How to lose weight… AND KEEP IT OFF
Welcome to The Spotter!
I am Nolan Vannata. This newsletter is a part of my mission to make health, fitness, and nutrition content that is evidence-based, digestible, practical, and accessible.
The article you are about to read is 1% “How to lose weight…” and 99% “how to keep it off.”
Starting in late February, I did something called the “Nordic curl challenge”, where I did 10 Nordic curls every day for 30 days to see how much progress I could make. You can see the exercise in the picture below.
I promise this is relevant to the article, JUST HANG WITH ME...
Due to the slow, eccentric muscle contractions of the hamstrings, this exercise leaves you extremely sore. I recorded videos of my progress every day and posted it on TikTok and got thousands of views per video. After the 30 days, I clipped the first rep of each day together to make a montage of my progress in a three-minute video. Who doesn’t love a good before-and-after video, right?
The progress was undeniable across the thirty days. The final video got over five million views and was flooded with comments about how incredible this challenge was. People commented how much more muscular my legs were by the end of it (they looked exactly the same), asked if it fixed my knee pain, back pain, and/or bad posture (which I did not have prior to the challenge), and mentioned how inspiring this thirty-day challenge was.
I’m happy that this video got people excited and motivated, but it was a flash in the pan, both for me and them. The muscles and tendons in my hamstrings ached, I was sick of falling on my floor, and I looked and felt the same as before. The only difference was that I was better at doing this one specific exercise.
I took a two-week break from Nordic curls before doing the exercise again at work (I work in a gym) with some coworkers. I felt like I lost about HALF of my progress.
I don’t regret the challenge at all. It was fun to see my progress and the online reactions, but this was symbolic of a deeper problem in the health, fitness, and nutrition industry. This brutal thirty-day challenge had no permanent positive impact on my health, fitness, or wellbeing. Despite that, the video was flooded with views, comments, and claims of inspiration. What does NOT get millions of views is the fact that I have been exercising five to ten times per week, eating moderately well, taking rest days when needed, and getting seven to nine hours of daily sleep for the past twelve years.
This story might seem irrelevant to the reason you started reading this article, but it is unfortunately analogous to the weight loss industry.
Aggressive low-calorie diets, two-week and thirty-day challenges, juice cleanses, and detoxes dominate the weight loss market. These unsustainable weight loss practices might actually do as they claim, like “lose 10 pounds in two weeks”, but most people want to lose weight and keep it off. The “keep it off” part is where the industry is failing people.
Permanent changes will require permanent changes.
Weight regain statistics are devastating. As shown in the graph below, people tend to regain a third of the weight they lose after a year, half of it after two years, and 80% after five years. This chart represents data from long-term structured weight loss studies, which is certainly more comprehensive than a random influencers juice cleanse diet.
The data speaks for itself; Weight loss is one problem, but weight loss maintenance is a different beast. However, I believe it is something that everyone can conquer, even though it is much harder for some people compared to others due to genetics, environment, occupation, and environment. This is an uphill battle, but not an impossible one.
I want this article to increase your chance of success by discussing three topics:
The concept of an obesogenic environment
Learning from those who successfully lost weight
Practical applications and recommendations
What is an “obesogenic environment”?
An obesogenic environment is “an environment that promotes gaining weight and one that is not conducive to weight loss”. Depending on your environment, a healthy bodyweight might be the exception, not the rule.
Car dependency, screens, sedentary jobs, and constant advertisements for and access to hyperpalatable foods contribute to an environment designed for weight gain. This is why I get frustrated with advice such as, “just don’t pay attention to those ads”, “try walking or cycling to work”, or my least favorite, “just eat less”.
Changing your environment is a difficult task. You would need to actively go against the grain of the environment around you and potentially do the opposite of what you are told you should be doing. It’s hard, and sometimes frustrating, to do things a certain way when there are so many other convenient options available.
Take note of the environment around you and ask yourself two questions:
Does this contribute to an obesogenic environment?
Can I change it?
Look at your sidewalk access, your house, the layout of your grocery store, the food delivery apps on your phone, and other places you frequently visit. In many cases, you will be doing things differently compared to so many others around you.
Learning from success stories
The study, “Perspectives into the experience of successful, substantial long-term weight-loss maintenance: a systematic review”, highlights the common themes among successful weight loss maintainers. The researchers were able to identify ten themes consistent among these success stories, as well as subthemes for each. The ten themes, with examples of each, are:
Self-monitoring (portion tracking, meal prep)
External monitoring (online support, peer feedback)
Intrinsic motivation (better health, self-confidence)
Extrinsic motivation (social standing and acceptance)
Self-defined goals (activity goals)
Externally defined goals (sports events, weight targets)
Intrinsic challenges (stress, lack of time, trigger foods)
Extrinsic challenges (work, obesogenic environmental factors)
Encouraging experiences
Discouraging experiences
Many of these themes and subthemes were to be expected, like intrinsic motivation, goal setting, meal planning, calorie tracking, external feedback, and so on. I would like to highlight and unpack one theme and its accompanying subthemes:
Encouraging experiences
New community
New identity
Reinvention
The authors of the study state,
“Participants spoke of having developed new identities, transforming into people who lived healthy lives, took chances, pursued previously daunting opportunities and felt they had existentially changed indefinitely.”
