Lasting Weight Loss

To achieve your dream physique you need to master your mental state, the mechanics of weight loss, and strategies to execute.

To get lean you must:

• eat less and/or,

• exercise more.

Seems simple enough. So why isn't everyone lean? This question has perplexed me most of my adult life. As a 32 year old I've successfully cut down to ~12% body fat at ages 20, 24, 27, 29, and 32. Before 27 I failed cutting 8 times because I was still learning the mechanics behind weight loss and how to properly execute.

Since 27 I've always succeeded when I decided to cut. I've also stayed at 12% for ~2 year after each cut. Clearly I've cracked the mechanics of how to lose fat and maintain it for a decent while. So what's the missing puzzle piece? Why do I still occasionally gain lots of weight? Why can't I just stay lean forever?

Three Pillars Of Lasting Weight Loss

The part it took me longest to understand is lasting weight loss requires lasting psychological wellbeing. Food is a vital source of energy. But it can double as a drug. When depression, loneliness, fatigue, anxiety, agitation, anger, chronic stress, or boredom hit our brains seek feel-good neurotransmitters. Food is accessible, time efficient, and socially acceptable. It is the simplest solution. The underlying issue is often a magnitude harder to detect and resolve. If left unchecked for too long, unhealthy amounts of body fat can accumulate as a reflection of a poor mental state. Yet monitoring weight trends over time is one of the simplest ways to monitor your mental wellbeing! This is the newest pillar of Leanrr in 2023.

Next is the mechanics of eating & lifting. You could be in a good state of mind but be unaware that some of the food you habitually eat is unnecessarily high density. Or your microbiome feedback loop could be forcing you to crave sugar & fatty foods but could be fixed in a matter of days. With this guide and Leanrr in general the goal is for you to be able to make informed decisions about your nutrition and exercise so you can stay in control of your body. There's a lot of misinformation about this everywhere so I had to read raw scientific research for two years to crack this part for myself. In general Leanrr is designed to show you weekly progress. Even if you trust you should always, always, always verify.

Last is execution. A healthy mindset and plan that minimizes time & effort is necessary. Showing up daily is difficult. If you improvise you'll have have to make a significant number of decisions every day. Decisions are draining. When work or life hits you with a surprise you probably won't have the mental space. You're much more likely to succeed if you dedicate time to create a plan when you're feeling highly motivated so execution will require minimal thought and effort when motivation is low. Leanrr helps you create such a plan: meals you'll eat, groceries you'll need, daily adjustments based on exercise, and weekly adjustments based on your body's response.

Staying On Track With Leanrr

Leanrr is built to monitor trends, detects problems, and help you diagnose the root cause either yourself, with a friend, or with your coach. It's done using an event driven approach to ensure minimal effort and consistency.

All you have to do is weigh in every morning. By averaging daily weigh-ins over the calendar week you can remove the noise that exists in day to day measurements such as hormones, water, carb retention, & meal timing. Then, by subtracting last week's average from the current week you can see the delta and observe trends.

If there's significant weight gain week over week, especially for multiple weeks in a row, Leanrr knows to fire off a notification so you can introspect about what's going on and talk to a coach. If you are losing weight Leanrr is able to tell you how much weight you're losing and whether you're exceeding a healthy amount for your body type. If you're maintaining it'll give you feedback on how whether you're staying within good boundaries. I'll teach you how to do all of this manually in the Mechanics section coming up.

You can track your average weekly weight in a Google Sheets every morning when you weigh in. Create a row for weeks and a column for each day of the week. Then average each row to come up with your weekly average weight. Here's an example setup:

In the Leanrr app you can manually track your weight every morning or connect to your Bluetooth / WIFI scale to track it automatically. Another benefit of using Leanrr is it will notify you of trends by email, text message, and allows enlisting a close friend or a coach to be alerted. Whether you've stopped weighing in or are experiencing dramatic weight gain or loss Leanrr helps you setup an intervention plan that will alert you, a friend of your choice, and your coach.

Next let's dive into the details of each pillar.