How can I lose a lot of weight fast with diets?

BUCKLE UP, BECAUSE WHAT FOLLOWS CAN AND WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE, IF YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS!

Take it from someone who has done them all.

• I have tried intermittent fasting.
• I tried the ketogenic approach.
• I tried low-carb.
• I tried simply restricting my calories.
• I tried water-fasts.
• I tried going vegan.
• I tried Atkins.
• I tried the Warrior-Diet.
• I tried the OMAD-Diet.
• I tried EVERY diet in the book.

Now, which would I recommend?

No one. And all of them. Kinda. Piqued your interest?

Okay, I’ll turn this into a valuable life lesson for you.

95% (!!!) of diets fail within a year.

If you read, apply and understand all of this, I promise you will fall in the lucky 5% that lose weight and keep it off for good.

You can get a wonderful physique, if you follow this.

I’ll be blunt: I came to understand WHY and HOW this works, only recently myself. I am very thick-headed, you see, and it took me YEARS to finally understand the simple principle behind how weight loss works.

Let us start easy: I mentioned earlier that 95% of diets fail.
Now, why is that? Why can’t you keep the weight off, after months of dieting, loosing 50, maybe 100 pounds, just to put them back on?

The reason is so simple, it is baffling.

First of all, you have to understand the basic principle of weight loss.

Losing weight is simply burning more calories than you consume.

Calories are given by the three macronutrients: Fat (8), Protein (4) and Carbohydrates (4).

The numbers in the brackets are the amount of calories one gram of macronutrient equal to.

So, I’ll assume now 2000 kcal as your daily energetic output.
(For women that is less, for men more, depending on weight and muscle-mass. Also, activity plays an important role. On my marathon-day I had an output of 5100 kcals, on days without sports obviously much less.)

We go with 2000 though for simplicity.
This most likely won’t apply to you, just search online for a BMR (basal metabolic rate) calculator and find out your approximative value. (Approximative, because two people of the same age, weight and build can still have different BMR.)

Now. To burn 2 pounds of WEIGHT (or 1kg), you will have to (roughly) burn 7000kcals.

The time frame in which you plan on doing so is up to you.

Now you’re thinking: “Marco, that is great! So if I eat only 1000kcals a day for a month, I burn 30.000kcals, which are approxiately 4,5 kgs of fat?”

See, I pulled a little sneaky on ya there. Observe how I said that you burn WEIGHT, I didn’t specify if that weight is muscle or fat.

The truth is, if you restrict your daily intake by more than 500kcals, your body won’t only burn fat - it is going to eat your precious muscle.

This is for a couple of reasons undesirable.

• First, your body will likely (hopefully) put all that muscle-weight back, once you quit “dieting”.
• Second, you essentially lowered your BMR. Muscle burns more energy than fat, so the more you have of the first, the higher your BMR is.

So, let us clarify why most diets fail within the year.

Take Bob. Bob is a 120kg, 47 year old man with an office-job.

Bob eats rather unhealthy, one can already judge by his weight. He puts in a solid 4000 kcals everyday, and got fatter and fatter.

One day Bob looks in the mirror and realises how hideous he has become. He decides then and there: “That’s it, I’m going on a diet.”

And on a diet he went. Any of the upper mentioned examples have one in common: They won’t work without restricting your calories.

So Bob eats, keto, let’s assume. He swiftly goes from consuming 4000 kcals a day to 1500, starves himself, but for a good cause, he thinks, since he loses over 2kgs a week!

After 6 weeks, Bob is down 15 kgs! Everyone compliments him, he looks amazing.

He might even go for another 3–4 weeks, because motivation was so high.

Now it is christmas time. With all the delicious treats, Bob thinks to himself: “I put in all that effort, I can enjoy myself a little now.”

And Bob starts binging on cookies, cake and desserts like he never did before.

Obviously, this binging is temporary. After 2 weeks he goes back to his old eating habits.

But do you think that after binging for a while he goes back to keto? Yeah naw.

Bob goes back to the same diet he had BEFORE he had lost all his weight. Eating again 4000 kcals a day, and slowly building all the fat back up.

And that is how, after 1 year, Bob is back to his 120–130 kgs. Fatigue is high, motivation is low.
Bob gives up, because he “tried everything” and “it just doesn’t work” for him.

So. You hopefully understand what Bob did wrong.

That is why I had the initial claim that no diet ever works.
Because we all define a diet as something timely limited.
We diet for a month, two, or even three. But this won’t keep your weight off, if you go back to your old habits.

I also said though that all diets work. Now, how’s that?
They all work because, as we have all different food-preferences, you have to pick the one diet that makes it easy for you to stay under your BMR. If that is keto, go keto.
If it is intermittent fasting, do that one. There is not ONE PERFECT DIET, only the one that works for YOU.

And you can switch it up. You can do keto, IF, OMAD, whatever, when you get bored, just do something else.

You might even ditch “diets” completely and realize you are good off just by skipping dinner, or lunch, or whatever.

Doesn’t matter which diet you choose, here are some (personal) tips that makes it easier (for me) to stay lean:

• Don’t drink your calories. Avoid all juices, avoid alcohol. You can have them, but IN MODERATION.
  Many want a six-pack, but drink beer 4–5 times a week. Some people can get away with that, but that’s not you, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this right now.
• Pick some kind of exercise. It is important you enjoy it!
  I started with going to the gym with a friend twice a week.
  Now I workout at the gym 4 times a week, box twice a week, have a race every month and finished my first marathon only 3 weeks ago!
  Also, the best trick in my book: ALWAYS work out with someone.
  I have found myself 3 friends, who I go with to the gym and boxing together.
  Suddenly, being unmotivated because the weather is bad, or you’re just not feeling it, or whatever, isn’t a reason anymore, because someone else holds you accountable. 6 of my current 7 workouts are with friends, and the one run a week I have to do alone, because I am proud to say that I’m on a level with my running that I don’t have a lot of friends who can keep up.
• Avoid refined sugar. I quit it for three months, and the tiredness and my cravings disappeared! The first 3 weeks are horrible, but afterwards, you feel like someone lifted literal weight of your shoulders.
• PPPPPP: Prior planning prevents piss poor performance.
  If you prepare your meals ahead, you’re much less likely to make the wrong choices.
  If you don’t buy chocolate, you won’t be able to eat any at midnight, when the hunger strikes. But hey, you still got bananas and some nuts! :D

In conclusion:

You are what you eat. If you enjoy eating donuts and cakes so much, trust me, you will look like it.
There is no “secret formula”, or pill, or tonic, or whatever, eat the fat off.

You will only ever get out what you put in. Stop searching for a “magic weapon” or whatever, and clean up your diet.

If you eat like sh*t, you will look like sh*t.

Oh, and one more very important thing:

It is a simple, yet cunning change in mindset. Don’t forbid yourself to eat or drink anything, but consciously make the better choice.

You don’t avoid sugar because “you’re not allowed sugar in keto” (for example), you avoid sugar because you decide that it isn’t worth it for you, and, VERY important, because you PREFER something different.

Also, you can still have everything in moderation. Today, I am traveling.
I am sitting at the airport for two hours now, will have to wait another 4, and then won’t be able (due to university, which I go to directly from the airport) to prepare anything, so I prepared my food in advance.
I had a big bowl of oatmeal this morning, have two bananas with me, and tonight, in celebration of returning home, I’ll go to an all-you-can-eat-Sushi.
So what.
I KNOW though that first thing after uni tomorrow, and every following day of the week, I have PREPPED my food in advance to a total of 2300 kcals, and I burn around 2500–3000 every day, trough my level of activity.