15 Key Insights from 5000+ Scientific Papers

What are the most important steps to losing weight and keeping it off? After analyzing 5000+ scientific papers, the following insights cover what actually matters.

01: Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself

The very first step that you can take to losing weight is to quit playing the blame game. You have to realize that gaining weight and/or not being able to lose weight is not your fault. In the United States (U.S.) in the…

02: You Have to Set Realistic Expectations

How many commercials have you seen for a weight loss program showing before and after pictures of an obese individual losing 150 pounds and becoming ripped? This all too familiar strategy to promote weight loss products…

03: There Are No Shortcuts

These are just a small sampling of the advice that you have probably heard at some point in an effort to supplement or enhance your weight loss. We all have limited time and energy, so it makes sense to maximize the retu…

04: Nutrition is NOT a Transactional Service

You can pay someone to do almost anything for you: fix your car, roof your house, clean your house, take your SATs (not legally), drive you around, clean your clothes, schedule your appointments, do your grocery shopping…

05: You Have to Be Fully Committed to Your Weight Loss

Think of the hardest thing you’ve ever done…Now, get ready to give (at least) that level of effort again. We get it. Life is busy and you don’t have enough time to get all the things you need to get done now, let alone a…

06: Losing Weight Requires a Caloric Deficit: All Diets Work this Way

To lose weight you must burn more calories than you consume, which is known as creating a negative energy balance. Weight gain is the result of consuming more calor…

07: There Are Three (and Only Three) Ways to Incur a Caloric Deficit

There are three (and only three) ways to incur a caloric deficit: portion size, food frequency, and energy density.

08: Diet is More Important than Exercise to Lose Weight

Diet is more important than exercise to lose weight. Why? Because eating too many calories is really easy but burning them off is really, really, really hard. When people say that you “can’t out-exercise a poor diet” the…

09: You Have to Exercise to Lose Weight and Keep It Off

Despite what every fitness center in America will tell you, exercise alone is not a good weight loss strategy. Even if you take up marathon training you are unlikely to lose more than 1-2% of your body weight over the co…

10: The First 3 Months of Your Diet Will Determine What You Weigh Years from Now

Weight loss is not a linear process. I know this is what you’ve been told but it is not true. You’ve been told that if you cut your calories by 500 calories/day for one week that you’ll lose 1 pound per week.

11: Eat Meal Replacements, Kits, and Delivery for the First 4-8 Weeks of Your Diet

The first two to three months of your diet are so important that you can’t afford to mess around.  Sixty to seventy-five percent of the weight that you are going to lose on your diet is going to come in these first two t…

12: Home Cooked Meals Are the Key to Your Long-Term Success after Phase I

In our last section (11), Eat Meal Replacements, Kits, and Delivery for the First Four to Eight Weeks of Your Diet, we stressed the importance of eating between 800 and 1…

13: You Must Self-Monitor and Self-Weigh to Stay on Track

Research has shown time and time again that two of the best predictors for losing weight and keeping it off are self-weighing and self-monitoring. Self-weighing is pretty self-explanatory. Step on the scale and see what…

14: Identify Obstacles to Healthy Eating and Exercise

If we only ate when we were hungry and stopped eating when we were full there would be little to no obesity. But we don’t eat when we’re hungry and we don’t stop eating when we’re full. We eat when we are stressed, bored…