For significant fat loss and changing the number on the scale, focus primarily on diet changes, as diet does “all the heavy lifting” in weight loss.
Separate the goal of exercise from the goal of weight loss to avoid feelings of failure and damage to self-esteem, as exercise alone is often ineffective for significant weight loss.
Understand that movement is essential for human bodies to function properly, a legacy of our hunter-gatherer past, even if not primarily for calorie burning.
Engage in regular physical activity to reduce chronic, damaging inflammation, as the body diverts energy away from unnecessary immune responses when more is spent on exercise.
Make an effort to get outside more often, ideally with friends, to move your body, get fresh air and vitamin D, and distance yourself from the refrigerator, countering the modern tendency to spend 90% of life indoors.
Prioritize and nurture personal connections in your life, as these social bonds are deeply important for human well-being and a legacy of our ancestral past.
Reflect on your priorities and choose to balance work with time for family, adequate sleep, and exercise, rather than working excessively and neglecting health.
Do not think you can “earn” unhealthy food by exercising more, as your body’s metabolic adjustments mean exercise doesn’t raise total expenditure as much as commonly believed, leading to potential weight gain.
Engage in short, manageable bursts of physical activity (e.g., 10 bicep curls while making a hot drink) to quickly boost self-esteem and self-worth, which can help maintain overall health efforts.
Focus on consuming real, unprocessed foods, as they make it harder to overeat and allow your brain to better signal when you are full.
Adopt a mindset where food is simply “food,” rather than expecting every meal to be a phenomenally beautiful and taste-bud-tingling experience, as this can lead to overeating processed foods.
Recognize that when you exercise more, your body adjusts by spending less energy in other areas (e.g., immune function, stress response, reproductive system) to maintain a consistent total daily calorie burn.
After losing weight (usually through diet), use exercise as a helpful tool to keep the weight off, as it aids in regulation and matching intake at a new weight.
Ensure you are not extremely inactive, as a complete lack of exercise can lead to dysregulation issues that contribute to overeating.
Engage in regular exercise to suppress the stress response (e.g., lower epinephrine and cortisol surges), which is beneficial for overall health.
Regular exercise can lead to healthy, slightly lower levels of testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone levels, contributing to energy savings and overall regulation.
Embrace sharing food and resources within your community, as it is a fundamental human trait that strengthens social bonds and ensures everyone has access to energy.
Understand that for a given distance, the total calories burned while walking or running are roughly the same, regardless of speed.
If your goal is to burn more calories per unit of distance or vertical height, consider activities like swimming or climbing, as they are significantly more energetically costly than walking or running.
Understand that our brains, evolved for diets of unprocessed foods, are prone to overeating in a modern world with constant access to highly palatable, delicious food.