Start Here: My Top 3 Weight Loss Tips

Warning: some of you won't like this.

A lot of people who come to see me say they’re confused about what they should try to lose weight or change their body composition. 

They’re reading about keto, carnivore, or plant based diets, Weight Watchers, and basically everything else in between. When it comes to losing weight and changing body composition, there are a few basics that I will tell 99% of my patients to start doing, even if they think they are already doing it.

Here are my top 3 recommendations for those who don’t know where to start:

1. Increase fibre: Fibre helps you feel full faster, improves blood sugar regulation, and promotes a healthy digestive tract.  Adults need about 30g of fibre daily and most are only getting half of that.  Most people end up needing what I call a fibre bolus—a significant source of fibre—once a day to hit this amount.  Having a dedicated meal or snack that has at least 10-15g of fibre in it helps achieve this.  I often recommend chia seed pudding or psyllium husk jam with berries, as these will pretty easily get you 15g of fibre in a normal serving.

2. Get adequate protein:  you’ve probably heard about this by now but maybe you don’t know how much you should actually be having.  The ideal amount of protein you should be having depends on your activity levels, weight, and your goals, but most people will fall around 1g per kg of ideal body weight.  There are definitely instances where we might go higher (ie 1g per pound of body weight), but the key at first is to make sure you are at least the minimum amount.  To hit your target, start by increasing how much you eat at your first meal, since breakfast is often the place where people tend to have less protein.

3. Track what you eat:  This doesn’t have to be a forever thing--it really depends on what your goals are. For those who have not done any tracking recently and we're just looking to see where they are at baseline, I usually suggest doing it for a few weeks. For those who have really precise weight/body composition goals, this is probably a long term thing.  Sometimes I’ll suggest just writing things down, and in other cases I’ll suggest actually measuring what you eat and tracking on an app.  Tracking for a couple weeks brings you more awareness to your habits and provides some objective data on your total calories consumed, your macronutrient balance, and your nutrient intake (ie fibre, iron, calcium, etc depending on the app and method). The most common comments I hear after tracking is that “I didn’t realize I was snacking this much” or “I didn’t realize my protein intake was so low” or even "I didn't connect my energy levels to eating high carb the day before."

These recommendations may sound very basic and even boring, but the reality is that it’s hard to move forward if these things are not done consistently.  If you’ve tried these things for at least 3 months and you see no changes, it’s probably time to get professional support and assess what’s going on through bloodwork, nutrition tracking analysis, body composition testing, etc.

Best in health,

Dr. Christine