How to Lose Weight FAST- Tips You Don't Know

“How to lose weight fast”. Probably one of the most Googled fitness-related searches, if I had to guess. Between the obesity crisis and social media comparison crisis, people are looking for answers.

Compound this with the don’t-have-any-patience-crisis and, well, you’re reading this post.

If you’ve ever been in a spot where you need to drop some extra pounds, like now, and don’t have time for weeks of dieting and exercise, you’ve come to the right place.

We’re going to discuss alternative weight loss routes that you’ve never heard, that the pros don’t want you to know about.

Disclaimer: Don’t actually do anything in part one. You will burn calories from laughter, however.

Pt 1: How to Lose Weight Fast

Shark Attack

Besides liposuction, the only proven and effective form of spot reduction. Ten times more effective than sitting on the inner thigh machine for 30 minutes while trolling Instagram,

Walk from Target to Your Car in Texas

For faster results, wear a snowsuit.

Pick up a Cocaine Habit

This strategy works in two ways:

You’ll have tons of energy and no appetite.
You won’t have any money for food.

Enlist in the Marine Corps

The only place where you’ll burn calories due to the adrenaline rush I guarantee you’ll be given if you make your bed wrong.

Gas Station Sushi

Slight risk of sh*tting out your spleen and possibly needing antibiotics, but it works. For best results, leave it in your car overnight first.

*I feel like this needs its own disclaimer: do not actually do this. I am not liable if you don’t have the common sense to avoid well known ways to get food poisoning.

Binge Watch the Ironically Named “Santa Clarita Diet”

Maybe you have a tougher stomach than me, but this is one show I was not at all tempted to snack through.

Want to know what all of the above “strategies” have in common? They are literally just about as ridiculous as some of the “lose weight fast” strategies and products that we see peddled around the internet these days.

Pt 2: How to Actually Lose Weight

Okay, in this section, all humor aside, we are going to dig into how to actually lose weight. We will cover: ways to speed it up, myths that are killing your progress, and how losing weight the wrong way will actually make you fatter.

Ditch the Diet Myths

There is no “better than the other” diet- high carb, low carb, high fat, high protein, the donut diet, whatever. To lose weight, the bottom line is that you must burn more calories than you consume, and we manipulate this through diet and exercise.

A Note on Keto

I want to talk about the Keto Diet right now since eating butter to lose weight seems to be a hot topic. The Keto diet works exactly the same as any other diet. All you are doing is burning fat for fuel instead of carbs.

Just because you are burning fat, does not mean that you are burning BODY fat. If you’re loading up on 3,000 calories of butter and bacon and cheese, and only burning 1,800 calories in a day, guess what?

Those extra 1,200 calories are going right to your waistline. And your arteries.

A Note on Carbs

I’m going to say this louder for the people in the back: carbs are not the enemy.

Let me clarify:

Carbs are a fuel source, just like fat is if you’re doing the keto diet. They power you through runs, lifts and carrying groceries inside in one trip.

If you eat more calories than you burn, you will not lose weight. If these calories happen to come from carbs, the same applies. Carbs take up less room in your stomach generally, and do not make you feel as satiated, so it is easy to overdo it.

Carbs also trigger the pleasure sensors in our brains, because for some reason the human loves sugar, which causes us to crave more of it. This also puts us at risk for over eating.

If you are replacing the calories that should be allocated to protein with carbs, you will not burn muscle and your metabolism will suffer.

If you are not eating enough carbs and you are also not in ketosis, you will crash and your metabolism will suffer.

You want an optimal ratio of carbs, fats and proteins- also known as macronutrients (macros)- and if you are new to this, I recommend getting help identifying how much of each that you need, and then using an app like MyFitnessPal to track them.

Carbs affect different bodies differently, based on your blood type. If you are carb sensitive, you will crash more often, crave them more and have a harder time losing weight. I recommend testing for this and consulting someone certified in nutrition to come up with a plan that works for you.

I will cover more on macronutrients and diet plans in a future post. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions here.

Ditch the Snowsuit Myths

I’m going to combine all products that fall under this topic into one term that I just made up: snowsuit myths.

Similar to doing anything in Texas in a snowsuit, the only weight you’re losing is water weight. You’re also messing with your body’s optimal sodium and electrolyte levels. Not only is this not helpful, it is damaging to your overall performance, as well as your organ function, skin, hair, nails, etc.

Oh, and I bet you’re paying money for these water sucking products too. That’s awesome. I’m looking at you, belly bands and sweat creams.

Let me caveat- when you remove water from your body, your skin does tighten against your muscles and you look leaner. This is super helpful for special events, photo shoots, getting on stage, etc. This is super not helpful for your typically Tuesday morning stairmaster sesh.

Set a High Goal With a Defined Time Period

You’ll read lots of places that you shouldn’t put more than a sustainable amount of effort towards a goal. I disagree. If you have 100 pounds to lose because you’re at risk of a heart attack, the faster you can unclog your arteries the better.

