Health is the best investment you can make in 2023
If you’re like most of the people around the world making resolutions for the coming year, ‘losing weight’ is probably on your list.
Most of us carry more inches around the middle than we’d ideally like and worry about the long-term health risks that can come with being overweight. And as COVID-19 painfully taught us, excess weight is a co-morbidity that can dangerously worsen outcomes for those dealing with serious health issues.
Yet most New Year’s weight loss attempts meet with failure, usually after only a few weeks. The truth is: dropping unwanted pounds and keeping them off is hard.
BUT….it’s doable. In fact, the pathway to achieve a healthy bodyweight is surprisingly straightforward. It just requires disciplined commitment. Weight loss programs overwhelmingly fail because of psychological reasons or misinformation. If you pick a program based on good science — and keep your mind right while pursuing it — positive results are inevitable.
In this article, which builds on previous advice I’ve written on the topic, I’m going to recount my own experience (with evidence for you to judge) with finally losing the pounds that had for years stubbornly refused to leave my middle. The keys to my success weren’t complicated nor expensive. And I firmly believe that anyone, regardless of age or situation, can deploy them to similar results.
For those wondering whether they should believe me, take a look at the Before and After pictures below:
You should listen to me because I’ve taken this journey.
That’s me in both pictures. In my late 30s on the left and my late 40s on the right.
I know what it’s like to be far too overweight and health-challenged.
I know how overwhelming the idea of self-transformation can seem when you feel poorly about yourself. And how deflating the setbacks along the way can be.
But I also know that success is achievable. Much more so than most realize.
Because I’ve gone through the process myself.
It’s not rocket-science. But it does requires substantial discipline and commitment.
The good news is: those are fully within your control.
And trust me, if I was able to do this, you can too.
As the title of this section states, losing weight has everything to do with diet.
Yes, following an active fitness regime is a very important complement (and essential for general health). But exercise alone is not effective for material weight loss.
The hard truth is that if you want to lose weight, especially to the point where it will be visibly noticeable, diet is going to be 80% to 90% of the work involved.
Now, that may sound like a downer. No one likes the idea of being on a “diet plan”. But I encourage you to look at it from another point of view. This is actually really good news. There are few things you have more control over than what and how much you put in your mouth. You have the agency here. You don’t have to rely on anyone else; you don’t have to wait to be chosen; you don’t have to pass any test to participate — you have full power to chart your own destiny here.
And you’ll find that a weight-loss diet doesn’t equate to deprivation and suffering. I’ll talk more about this in a moment, but eating healthier often means eating tastier, more satisfying meals. And it can frequently — and non-intuitively — mean eating more, not less.
The point here is: Try to put aside your dread. It’s not going to help you, and much of what you’re fearing is likely wrong.
An important note: I’m going to explain here the kind of diet that I followed to lose weight, because it worked. It worked for me, and I’ve seen it work for dozens of other folks I know who have followed it. I’ve personally witnessed the transforming results.
What I’m not saying is that this is the only diet for losing weight effectively. Or the best one. There are a number of other plans that are worth consideration. But I know for sure this one works, which gives me the confidence to share it with you.
So, do you have to follow some complicated program made up of pricey powdered shakes or arcane ingredients like panda spleen? No. Not at all.
The simple mnemonic to keep in mind is: the closer to its natural state, the better the food likely is for you.
As gross as this may sound, if it can go rancid within a few days = good. If it can live in your pantry for months (because it’s filled with preservatives) = not so good.
You want to eat foods that supply the natural building blocks your body needs to function well: notably protein, saturated fats, fiber, quality carbohydrates, and anti-oxidants.
And you want to minimize the intake of processed foods that trigger your body’s insulin response. The worst offenders are refined flours (found in most processed carbohydrates) and refined sugars (found in almost everything).
It’s the insulin response that sabotages the efficacy of most diets. When we eat sugars or foods that easily break down into sugars (most carbohydrates), our bodies use these sugars for immediate energy and store any excess sugar along with everything else we’ve eaten into our muscle and fat cells for use later. Not only that, but as our insulin levels begin to normalize after a sugary meal, a craving for additional sugar occurs which often leads to overeating of unhealthy foods. To add insult to injury, eating sugars/carbs encourages your body to retain water — leading to additional weight gain.
So, what to eat? I find the guidance offered by Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint diet (quite similar to the Paleo and Zone diets) very useful. I highly recommend using his book The Primal Blueprint Cookbook for meal planning, but the chart below offers an easy-to-understand framework for where to place your focus:
Animal protein plays a big role in the Primal/Paleo/Zone diets, especially for those engaged in concurrent strength-training. Note the focus on pasture-raised, grass-fed, organic, wild-catch and local sources. Similar to humans, the animals we eat are as healthy as their diets. If animals we eat were not nourished well, how can expect their meat to nourish us any better?
This focus on meat does not mean that vegetarianism and veganism are to be eschewed. There is much evidence for the benefits of plant-based diets — though those on them do need to pay more attention to ensuring they consume enough protein during the day for healthy body function.
It’s tempting to view losing weight as simple math: that to lose weight you just need to eat fewer calories than you burn off.
While that is not necessarily untrue, it can lead to unhealthy decision-making.
It’s important to realize that all calories are not created equal. Intake of “good” calories can actually catalyze weight loss, and conversely, “bad” calories will trigger weight gain.
As for bad calories, the big baddy to watch out for is processed carbs (sugars, grains, etc). Anything that spikes insulin production. The Primal Blueprint program encourages us to consume less than 150 grams of *any* kind of carbs per day:
Now, if you’re like me, you’re challenged to think of your food serving sizes in terms of grams. Not to worry.
There are apps out there now that do all the thinking for us. I use MyFitnessPal. You simply type in the food you’re about to eat, and it offers you a selection of serving sizes to choose from. Pick one, and all of a sudden the app can tell you how many grams of carbs/fat/protein/etc it has. The app will help you set targets for your daily food intake and track your progress during the day to let you know how little (or how much) you have left in your eating budget. It’s a great way to quickly and easily get an exact answer to the question: How much should I eat today?
And there are days where I find it challenging to consume all the app tells me I’m supposed to, especially protein. If anything, there are more days where I feel like I’m eating more than I’d rather vs days where I want to eat more. And this is coming from a guy who really enjoys food.
On top of that, eating such a well-balanced, low-insulin-producing diet is much more sating. Without the swings in blood sugar, hunger cravings nearly disappear. Whereas my eating schedule used to be dictated by how aggressively my stomach demanded to be filled (which I would often try to appease through snacking between meals), now I eat by the clock. It’s not uncommon for me to forget about a meal if I get busy with a project, because my stomach rarely reminds me the way it used to.
If you’re looking to lose weight this year — in a healthy way — here are the top steps I would advise taking, based on my own experience:
That’s it. If you can follow the steps above with discipline, the weight will come off.
Now, my personal health transformation wasn’t due to just diet alone. Ideally, yours shouldn’t be either.
Your progress will be materially helped by concurrently engaging in the other key pillars of functional health:
As Schopenhauer put it: “Health isn’t everything; but without it, everything else is nothing.”
So there really is no better investment you can make in 2023 than improving and safeguarding your own health as well as the health of those you love.