Weight Loss is Easier Than You Think

A Few Key Adjustments Might be All You Need

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I Bet You’ve Done a Lot of Things Right When You’ve tried to Lose Weight

You just have to change the things you did wrong. The gap between success and failure isn’t big.

Most weight loss plans work the wrong way around.

You get your ducks in a row:-

🦆Cut your calories

🦆Prep complicated recipes

🦆Track every morsel that passes your lips

🦆Get to the gym by 5:30 to work out

🦆Journal your feelings instead of stuffing them down with Oreos

You put your body and mind into a state of shock and expect that you’ll be able to quickly let go of all the weight you’ve spent years collecting. It’s like trying to teach someone to swim by pushing them into the deep end of a swimming pool.

But what if you turned that plan on its head and started by making the smallest change possible to lose weight? If you’ve been on a weight gain trajectory that might be to stop gaining weight before you even think about losing.

Weight Loss Levers: That Actually Move the Needle

1. Meeting Your Needs Before Changing Your Diet

I didn’t realize it at the time but reducing my carb intake wasn’t the first weight loss lever that I pulled. It was meeting my needs.

We all have five basic needs:

• Survival (food, shelter, safety)
• Love & Belonging (connection, relationships)
• Fun (play, hobbies, joy)
• Freedom (autonomy, choice)
• Power (achievement and acknowledgment)

I hadn’t been meeting my needs effectively and I was using food as a substitute. You can read more about your Basic Needs here.

The Five Basic Needs that Save My Sanity …

Writing on Medium meets my needs for connection and achievement. The money it paid also helped with my survival needs. Since Medium’s latest demise, I’ve had to be far more aware of my needs. I’m back writing here even though the landscape is completely different from a few months ago because it meets my needs.

2. Increase Protein, Reduce Carbs

If you’ve struggled with weight for years, chances are your body doesn’t handle carbohydrates well.

• More protein = better satiety and muscle maintenance
• Fewer carbs = better blood sugar control and fat adaptation

3. Track Your Food (But Not forever)

Most people think Keto is all about cutting carbs. And while that’s a huge part of it, it may not be enough in the beginning. It wasn’t for me.

When your body isn’t fully fat-adapted, it may prioritize burning dietary fat and excess protein (via gluconeogenesis) for energy before tapping into stored body fat.

That’s why it’s helpful to track your food for a while — not obsessively, just to get a ballpark idea of how much you can eat to get into a calorie deficit. I used (the free version is enough).

When you’re further along on the Keto Path this isn’t as important because your body is wiser and more in control. If I’m hungry I eat more and it doesn’t affect my progress. I can eat six chicken wings for lunch when I’m hungry.

4. Do Some Time on Carnivore

“Wait that’s extreme, can’t I just exercise?”

Sure, if you want. The Keto Path is your unique journey to slimness, you don’t need me to tell you what you can and can’t do.

It’s just that from my experience, I would prioritize Carnivore over regular formal exercise.

The Carnivore diet resets your tastes and escalates your fat adaptation. Try it for thirty days and see what happens.

You need to eat but you don’t need to do formal exercise.

That’s why I think Carnivore trumps exercise. If you want to see how I did Carnivore you can read about it

Thirty Days: Just Meat and Me

I started with 30 days but the changes were so great that I did at least 60 before gradually adding back some low-carb vegetables.

5. Extend Your Fasting Periods

After a couple of weeks on Carnivore I dropped breakfast. This lengthened my overnight fast, which can help promote processes like autophagy. I’m no longer doing strict Carnivore but I still fast for around 17 hours a day.

6. Maybe Now It’s Time to Start Getting Into More Exercise?

But only if you’re comfortable eating ketogencally. If you start exercising seriously too soon you will probably just get hungrier, more tired, and increase your calories.

7. One-Meal-a-Day and Longer Fasts

These are the levers I’ve kept up my sleeve. Most of my clothes are now too big for me and I want to find my optimum weight and body composition (fat/muscle ratio), before replacing them. I will be documenting this journey for my paid subscribers on .

Final Thoughts: Small Changes — Big Wins

Most weight loss attempts fail because people try to do everything at once. Long-term success comes from making small, sustainable changes, one lever at a time.

• Start from where you are
• Pull one lever and lock it in before pulling another
• DON’T SUFFER — Work with your body, not against it. If something doesn’t work try something else.

So… which lever will you pull first?

💬 Comment below: What’s one small change you’ve made that helped you lose weight?

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