Video | Ways to Lose Weight | Boundaries | Structured Flexibility | Accelerators

If you would like to lose weight or improve your weight loss results but you feel some resistance to getting started, you’re not alone.

Changing your food choices, becoming more active, and putting limitations on certain foods, calories, or the hours that you eat can feel like a loss of freedom or a burden that you are just not ready to take on in your already over-busy life. 

You can be successful and avoid feeling overwhelmed by setting boundaries, creating structured flexibility, and then adding accelerators. I share this 3-step approach in this blog post. 

How to Break Down Your Weight Loss Goal to Avoid Overwhelm [3 Steps] [Video]

In this video, you’ll learn…

• Three steps to help you break down your weight loss goal.
• Further information within each step.
• Books, blog posts and studies to use as resources!

3 Ways to Lose Weight 

The average person’s daily calorie consumption has increased by 27 percent since the 1960s (1).

That increase is, in large part, due to the increase in calorie-dense processed and refined foods. 

In the 60s, those foods were just starting to make their way onto our grocer’s shelves. Today, they make up 70% of the foods in our grocery stores. 

With this abundance and excess surrounding us, to lose weight in today’s world, some restrictions must occur. What you choose to cut back on is up to you. There are three different approaches:

• limiting the number of hours during which you consume food (intermittent fasting)
• limiting how much you eat (calories)
• limiting certain foods (refined and starchy carbs)

The first step is to set boundaries around time, calories, or carbs. 

Step #1: Set Boundaries

There is a pre-step involved. Before you can set boundaries, you need to know your baseline. How many hours a day do you currently eat, and how many calories and carbs do you currently consume? 

To figure this out, I recommend recalling your eating over the past three days rather than keeping a food diary for the coming days. Both methods have flaws, but if you’ve already decided to change your eating habits, it will skew the results of a food diary.

If, instead, you recall what you ate over the past three days, you put your memory to the test, but you get a more accurate picture of the diet you are moving away from. 

Time Boundaries

In a past blog post, I reported on a study showing that intermittent fasting was more effective for weight loss than calorie restriction, and participants assigned to the fasting group had an easier time sticking with the 6-month study period.

If you are feeling some resistance to changing your food choices, you may find that decreasing the hours that you eat is a more doable option. 

To do this, first, think back over the past three days and recall when you started eating and when you stopped. Then, shorten that eating window by one or more hours, forming your time boundary. 

To give you some clarity, before joining the study that I mentioned, participants were eating on average for 12 hours a day. They decreased their food intake to 8 hours (time boundary). 

That was the only change they made. They could eat anything they wanted. After 6 months, they lost, on average, 3.56% of their body weight compared to the controls. 

Calorie Boundaries

There is certainly evidence that cutting back on calories works for weight loss, regardless of whether you follow a low-fat or low-carb lifestyle (2).

Let’s look at how to create a calorie boundary. 

Determining your caloric needs is never going to be a perfect science because there are so many variables to consider. There are a few methods to choose from.

One way is to recall your food intake over the past three days to determine your current calorie intake. Once you have that baseline, you can reduce it to create your calorie boundary. 

How much to reduce varies among individuals. Consider starting with a 100- 500 calorie reduction. For instance, if you discover through your 3-day food recall exercise that you consume an average of 1,800 calories, you can reduce that to 1,400 calories (calorie boundary).

Another option is to estimate your caloric needs. You can obtain a ballpark figure from this admittedly oversimplified formula: 10 calories per pound of your desired body weight.

In my Freedom 40-Day Diet Reset Program, I share how to calculate your caloric needs based on your lean mass, not your total weight. The method requires you to gather some measurements and is not a perfect science, but I like this method because, ultimately, you want to feed your muscles, not your fat.

Carbohydrate Boundaries

As with calories, there is evidence that reducing your intake of refined and processed carbs works for weight loss, regardless of whether you follow a low-fat or low-carb lifestyle.

When it comes to creating a boundary around carbohydrates, you have a choice. You can set your boundary around the type of carbs or number of grams you consume. 

If you do a three-day food recall exercise, you may find that you are consuming a lot of refined foods, like the 3 C’s: cookies, cakes, and candies. A great boundary to set is zero added sugar. 

Avoiding sugar is a keystone habit, which is a habit that, when changed, produces a ripple effect that causes other patterns to change as well. Get sugar out of your diet, and it will lead to a cascade of other actions that raise your baseline of health without force or the need for willpower.

In my book, Zero Sugar / One Month, I define zero added sugar as avoiding foods and drinks with sugar listed as one of the first three ingredients. 

