Recently, Emily and I were discussing someone’s experience with losing weight. They explained how they lost 30 pounds. This is an impressive number. But what stood out more was hearing about the process. They were miserable the entire time.
This is a huge red flag for someone trying to lose weight. I’m not saying it can’t work. Clearly this person made a pretty dramatic change doing what they were doing. But when you are miserable during the process, the chances you’ll be able to keep that weight off are pretty slim. Eventually you won’t be able to keep it up because you will come to the conclusion that it isn’t worth the effort anymore. And this is when the weight starts to creep back up.
But the opposite approach doesn’t work either. The easiest path has its problems as well. Let’s look at both extremes and then find what works best.
Too Hot: The Hardcore Approach
We often see this approach at the New Year. With motivation levels super high, people want to go all in. They drastically cut calories and remove food groups AND dramatically increase their exercise levels.
The problem is, this approach asks you to turn your whole world upside down. Your meals, schedule, social life, and energy have all changed at once. You can power through at first usually running off the motivation you have of getting started, but reality usually steps in.
The lower calories is leaving you run down and unable to recover from the intense training. Then work gets busy, stress goes up, and you start to think it isn’t worth the results anymore and give up. When these types of plan fall apart, it tends to fall apart completely.
The research points in the same direction. In one analysis, how much weight people lost tracked closely with how well they followed their diet, but not with which diet they were on. Another found that people who stuck with their weight loss diet more closely regained less weight over the following two years. In other words, the best plan is the one you can actually follow. A plan that makes you miserable is one you won’t follow for long.
Too Cold: The Easy Way Out
On the other end of the spectrum, we’re often looking for the easy way out. A fad diet, a magic supplement, cleanses, or another latest quick fix. These days we see it in many that go on GLP-1 medications. This is not saying that weight loss medications are bad. They can be incredibly effective of course. But when the person taking them has the mentality of not wanting to make any changes in their lifestyle and just rely on medicine to do the work for them, we have a problem.
Medications, supplements, and other things that might fall in this category can be a legitimate tool for some people. But thinking any single tool will solve everything misses the point. Or the idea that there is something wrong with you and this “thing” is the only way you can be successful is a dangerous mentality. Nothing you take or buy changes how you eat day to day, how much you move, how you sleep, or how you handle stress. They may assist those things, but you still have to put the time and effort into making those changes. Whatever you use to lose weight, your behaviors still determine what you happens next.
The Real Challenge Is Behavior
For most people, the struggle isn’t knowing what to do. It’s actually doing it consistently. Changing behavior is hard, and that’s where most people get stuck. The good news is that once you get past that, following through gets much simpler.
The National Weight Control Registry tracks people who lost significant weight and kept it off. Most of them changed both their eating and their activity, and the overwhelming majority said the key was changing their lifestyle for good rather than following a temporary diet. Common habits included regular physical activity (walking was the most common), a consistent eating pattern, and catching slips early before they turned into bigger regains. Nothing exotic, just ordinary habits done consistently. These are observational findings, so they show what successful maintainers tend to do, not proof that these habits are the cause.
I get it. This isn’t the sexy answer you want to hear, but this is what really works.
Just Right: The Goldilocks Approach
Your job is to find the sweet spot somewhere in the middle. Make just enough change to make a difference, but not so much that it sets you up for failure. What those changes are is really up to you and your lifestyle. You have to be a little uncomfortable, but not so challenged you will quit at the first roadblock you get to.
We can’t forget about consistency being the key to putting this all together. A small change done for two years will beat a dramatic change done for two weeks. Progress comes from repeating the right things over time, not from how intense you can be for a short stretch.
When you are thinking about a change to make ask yourself this. Can you see yourself still doing this a year from now? If the answer is no, it’s probably too hot.
There might be some times you want to implement short time extremes. Maybe you want to try a dry January. This might be ok, but you have to have an exit strategy. If the goal is to not drink alcohol for one month and then February the plan is to drink as much as you used to, you might want to rethink why you are doing this. Think more long term. Use the one month as a kick start, but then have a plan on what your strategy should be after that.
Action Steps for Better Success
1. Start with one or two changes, not ten. Trying to fix everything at once is the hardcore approach in disguise. Pick the changes that will make the biggest difference for you and start there.
2. Make them small enough to do on your worst day. A 10-minute walk after dinner that you actually do beats an hour-long workout you do twice and then abandon. Adding protein to breakfast is easier to repeat than a complete overhaul of how you eat.
3. Strength train a few days a week. Weight loss without strength training can mean losing muscle along with fat, and muscle is what keeps you strong and capable as you age.
4. Build a daily movement baseline. Walking is a great place to start. It’s low stress, easy to repeat, and it adds up.
5. Track the habit, not just the scale. Did you take the walk? Did you get your protein in? The scale moves around for lots of reasons, but habits are something you control. If tracking tends to make you anxious, choose a simpler way to check in.
6. Plan for slips. Everyone has an off day. The goal is to get back on track at your next meal or the next day, not next Monday. One off day isn’t a failure. Quitting is.
7. Get support. A coach, a training group, or a friend who keeps you accountable makes it easier to show up on the days when motivation is low.
8. Add the next change only when the first feels automatic. Layering changes slowly is how big results get built without turning your life upside down.
What This Means for You
You don’t have to choose between misery and magic. The approach that works is usually less dramatic than people expect: a few changes you can actually keep, repeated consistently for a long time. Weight loss isn’t won in a few weeks of suffering. It’s won by the habits you can still see yourself doing next year.
When you see that next shiny object, run it through these tests to see if it is a good fit or just another thing that will likely set you back.
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