Achieving Long-Term Weight Loss is Easier Than You Think
At Couture Fitness we know that there are so many ways people try to achieve weight loss; from crash diets to intense workout regimens. The question is, what helps keep the weight off for good? What will help us maintain a healthy lifestyle while keeping the weight off over a long period of time? There is nothing worse than losing a bunch of weight and then gaining it all back (and sometimes even more), just to enter an endless cycle of dieting.
What is most important in losing and maintaining a healthy weight relies on your mindset, your lifestyle, and the type of activity you get regularly. The biggest hurdle of most weight loss journeys is shifting from your current lifestyle and committing to sustainable changes – changes that you can maintain for years to come and that will reap endless health benefits.
Nail Your Nutrition
How you treat your body internally is the most important part of weight loss. 80% of weight loss success is tied to nutrition, however, nutrition needs vary from person to person. Depending on the state of your metabolism, everyone needs different calorie and macro targets to generate the results they want to see. Diving into your current state, looking at the numbers, and creating and following a tailored plan is the key to a fruitful nutrition change.
Knowing your current nutrition state and macro nutrient intake helps determine how much protein, carbohydrates, and fat - the three key macronutrients - are needed to effectively meet your goals.
Depending on your history with dieting and if your metabolism needs to be improved, fitness coaches at Couture Fitness may either recommend a reverse diet, which increases the number of daily calories ingested, or a calorie deficit .
We believe that abs are made in the kitchen! Getting the right direction with your nutrition will be key to your weight loss success. Sign up and Get Our Free Menu that will help conquer the first step of your weight loss journey.
Max Out Your Muscle
Burning calories as part of your exercise is the least important thing to focus on when choosing what exercise to do. The goal with exercise is to stimulate strength and muscle growth.
As much as people push cardio for weight loss, we emphasize resistance training at Couture Fitness Coaching. Endurance training will burn off your muscle, which will lower your metabolic rate and your body will burn fewer calories as it becomes more efficient at running, spinning, etc. In the long-term, strength training helps you burn more calories all the time because as you build more muscle mass on your body, you will burn more calories when in a resting state.
Strength or resistance training can mean utilizing resistance bands, dumbbells, barbells, machines,or any activity that focuses on stimulating muscle growth. The more muscle you have on your body, the higher your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) will be, which will increase the number of calories you burn while at rest.
Aside from the calorie-burning benefits of strength training, it also helps increase bone density and health. Additionally, muscle tissue regulates glucose and insulin processing, which aids in preventing diabetes and insulin resistance, making the advantages of strength training extend far beyond its aesthetic benefits.
A good way to get started with resistance training is to do two full-body workouts a week (at a minimum), making sure to focus on the larger muscle groups. Utilize a progressive overload training method, which means doing the same exercises repeatedly but increasing your reps or your weight as you progress.
Make sure to target the large muscle groups by incorporating squats, lunges, shoulder presses, pull-ups, rows, dead-lifts, and more. You will need rest days in between workouts and you don’t want to exercise the same muscle groups two days in a row.
Take A Hike
Keeping your body moving will help with long-term weight loss success. Activities such as walking, yoga, pilates, or gentle activity that fits into your daily life will be sustainable and make an impact. NEAT (Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis) activities typically add up to an hour and a half of common life activities. Things such as walking your dog, putting up your holiday decorations, cleaning your house, or any daily life activity involving movement will help you get 8,000-10,000 steps a day and can be considered NEAT activity.
It’s important to find a device that can help you track your steps, whether it be a Fit-Bit, an app on your phone, or an old-fashioned pedometer. You don’t have to set out times to get large chunks of motion in; instead, you can aim for smaller intervals throughout the day to reach your goal. By building more NEAT into your daily routine, you are more likely to remove the stress and pressure of trying to be more active; instead, it just will become a natural part of your day.
Some tips we like to follow to maximize our steps naturally are parking further away in a parking lot, taking the stairs instead of an elevator, walking around your neighborhood, or even pacing around your home while on a phone call.
A fun way to get your steps in is to make it social. You can find a partner and set up walking dates, or take yoga classes together. Playing outside with the kids is another fun way to get more activity into your day. You can always find ways to get steps into your day, even by doing the simplest of tasks. All of these activities are gentle and won’t surge cortisol levels in your body.
Cue the Cardio
At Couture Fitness we are not huge fans of doing excessive amounts of cardiovascular exercise (jogging, running, spinning, stairmaster, etc.). Too much cardio can hinder and sabotage weight loss. When it has to be done as a strategic means of aiding in weight loss, we recommend High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) cardiovascular exercise.
HIIT Cardio can best be described as intervals or short bursts of intense activity followed by a period of rest. Cardio is a stressor on your body and floods your system with cortisol, which hinders weight loss. Additionally, intense, steady state cardio is typically catabolic (muscle burning) vs. anabolic (muscle building). HIIT cardio, on the other hand, signals your body to build strength and speed.
Your metabolism adapts quickly, albeit negatively, to an intense cardio regimen. This means the more you do it the fewer calories your body burns. When people pair high amounts of cardio with under-eating, it can cause metabolic maladaptation. Additionally, cardio can cause overuse injuries, especially in high-impact sports. For the average client, we typically prescribe an hour or less of cardio per week into their workout plans. Most of our clients see better, long-term weight loss success simply by increasing their daily steps than by increasing cardio exercise.
Manage Your Mind
Couture Fitness focuses on the science of how your metabolism works. We create personalized nutrition and exercise routines for our clients. Each plan is catered to the needs and lifestyles of our individual clients where we focus on a couture plan rather than a cookie-cutter solution. We evaluate you, your lifestyle, and your nutrition and exercise habits to curate a plan that fits into your life and will help you meet your fitness goals. We then provide mindset coaching to help you incorporate all of this into your life in a way that works for you.
Weight loss requires lifestyle changes and ultimately, hard work. We can only lose so much weight in a given set of time, therefore you must cultivate a mindset of patience and resilience knowing that the end result will be worth the hard work and discipline.
As with all changes, consistency is key. Having a plan and a team to keep you accountable is half of the battle. Regularly checking in with a coach and having access to a group of like-minded people sets you up for success. A coach will be able to answer direct questions about very specific issues you are going through and be there to calibrate and check in on your progress. The reality is that without accountability, making the changes can be very difficult so the support of a coach and a fitness community makes a world of a difference.
We work with clients to help them realize that stress doesn’t need to be a part of the weight loss journey. We want to shut down your shame, your frustration, your desperation and have you approach your weight loss journey with a sense of curiosity and adventure. Be prepared to learn about the science behind weight loss and how small adjustments can be the key to keeping the weight off and building the body you’ve always wanted.
Couture Fitness Coaching for Long Term Weight Loss
Let us help you boost your metabolism! Book a free strategy call —or email We’ll set up a 15 minute call to discuss your goals and dieting history and help develop a customized plan that allows you to eat more (really!). We’ll also talk about how you can exercise to build calorie-burning muscle. The Couture Coaching Team wants to help you create a body you love—for life!
Want more metabolism-boosting ideas?
*Join our private Facebook Group (Boost Your Metabolism After Age 30)
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*self-paced Master Your Metabolism Online Course.