You can also create a carbohydrate boundary based on the total carbohydrate grams you consume daily. To create a boundary, use the 3-day food recall exercise to determine your current total carb intake. Once you have that baseline, you can reduce it to create your calorie boundary.

How many carbs you can consume is your carbohydrate tolerance, which is unique to you. Consider reducing your intake in 10-gram increments based on your comfort level and goal. For instance, if you discover through your 3-day food recall exercise that you consume an average of 90 grams of carbs daily, you can reduce that to 60 grams (carb boundary).

I recommend counting total carbs, not net carbs. To give you a loose guideline, consuming between 50 and 125 grams puts you in the low-carb range; fewer than 50 grams begins the keto range.

Can I Combine Boundaries?

If you want to combine boundaries, that is up to you, but the purpose of this post is to avoid being overwhelmed. Don’t take on more than you feel comfortable with. You can get results by focusing on one thing: time, calories, or carbs.

Once you’ve chosen your focus, you can turn down the emotional energy of dieting even further by setting up Structured Flexibility.

Step #2: Set Up Structured Flexibility

By structured flexibility, I mean creating an upper limit for your boundary. 

You are not going to be able to stick with exact numbers every day: an exact 8-hour eating window, exactly 1400 calories, exactly 60 carbs. (Note that these are just examples, your numbers will be different.)

Not only is it impossible due to the differences in foods and life events, but it is also stressful and eventually overwhelming.

Simply take your boundary and give yourself a little bit of built-in wiggle room. For instance, if your time boundary is an 8-hour eating window, make your upper limit 9 hours. 

Your bullseye every day will remain 8 hours, but if unforeseen circumstances arise, you have an extra hour to play with. 

This helps you avoid feeling overwhelmed because you built in the flexibility before the difficult situation arose. There’s always something. Traffic delays your dinner, your hunger is up because of your activity level that day, or it’s just one of those days. With built-in flexibility, you can more calmly go with the flow without feeling like you blew it and want to throw in the towel. 

Setting up structured flexibility with calories or carbs is the same idea. If your calorie boundary is 1,400 a day, cement that as your daily goal, but create an upper limit of, say, 1,600. If your carb boundary is 60 grams, aim for that each day, but allow yourself up to 80 carbs for those unusual days when life is throwing you curveballs. (The numbers are just examples. Yours will be different.) 

Yes, you will exceed your boundary, but you won’t lose control because your plan includes structured flexibility. 

When you establish these first two steps, boundaries and structured flexibility, you will find yourself progressing without feeling overwhelmed. Now, you can add weight loss accelerators. 

Step #3: Add Accelerators

We often make this the first step. It needs to be the last. After working with your flexible boundaries, you’ve given your body and brain time to adapt to the food changes, giving you more energy, control over hunger and cravings, and mental clarity. Now, you have the freedom to add accelerators. Here are three to think about:

#1: Add More Fasting Hours. You can do whatever feels right for your lifestyle. For instance, you might increase your fasting period from 16 to 18 hours daily or just on weekdays.

#2: Practice Intermittent Carnivore. Intermittent carnivore is a diet regimen that introduces brief periods of eating only animal-based foods. These periods of very low to no carb intake keep insulin levels low, making it easier for your fat cells to release fat.

#3: Add Exercise. Exercise is one of the best things you can do for your body and mental health. But jumping into a higher level of training than you are used to can increase hunger and fatigue to a point that sabotages your progress. Get your diet under control first, and then increase or add to your exercise routine. 

Takeaway

Everyone’s metabolism and lifestyle is different, so the boundaries, structured flexibility, and accelerators that work for you will be up to you. But keep this in mind. Your ultimate goal is to find a way of eating and moving that is easy for you to follow, enjoyable, and effective. Those are my 3E’s and when you have them in place, there is no need or desire to return to your old diet. 

Thank you for reading and have a wonderful week!

References:

(1) Gould, Skye. “charts that show how much more Americans eat than they used to.” Business Insider.–2017.–10.05.–URL: https://www. businessinsider.com/daily-calories-americans-eat-increase-2016-07 (дата обращения: 10.01. 2021) (6).

(2) Gardner, Christopher D., et al. “Effect of low-fat vs low-carbohydrate diet on 12-month weight loss in overweight adults and the association with genotype pattern or insulin secretion: the DIETFITS randomized clinical trial.” Jama 319.7 (2018): 667-679.

About the Author

Becky Gillaspy, DC, is the author of The Intermittent Fasting Guide and Cookbook and Zero Sugar / One Month. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with research honors from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1991.