The New Rules of Weight Loss (Why Diet and Exercise Aren’t Enough)

If you’re only focusing on diet and exercise, you’re playing by the old rules of weight loss.

While the 'rules' of the game (calories in vs calories out) haven't changed, the recommended approaches and beliefs around losing weight have.

There’s a more effective and sustainable way to burn fat (without sacrificing your performance).
Whether you want to drop 50 lbs or those last 5 lbs of belly fat.

Despite knowing how to eat healthy and exercise, I spent years spinning my wheels while trying to get lean.

I would lose the same ~10-15 lbs over and over again…slowly gaining it back each time.

It was frustrating.
And my efforts to see change weren't sustainable.

Once I understood what’s really needed to get lean (which I’ll outline below), burning fat has become easy.
It’s become predictable.

From when I started working out at age 15, until the time I was 30, I was almost always above 195 lbs.

I’ve always carried a lot of muscle, but never could get rid of the fat I wanted to despite regularly working out 4-6x/week and eating fairly healthy.

Now I effortlessly maintain a weight around 180 lbs, and am pound for pound stronger than when I was squatting 500 lbs as a college linebacker.

Here are some things I wish I knew sooner when it came to losing weight and getting lean.

Your body doesn’t want you to lose weight

Our bodies are adaptation machines.

Like it or not…it makes sense.

As important as you think your weight loss goals are, walking around at sub 10% body fat is not survival priority number one.

Our bodies are great at storing fat and energy.

A really good thing when food is scarce and you don’t know where the next meal is coming from.
Not so good when your cabinets are filled with easy to consume calories and even drive thrus are too much work these days (thank you door dash)

If you;ve tried to lose weight before, you know how this works.
And studies have shown the same things:

• Minnesota starvation experiment: 24 weeks of semi-starvation led to basal metabolic rate (BMR) drop of 628 calories. Which means even at 1,600 calories per day weight loss plateaued
• Biggest loser study: 30 weeks of extreme diet and exercise led to a 2,000+ reduction in total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). Their metabolism might never rebound, making weight re-gain easy and the ability to lose weight again even harder
• Race across the USA: participants ran a marathon 6 days per week as they raced from west coast to east coast. They saw a 600-1,000 calorie reduction in TDEE despite extreme levels of activity (if that doesn’t turn you off from running a marathon per day I don’t know what will)

Here’s why this happens.

The problem with diet and exercise alone

When you significantly reduce calories, increase exercise, or do both at the same time, your body pushes back.

This is why extreme diets or exercise programs/challenges very rarely lead to long-term weight loss.
Sure you can cut some weight in 6 weeks with these strategies, but rarely is that maintained 6 months later.

All of this comes back to something called non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT for short, although it doesn’t sound all that neat)

NEAT is the spontaneous movement throughout your day that burns calories without you realizing it, and it often accounts for more calories burned than exercise (even when you’re working out hard like our athletes do)

When you cut calories aggressively, your NEAT tanks.
Bodybuilders are miserable leading up to a competition, and have to literally force themselves to move.

When you increase exercise, your NEAT drops to compensate.

This is why a morning Memorial Day Murph workout can leave you glued to the couch the rest of the day.
This is also why people that get up early to crush a workout, only to sit at a desk all day, can have a hard time losing weight.

What you can do instead (the new rules for weight loss)

This doesn’t mean that exercise or diet are not effective for losing weight.
But there is a better way to exercise and workout, which I don’t have time to cover in this email alone.

There is also a missing piece that most people ignore.
It’s the same thing I ignored for so many years as I struggled to get lean.

If you want to lose fat, and keep it off long-term, here is the better way:

1. Get your baseline

• Track how many calories you’re consuming. You don’t have to track forever, but you do need to know how many calories you eat over the course of a week
• Write down your current exercise routine. The more info the better (how many days are you working out, how many calories burned, average HR, etc)
• Take note of your daily movement. This is best done simply by tracking how many steps you get on average over the course of the week

2. Decrease, Increase, Increase

You have 3 levers you can pull to lose weight.

Pulling one might give you some results.
Pulling two is probably better.
Pulling all three is what’s really needed to see long-term results.

• Decrease calories consumed. Don’t go extreme here, we’re after long-term results. A 5-10% calorie reduction is a good starting point.
• Increase one thing from your current exercise routine. Add one more cardio or strength session per week. Or try and burn 50 more calories each workout session (which is exactly what all of our programs are designed to help you do)
• Increase your daily movement. The easiest way to do this is by increasing your daily steps. If your average baseline is 6,000 steps per day, set a goal to increase to 8,000.

3. Track your average weight

Don’t get caught up in day to day weight fluctuations.
Weigh yourself daily, or at least a few days per week (first thing in the morning) and take the average each week.

If you’re losing 0.25-1% of your bodyweight per week, don’t change a thing.

I've seen too many people panic when they're actually on track (even if it doesn't seem fast enough)

Only make adjustments when you hit a plateau.
Not based on how you feel, but what the data actually shows.

First increase steps when able.
Then increase something from exercise.
And only then decrease calories...doing this first will give you less energy for number one and number two.

Little changes go a long way, don’t rush the process.

If you need any help with this, hit reply.
If you want to see any more emails like this, reply 'weight loss' and we can dive deeper into the strategies that will help you burn fat (and keep it off)

I know how frustrating it is to feel stuck here, despite working hard with your diet and exercise.

If you need help with an exercise program that is intentionally designed to boost performance and burn calories (without burning you out), try our programming out free for 7 days.