As we get past the holidays and the New Year rolls in, I know that a lot of you are focused on losing some weight. As someone who figured out how to lose over 100lbs, I thought it would be helpful to write up some of my strategies and the best ways that SHIFTED can help you lose weight in a sustainable and healthy way.
By Vince Thompson
About three years ago, I weighed in at 285lbs and I knew something had to change. Below you can see what I looked like in 2020. As you might imagine, I was not happy about this.
Over the next three years, with a lot of determination and some help from SHIFTED, I managed to get down to below 185lbs.
I also competed in my first official kickboxing match and won!
In this article I'm going to help you understand the steps you need to take to burn fat, lose weight and keep it off in a sustainable and healthy way.
Step 1: Believe In Yourself
When you're very overweight, it's hard to believe in yourself. It's easy to feel stuck. Or to have negative self-talk about your ability to stick things through.
Trust me. If I can do it, you can do it.
You have to want this. You have to believe that you can do it.
Step 2: Just Get Active
My first step towards losing weight was joining a kickboxing class. I immediately fell in love. It became my passion.
Find a way to become passionate about some activity. Any activity. Something that requires you to use your body. This will help you build muscle and increase your metabolism, burning more calories and contribute to a caloric deficit.
Once you start putting that body to use, that's when SHIFTED can start helping out.
Step 3: Get Your Nutrition Right
When you put your body to use, and you start using all of your muscles, it becomes critical that you feed your body the nutrition it needs.
One of the most important nutritional choices you can make is to eat enough protein. I recommend 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight.
Protein will help your body will recover more quickly, and you'll be able to be more active, more often. Plus, protein keeps your appetite down and that helps to reduce cravings.
Sometimes, its hard to get all of your protein from food alone. That's where SHIFTED can help. We've got two great protein supplements, SHIFTED Recovery and SHIFTED WPI.
Step 4: Walk then Run
When first starting out, it's hard to beat a brisk walk for weight loss. Over time, you may switch over to running to build up your cardio, like I've chosen to do. Or, you may stick with walking.
To maximize weight loss, I recommend that you walk 2-4 miles per day at a pace of about 3-4 mph. Every mile will take you about 15 minutes to walk.
If time is an issue, make sure to get your walking in at least every other day.
Step 5: Keep on Top of your Electrolytes
A lot of us will binge snack when we need more electrolytes. It's not a coincidence that a lot of junk food is salty. We need the sodium. We don't need all the other junk.
Regular snacking on junk food is the enemy of weight loss.
By staying on top of your electrolytes (and your protein), you will reduce your cravings and make sure that the calories you consume are providing positive nutrition to your body.
SHIFTED Hydration is the perfect electrolyte supplement. Personally I have half a scoop 2-3x per day. In the morning, I usually mix half a scoop along with a scoop of collagen and a scoop of creatine.
Step 6: Introduce Resistance Training
I lost most of my weight without any weight training but looking back, I wish I had started weight training sooner. Muscle mass will help you burn more calories throughout the day and help speed up your weight loss.
For the purpose of weight loss, you never have to go heavy or risk injury. When trying to lose weight, I recommend higher reps and lower weight.
Make sure you hit every major muscle group. Don't forget that your lower body contains more muscle mass than your upper body. In simple terms: don't skip leg day!
Once you start using weights, it's critical that you also supplement with SHIFTED Recovery immediately after your workout and that you hit all of your protein goals.
Step 7: Maintain a Caloric Deficit
The closer you get to your ideal weight, the harder it is to make additional progress. This is when it becomes very important to track your calories in and calories out as well as possible.
You can make a lot of progress early on (especially if you're starting from zero) without being meticulous about calorie tracking. The key is to remember that you won't lose weight unless you are burning more calories than you are eating. Ever.
Don't eat mindlessly. Be comfortable with a little bit of hunger. Learn to say no.
Step 8: Tweak Your Metabolism and Reduce Your Appetite
For icing on the cake, you can experiment with subtle ways to increase your calorie burn and lower your appetite. For example, some people swear by sauna and heat therapy for increasing calorie burn (just make sure to stay hydrated!). Others swear by cold plunges.
When we designed SHIFTED Burn, our fat burner supplement, we used a two pronged approach: we included ingredients that help reduce appetite and ingredients that help increase energy burn (even one ingredient that maximizes your utilization of fat as energy).
While no fat burner is going to do the heavy lifting for fat loss, a good fat burner will give you an extra boost.
Step 9: Keep it Up and Stay Consistent
The most important part of losing weight is staying consistent. You'll have setbacks. Life will happen. Just be committed to coming back stronger. Every time.
Example Daily Routine for Weight Loss Using SHIFTED
After the holidays I put on about 10lbs and while that's ok, I knew I needed to get back on track. So far I've really liked my routine and I wanted to share it with you in case it can help.
6:30am
Morning Coffee + Breakfast (Eggs + Avocado)
7am
SHIFTED Hydration + SHIFTED Collagen + SHIFTED Creatine
8am
SHIFTED Burn
2 miles on the treadmill
8:30-11am
Work
11:30am
SHIFTED Maximum Pre-Workout
45 Minute Resistance Workout
11:45
SHIFTED Hydration as an Intraworkout
12:15pm
SHIFTED Recovery (Rapidly absorbed EAAS and 18g of protein)
12:30pm
Lunch (Grilled Chicken with Salad)
1-4 pm
Work
3:30pm
SHIFTED WPI (25g of protein)
4-5 pm
SHIFTED Burn + 2 miles on the treadmill
6-9pm
Dinner (Ground beef and rice) and family time
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