Similarly, if you have an event coming up that you want to lean out quickly for, there is nothing wrong with devoting a high level of effort towards that goal. The key is to have a defined time period during which to expend unsustainable effort, and to have a plan for continuing at a reduced effort after that time period, so that you don’t crash and burn.

It is OKAY to go hard in the paint for a goal. It is OKAY to do more than what you can sustain long term. Just have a PLAN and when it’s time to scale down, stick to the plan.

Don’t try to keep going balls to the walls until you burn out, and also don’t drop your pack and do nothing and lose all of your results.

Staying in a deficit for too long of a time period will have a massive effect on your metabolism, causing you to be lethargic, and for the calories you eat to have a much higher storage rate.

Also, if you go from your lean machine program to the couch sitting-donut eating program overnight, the massive jump in calories and sugar will glue itself to your bones faster than you can say “America runs on…”.

(Contrary to popular belief, most Americans that run on Dunkin’s don’t actually do much running. I love my donuts, but I don’t advocate the donut diet.)

If I know I have a photo shoot coming up in 4-8 weeks, I will do things like:

Add fasted cardio to my morning routine
Increase my calorie deficit
Cut my carbs and use exogenous ketones to increase the amount of body fat that I target *(something I will cover in a later post, that I haven’t talked a lot on)
Increase the number of times per week that I do cardio
Increase the volume on my weight training days
Cut out all sugar (including donuts- extreme, I know)
Add an additional HIIT training day
Add 1-DB Goddess and Thyro-Drive to my supplement stack

*Ad: 1stPhorm does not run sales or promotions, because their products are high enough quality that there is constant demand. However, you can get free shipping by ordering through the links above, or at 1stphorm.com/halfpint .

Thank you for contributing to my donut fund- and the ability to do fun things like product giveaways.

Do I do these things all the time? Definitely not. I love donuts and I love sleep. When I reach my goal, I scale back down to a pre-determined activity level that I plan for so that I don’t rebound hard and waste all my progress.

See:
10 Best Exercises to Grow and Shape Your Glutes
Cardio Options That Aren’t Running

Good Weight vs Bad Weight

What happens when you get on the starvation and cardio diet and lose a bunch of weight super fast? Well, you burn some fat…but you also burn a ton of muscle, and that is not what you want.

Believe me, I’ve done it, and it’s a pain in the butt to recover from. Building muscle takes time and effort. Maintaining a large percentage of lean muscle mass keeps your metabolism running high, and causes you to burn more calories naturally throughout the day.

At the end of the day, you can easily end up with a higher body fat percentage, because that’s what you converted your lean muscle to. Your body will go into starvation mode, causing your metabolism to drop and hold on to calories even more aggressively. Not ideal.

Ways to avoid doing this:

Limit your sustained cardio to 3-4 times a week max
Use HIIT cardio and higher volume lifts to burn more calories in a session while preserving muscle mass
Don’t exceed more than a 700 calorie daily deficit. The recommended deficit is actually 500, but if you’re going for a short term goal it’s safe to increase that slightly.
Refuel immediately after a workout with quick digesting carbs and protein

How to Burn Your Stubborn Fat

Without getting to deep into the science, there are different types of fat cells. One type is fairly easy to burn off through increased activity and a clean diet. The second type is your emergency fat storage- the problem areas that seem to not want to let go, even when you get fairly lean.

These fat cells only metabolize when they sense a state of emergency, like starvation. Unfortunately, when you induce that kind of stress on your body, it also tends to metabolize muscle cells into energy or into fat storage, which is not what you want.

The three best ways that I have found to hit my super stubborn fat storage are to:

Cut all sugar- this includes high sugar fruits, dried fruits, any added syrups in protein bars, and alcohol. (I don’t drink anyways, but I used to, and I always had to cut it out to lean down.)
Add supplements- I’ve tried lotttsssss in my time in the industry, and the ones linked above are my tried and true go-to’s
Increase the intensity of my workouts. Hands down the most important one.

If you’ve been training for a while, it’s easy to settle into going through the motions if you have a good idea of what you’re doing. We also unconsciously settle into routines and habits that influence the exercises we do most frequently, our reps and sets and our rest cycles.

Really put a focus on pushing yourself. Don’t limit to five sets of ten reps- max out. Always get one, two, three more. Add drop sets. Get off your phone. Pay attention to your rest periods. Get an intensity mindset. You’re not here to dabble- you are here to dominate.

Add HIIT workouts, and go all out. Workout structures like AMRAPs (as many rounds as possible), EMOMs (every minute on the minute) and RFT (rounds for time) are awesome ways to push yourself beyond what you thought you were capable of.

Check out my 5 HIIT Workouts With Zero Equipment here. I go over exactly how to implement the above acronyms, and how to structure your own workouts to do anywhere, with whatever equipment you have.

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In Conclusion

If I had to summarize my tips for accelerating weight loss without sacrificing muscle or metabolism, it would be these:

Invest in quality supplements.
Increase the intensity of your workouts.
Plan for and track your nutrition.

Thank you for reading! If you got anything out of this post, do your girl a solid and leave a comment or hit the easy share button at the top. It helps me know what to write more of, and tells Google that my site is legit!

Happy shredding!