I cannot emphasize this point enough. When we (fitness and nutrition coaches, other health professionals) mention “lifestyle changes”, we mean it. Your life has to change. Do you have to completely change everyone at once? Not at all. **Although, you might have to change the grocery stores you go to, how you commute to work, what your family cooks for dinner, and potentially how you socialize. This ties in with the obesogenic environment mentioned earlier. You need to change your current life*style and environment to make it conducive to your health and fitness mission.
Who you surround yourself with can make your break your ability to maintain weight. The authors state,
“Weight loss maintainers also enjoyed receiving compliments and admiration for their success and appreciated being included in new communities that they were either too insecure to approach or had felt excluded from previously.”
Many of our communities socialize by revolving around food and alcohol (i.e. lots of calorie dense food and drinks). It’s difficult to be the one who is sticking to water at a bar or bringing your own container of vegetables and lean proteins to watch a football game with friends, but I believe a group of true friends would support your health choices. If you don’t have a community willing to support you, you may need to find a new one, which is a tough pill to swallow. Having a supportive and encouraging community can massively influence your chance and degree of success.
I hope it is becoming clearer why short-term, aggressive weight loss challenges do not usually work… Successful weight loss maintainers view themselves as different people with fresh starts and openings for new experiences. There is no “finish line” for weight loss maintenance.
Weight loss maintenance shouldn’t be viewed as needing to eliminate everything fun and exciting from your life. Rather, this should be seen as a way to ADD to your life — Learn how to cook new food, explore new hiking trails, or join a community club sport.
If you want to read the full article and all of the themes of successful weight loss maintainers, click this link to access the PDF and go to page nine of the article. Reinventing oneself is likely the most difficult of the themes listed. Successful weight loss maintainers saw themselves as different, health-conscious people rather than someone going through a health phase.
Practical applications and recommendations
“Make a lifestyle change” is vague advice, so I will offer a strategy on how you might implement new healthy habits. There are three ways in which you will get the most out of your lifestyle changes:
Change realistically
Change gradually
Change enjoyably
1. Change realistically
Make your changes small. If a specific change seems too small to make a meaningful difference, that’s because it probably is. Learning basic chords on a guitar doesn’t seem like it will help you play a Jimi Hendrix song you want to learn, but it is a valuable and necessary first step onto which you will build many times over.
To me, a realistic lifestyle change passes the 80% rule. Ask yourself, “Can I do this thing with at least an 80% compliance rate for the foreseeable future?”. If the answer is “no”, then you might need to start smaller. You don’t have to apply a certain change for the rest of your life — you will find things that don’t work or are actually harder than you thought, and that’s a part of the journey.
Food swaps are an example of a small change. You can swap fatty meats for leaner cuts, or regular soda for diet (if you are concerned about artificial sweeteners, read my previous article by clicking this link). If you need more fruits and vegetables in your diet but don’t like them that much, try new cooking methods or revamp your spice cabinet. For extra physical activity, you can walk for five minutes after one meal per day, go to the gym for one 20-minute session per week, or find a new hobby that is more physically demanding.
Starting small isn’t that exciting, but you will continue to make more small changes that will stack on each other, which brings us to the next point: change gradually.
2. Change gradually
Gradual change is not only easier, but *also more controlled. It allows you to see what works and what doesn’t. If you make ten changes all at once, you have no way of assessing which changes made a meaningful impact.
As time goes on, you’ll get comfortable with your changes and adapt to a new normal. When that happens, it’s time to introduce more changes and build on your current lifestyle. Progress!
Start small, be patient, and play the long game.
3. Change enjoyably
In my opinion, this is the most important. If you are going to make a long-term change, you should enjoy it. Even if you are not particularly excited about forming new healthy habits, you should at least be able to identify some modifications that seem more or less enjoyable. If you need to include more aerobic exercise in your life but don’t like walking, cycling, or running, you can join a basketball or soccer club. If you need more fiber in your diet but don’t enjoy salads, roast a tray of vegetables or keep more fruit in your house.
Find ways to enjoy the process AND the outcome whenever possible. When you discover and apply these win-win scenarios, you can save your mental energy and willpower for the changes that require more discipline and effort.
Final thoughts
Even with the best advice and a perfect plan, losing and maintaining weight is going to be hard and you will probably need help. If you’re lucky enough to have a supportive community, you’re already on the road to success. But, as I mentioned earlier, your environment is so difficult to change. Support can also come in the form a coach — someone to help set-up and guide your journey, hold you accountable, and cheer you on.
If you expect linear progress and a magical plan that will never fail, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. If maintained weight loss is something you truly want, you need to expect errors, setbacks, frustration, and course corrections. With this mindset, these low points can be seen as a part of the process rather than a personal failure.
This article will mean nothing if you don’t put these words to action.
If you need a coach, click this link to schedule a free call with me. Helping people with these kinds of challenges is quite literally my favorite thing to do.
YOU. CAN. DO. THIS.
What’s next? 10 exercises with 5 tips for each of them
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Yes! Having an environment conducive to maintaining weight loss. Finding a way to actually enjoy what you’re eating. Any feeling of deprivation won’t work in the long run. And the part about sticking to a plan 80 percent of the time. Food and alcohol are extremely pleasurable parts of life for some of us and I personally want to include them in my lifestyle somehow.
It's a reward in itself seeing lower numbers on the scale. I could even appreciate how some people wind up with eating disorders. I dropped my weight lower than I would want it now and eventually gained back to a weight I want to stay near to. This might account for why some stats will show people have failed or it's a good stratagy for some. In my case slowly growing to 186 lbs, dropped it to as low as 138 but happy with 153 or so for years now.