I’d aim to increase the number of steps per day by 1000. I took the stairs instead of the elevator and parked my car in the farthest possible spot from my office building. I got out of my chair each hour and did 10 squats next to my desk. I began taking a 15-minute walk after dinner. I slowly saw the step count ramp up week after week, and I’m now at a point where I hit anywhere between 14–16 thousand steps a day. This is an additional 10–12 thousand steps from when I began, which roughly translates to an extra 500–600 calories burned in one day; I can cut 0 calories out of my diet and still lose about a pound of fat a week; not bad at all!

Nowadays, diets like keto and paleo are all the rage. In the past year, keto’s popularity skyrocketed since it promised to turn your body into a ‘fat-burning machine’. How many times have you heard someone say “I can’t eat that, I’m on a diet”? Being ‘on’ a diet implies that you’ll eventually go off it, and that is not the solution to long term change. Your diet is a habit, and habits are incredibly hard to change. Think about it this way. If I told you to wake up each morning at 6 when you’re used to waking up at 8, would that be an easy change to make? Obviously not. However, if I told you to wake up 15 minutes earlier each week, you’d eventually reach the point where 6 doesn’t seem so early anymore. The same concept can be applied to your diet. Instead of eliminating all foods that are typically deemed ‘unhealthy’, take small steps towards changing your diet.

Begin by simply keeping a food log of all the foods you eat in a day for a week or two so you become aware of what you are consuming. The next week, remove one pack of pop tarts and add an extra serving of vegetables at dinner. The week after, swap your instant maple and brown sugar oatmeal for old-fashioned oats and add some maple syrup in yourself. As you make more of these swaps, your body will begin to respond to these changes: you’ll feel less bloated after meals, reduced fatigue in the middle of the day, greater mental clarity, etc. You’ll start to associate these improvements in health with the new foods you’ve incorporated into your diet, and those foods you once hated become more appealing to you. All of a sudden, plowing through that pint of Ben and Jerry’s doesn’t sound so appealing anymore (who am I kidding, give me ice cream and I’ll inhale it within a matter of seconds).

All jokes aside, you will begin to realize that you don’t need to eliminate any foods from your diet. It’s not that you can’t eat a food — a healthy diet is not about restriction — you’re simply making the choice not to.

So there you have it. The least sexy, most boring secret to fat loss. I won’t deny that it has less appeal than going ‘beast-mode’. After all, who doesn’t enjoy the euphoric feeling after a good hard workout? The fitness industry knows where the appeal lies, which is why you’ll often see fitness commercials of individuals drenched in sweat after an all-out bout on the battle ropes.

However, anybody who has had any level of success with achieving their ideal body will tell you that drastic changes will never work in the long run. There is no quick path or magic pill to a healthy body. Begin to implement these small, incremental changes to your lifestyle and I can guarantee you’ll not only shed the pounds, but see a drastic increase in your quality of life.

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