This is a big one for many people! So many of us want to “lose a few pounds” or “lose baby weight” or just try to trim up for personal/aesthetic reasons. Whatever your reasoning, if you stick to the plan, exercise some will-power, and be both patient and determined, you can lose weight with diet alone. With that being said, combining a healthy, low-carb diet with intermittent fasting will speed up your results dramatically, The ultimate combination would be a healthy, ketogenic diet, intermittent fasting, and exercise! As I’ve said before, everyone’s circumstances are unique to them and what works for one person may not work the same for the next person so be sure to tailor all of these aspects to your schedule and your lifestyle. Remember: the diet that works the best is the one that you can stick with! Find what works for you and if you need/want to tweak/change it as you go along, that’s the best way to go about it.

Let’s do a quick crash-course on human physiology and how weight-loss works. Although it is true that you can lose weight with the simple formula of eating fewer calories than you burn, in my opinion that will require more work on your part to track those calories while taking longer to produce results. Something you need to understand: when your blood sugar goes up, your body produces insulin to bring it back down. When you have increased insulin levels, that’s a signal to your body to store fat, since it thinks it has plenty of fuel in your blood and it doesn’t need to burn fat for fuel instead. However, if you reduce the amount of insulin in your body by reducing your blood-sugar levels, it will think that it needs an alternative fuel source for energy and so it will start taking your body fat and burning that instead.

So, in my opinion, a ketogenic diet will produce the best results in the shortest amount of time by getting you fat-adapted and burning your own body fat for fuel. But the other thing that happens by getting fat-adapted is that since you can burn your own body fat for fuel, you can go longer without needing to eat food for fuel. This will increase your intermittent fasting length, allowing you go longer without eating and continue burning fat!

Which is why intermittent fasting is the second most important thing to start with for weight-loss, although it becomes increasingly key in your weight-loss as you increase your fasting window, thereby increasing the length of time you are burning your body fat. It would be hard to just start fasting when your body is running on carbs as you’ll get hungry and need to eat again. Being hungry sucks and a diet that you spend the whole time hungry is a diet that won’t last long.

So, start by cutting out the carbs and eating ketogenically, while slowly narrowing your eating window and increasing your fasting length. I recommend this process taking around a month or so, to make it easier for your body to adapt, figure out how to make things work with your schedule, and not be hungry (or hangry haha) all the time. Again, healthy weight-loss takes time so be determined and be patient while trusting the process and you’ll achieve results!

With that being said, adding in exercise to your diet and fasting regimen will speed up fat-adaptation and in-turn, speed up how much of your body fat you burn. Any exercise is better than nothing, of course, but some things will work better than others. Depending on the person and their body-type, their athletic ability, their current weight, etc., even just starting with walking or increasing daily steps will help! Especially after a meal, walking can make a big difference vs sitting on the couch and watching TV, hoping that your diet will help you lose weight. If you are more into fitness or more willing to work harder to achieve your goals, a higher level of working out will speed things up even further. HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) is the best form of exercise for weight-loss. Short, intense bouts of exercise (like sprinting, lunge jumps, burpees, etc.) followed by a period of rest will kick your weight-loss into overdrive! The best part is: HIIT workouts are usually shorter (10-20 min) and can more easily fit into a busy person’s day vs going for a 30-60 minute jog. I’m personally quite busy, so fitting a 10 minute HIIT into my day is far easier than finding 45 minutes plus driving time to go to a gym, lift weights, get on a treadmill, etc. However, if building muscle, toning your abs, or increasing strength is also one of your goals, you’ll have to find that balance with your time and your workouts to make sure you are maximizing the results for what you want.

Lastly, I highly recommend doing your workout while you are fasted/before eating a meal. This will serve two purposes: it will help to reinforce your body to be fat-adapted while also giving you a little more leeway when you do eat, as your body will quickly uptake carbs and deliver them to your muscles that you worked instead of them being in your blood stream, which will limit your insulin spike and get you back to burning fat again sooner.