I find it most beneficial to start with what I call the Base Habits and the Two Week Rule. Together they make up Phase One of my plan.
The Base Habits are three things you do every day. They stay part of your routine for your whole weight loss journey. The Two Week Rule is your first two weeks, where you do those three things and nothing else. No gym yet. Two Week Rule
These habits make sure you see progress before you start training. They also mean that if you can't get to the gym, you are still on the path to weight loss.
Three things, every day:
- Weigh yourself
- Log everything you eat
- Walk 10,000 steps
Why We Start Here
You can't outwork a bad diet.
An hour of hard training burns a few hundred calories. Ninety seconds of eating puts them back. 3,500 calories = 1 pound of fat.
The gym is one hour. What you do with the other twenty-three is what actually changes your body: what you eat, and how much you move.
The reason steps matter so much is because ten thousand a day burns more than the workout does, it doesn't wreck you, and it doesn't leave you starving afterward. It just adds up, every day, whether you notice or not.
So we start with food and steps. We need to see the scale start to move before adding the gym. The Base Habits are where the bulk of the work is.
The Three Habits
Weigh yourself every morning
Same time, after using the bathroom, before you eat or drink anything. Record it in the spreadsheet I gave you at our kickoff call.
Your weight will go up some days. That's normal and it doesn't mean anything on its own. What we care about is the weekly average, not any single number. Weight
Hit your calorie target
You already have your number from our kickoff call. It's based on your height, weight, age, and activity level, and it puts you in a light deficit, about 300 to 500 calories under your maintenance.
Light on purpose. When we add the gym in a couple weeks, the deficit grows on its own without you eating less. I'll explain this further on the Calories page and during our first meeting. Calories
Walk 10,000 steps
Every day. This is your baseline goal. You can go over, but do your best to not go below 10,000 steps in a day. Do not get in the mindset of "I will make up those missed steps tomorrow." This creates inconsistency.
Ten minutes of walking is roughly 1,000 steps. Break it up however you want. Walk at lunch, park further away, laps around the house at 9pm if that's what it takes. It all counts the same.
Diets With a Name Are Marketing
Keto, paleo, carnivore, intermittent fasting, whatever's next. These diets work by creating restrictions. They tell you WHAT to eat and what NOT to eat, which usually causes people to eat less than they were before. Eating fewer calories than you burn is called a calorie deficit, and that's the mechanism behind weight loss.
Where these diets fall short is that they never tell you HOW MUCH to eat. That number is different for everyone, and it depends on your body and your activity, not on a set of food rules.
The same goes for protein, carbs, and fat. You need a certain amount of each, and no diet name will tell you whether you're getting it.
You don't need a diet with a name. You need to know how much you're eating and what it does to your weight over time. That's what we're building.
What You Need to Buy
There are only five items you need to get started.
- Digital food scale
- Bathroom scale
- Step tracker
- Calorie tracking app
- Tracking spreadsheet
What Day One Actually Looks Like
The moment you decide to start, you go to the grocery store.
Build the list around what fits your targets. Chicken, rice, potatoes, eggs, lean beef, vegetables, fruit. Boring is fine. Boring is repeatable. Consistency is what makes tracking trends easier.
Don't buy junk food. Don't think "I will just have a little bit and track it." Just take the temptations out of your house as much as possible. The best decision you make all week is the one you make in the store, when you're not hungry and standing in your kitchen at 9pm.
Prep and stock the fridge. Every prepped meal is a decision you don't have to make later. Make the right choice the easy choice.
Supplements: mostly no. A few are worth it. Most are not. Don't spend money here until we talk. Supplements
You Are Not Going to Do This Perfectly
The two weeks are for building the habits, not executing them flawlessly from day one.
You'll weigh peanut butter and realize your spoonful was two hundred calories. You'll find out the chicken breast you called eight ounces was twelve.
That's the point. None of that is failure, it's you finding out what you've actually been eating this whole time. You can't fix a number you've never seen.
Saying No to Food
At some point in these two weeks, someone will offer you something that doesn't fit your new diet plan.
You can say no. You can also bring your own food to a family dinner. People will comment on it. It's fine. To accomplish the goal of weight loss, you need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. And if you space out your meals well enough and eat filling foods that are not calorie dense, you will not be that uncomfortable or hungry.
You might just need to start saying no to things you used to say yes to.
What the Gym Is For (Later)
You lift to keep the muscle you already have while you lose fat.
You don't need to kill yourself in the gym, and you don't need to do endless cardio. The only reason to do cardio at the gym is if it's an easy way to get your steps in.
What Happens After Two Weeks
We look at your data together: average weight change, average calories, step consistency. Then we adjust your numbers based on what your data shows.
I'll send you the training material a few days before week two ends, so you have it ready to go.
The Two Week Rule page picks up from here. It covers your first two weeks in detail: what to expect as you go, where your calorie number comes from, and how the check-in works once week two ends.
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