Nope, I'm not talking about using meds for fat loss. I'm not that kind of coach...
I'm talking about the Minimum Effective Dose (MED)! This is the smallest possible dose of something that you can use whilst still benefiting from it.
Usually, we want to do as little as possible to achieve what we want. So why do people do the exact opposite when it comes to fat loss? People take their calories way down, start hitting the gym every day, maybe they even start taking sports supplements and avoid certain food types because they heard that they make you fat.
Whilst this will likely result in a short period of fat loss, it's extremely hard to keep up and when you inevitably reach a plateau you have nowhere to go. Don't pull out all the stops at once thinking that you'll get where you want to be twice as fast! Being slow and steady really does win the race. You do not need to change your entire diet to start making progress. It usually just takes a few small changes to start with. Once progress slows, make another few small changes. You stay happier, you're not starving yourself, and you don't need to hit the gym every day! Small Changes These don't need to be life changing. You don't need to cut out all the foods you enjoy and replace them with salads. If you indulge in a coffee or two during your workday, try not going for the latte and have an americano. If you drink a glass or wine or a beer every night, try limiting this to a few days a week!
This isn't life changing, but over the course of a week this will likely save you 100's of calories!
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff There's so much information on nutrition available to us. You'd think that'd make fat loss easier, but it can often make it a whole lot harder. With so much information out there - a lot of it being very conflicting - you can very easily over complicate fat loss.
Ignore nutrient timing, supplements, diet types. Just stick to what you know. Eat largely whole unprocessed foods and plenty of protein and vegetables. As long as you stick within your daily/weekly calorie goals, you don't need to sweat the small stuff.
Don't Go From 0-100 If you go from no exercise per week to working out 7 days a week you're asking for failure. Maybe you keep it up for 2 weeks and you lose 2kg. Maybe you keep it up for 4 weeks and lose 4kg. Then after 5 weeks you plateau and weight loss stalls.
Are you now going to add in an extra workout and train 8 days a week? I don't think so.
If you don't exercise at all, start off by hitting the gym or doing a home workout 2-3 times per week to start!
The same goes for nutrition. If you start a diet by dropping your calories down to 1000 calories per day and eventually plateau, there's not much you can do to continue losing weight as your body will not thank you! Use MED Do the least amount possible to achieve your goals. Small changes to your diet and a moderate amount of exercise is usually enough for most people to start seeing changes.
Once progress slows down, add in an extra day of exercise, reduce your calories a little bit, consider going low-carb on rest days, but don't start off with these.
You want to keep as many tricks up your sleeve as you can to use at a later date!