When I first went about my journey in losing weight, I thought the best way to do it was go on a keto diet, do intermittent fasting, and almost starve myself to forcefully make my body use fat as its energy source. I’m not gonna lie, it was successful. It got the job done, but in the most unenjoyable way possible. I list a lot of weight really quickly, specifically almost 60 pounds within the course of 9 or 10 months. However, the weight I lose was not only fat, but a lot of muscle as well. This made it so much harder for me to get to a desired body composition, since I basically started off from scratch as a “skinny-fat” person.
In my experience, I believe that the best way to lose weight is maintaining your calories, or even going on a surplus in the beginning, and weightlifting consistently to build a good foundational amount of muscle (no matter what you do in the beginning, you will always gain muscle to start off, then after your “noobie gains” deplete, it is harder to grow muscle). The more muscle you have, the higher your base metabolism is. After building that muscle, you can start going on a caloric deficit (which is probably more food than when you first started, since you have more muscle and weigh more). Going on a caloric deficit is the ONLY way to lose body fat. Whether you are on a caloric deficit or caloric surplus, always eat enough protein as well (1 – 1.15 times your body weight in grams). This is important since your body literally takes more energy and calories to digest protein.
The biggest misconception of weight loss is going on these FAD diets, starving yourself, or doing cardio. All of these may work in the short term, but they are NOT going to help in the long term, since one you stop the diet, your body is just going to rebound as soon as you start eating more food again. Without the help of any muscle to burn calories, you may actually gain even more weight and fat than before. Ultimately, the key to weight loss, specifically fat loss, is actually weightlifting.
