This article presents just one method of losing weight. It’s worked very, very well for me. It doesn’t require an extreme diet, it doesn’t require much money (you’ll save money, in fact), and it doesn’t require extreme amounts of willpower. All it requires is a bit of method and preparation.

I’ve gone through this “diet” three times (see graphs). The first time I went from 83kg to 75.5kg over about 3 months. The second time, from 80kg to 71kg over 4 months. My latest iteration of this diet has me down from 75kg to 68.5kg in about 2 months. When I started my first version of this diet, two and a half years ago, I was, according to my scale, at about 22% body fat (well into “overweight”). I am now at 14.3%, which is just below the middle of the “normal” range for men. I still have a little bit of belly fat, but considerably less than I used to.

Usual disclaimers: this worked for me, it may not work for you. I provide it with no suggestion that it will do you any good. It is not a way to get fit, or a way to get a six-pack, or a way to get healthy. I have no idea if it will work for obese people, because I’ve never been obese. I suspect it won’t hurt to try, and I’d love to hear about any successes, but I provide this information as-is. Make whatever use of it you like.

Willpower

Before I tried this approach, I tried to “diet” in a number of ways, mostly by telling myself that I’d be eating less, and making a concerted effort to not heap huge amounts of food onto my plate at every occasion . None of those “dieting efforts” paid off, even though I really wanted to lose weight.

Fundamentally, losing weight is extremely simple: eat less than you spend. No diet can side-step this fundamental fact. If you eat a lot less than you spend, you’ll probably lose weight in an unhealthy way (your body will eat through your muscle tissue and even your organs if you push it hard enough – even if you still have fat left). If you eat a little less than you spend, you will lose weight in a slow and relatively predictable fashion .

So why is it so bloody hard to lose weight? My theory is, the hardest thing with losing weight is not figuring out what to eat (or not eat). It’s actually not eating when you’re hungry.

When my body wants food, it is extremely good at convincing me to eat.

So really, losing weight is much more about willpower than about preparing and eating meals. This is why most of the advice below is about generating and sustaining willpower, rather than about eating. I firmly believe that anyone who wants to lose weight enough and is smart enough about sustaining the willpower to do so, will lose however much weight they want to lose.

Without further ado, onto the method.

Step 1: Weigh yourself every day

The first piece of advice is to weigh yourself every morning. Wake up, go to the toilet, and then step on the scale. Record that weight (more on this in step 2). Do this every day, at the same time every day. If you do it later than usual, you’ll be lighter. If you do it after eating breakfast, you’ll be (potentially a lot) heavier. If you wake up really early, you will be lighter.

A lot of weight-loss guides claim that you should only weigh yourself every week or two, because “the weight loss is not that visible otherwise”. Bullcrap. Weighing yourself first thing in the morning helps put you in the right state of mind to sustain your diet. Thinking about your weight every morning means that you’ll keep on thinking about your weight loss and stay motivated about it. The surest sign that my diet was failing was when I “forgot” to weigh myself for a week or two.

This is the most important step, and has nothing to do with what you eat.

Buy a body fat percentage scale. They are wildly inaccurate, but if you weigh yourself at the same time every day, you will get a rough idea of the trend of your body fat percentage. This is important because not all weight loss is equal. You want to lose mostly fat, not mostly muscle. A body fat percentage scale will keep reminding you that starving yourself is no good, since your body fat percentage will go up or stay steady when you do that, but it will go down along with your weight when you diet healthily.

Weigh yourself every day.

Step 2: Graph your weight

You might feel silly at first. You will feel delighted once you see how well this works.

During your weight loss, you will inevitably have some slips. Someone will sweet-talk you into having a big dinner. There’ll be that one day of actual real summer (with genuine sunshine) in London, and so you’ll have to have a bbq or wait for the next one (a year later). These things happen. Errare humanum est (to err is human).

If you only weigh yourself every morning without graphing it, then when you slip you will feel demoralised, because you will have gone up by a kilo and a half. That feels really harsh when it took you two weeks to lose that weight, and it might sap your willpower enough to give up.

A graph of your weight will give you perspective. When you can see a lovely straight line from 81kg to 76kg, an unfortunate bounce back up to 77.5kg isn’t such a drama. Thanks to the graph, you’ll see the mishap for what it is – a temporary mistake. It will also be hugely heartening to see the “bump” go straight back down over the next couple of days (assuming you don’t continue stuffing yourself!).

Have a look at my graphs – what do you see? The dead cat bounces along the way, or the irresistible, stock-market-like slide downwards?

Graph your weight every day.

Step 3: Eat less

There has to be one step about eating, eh?

You won’t lose weight unless you eat less. Any number of systems work, but I recommend a system that doesn’t involve starving yourself of essential nutrients. Continue to eat balanced. That includes fat, protein, carbs, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, plenty of water, and nothing in excess (even water is deadly in large quantities).

For me, the method that worked best and with the least expenditure of will-power was what I called “front-loading the day”, or the “big breakfast” diet. For the first two stints of this diet, I had my meals in reverse. My breakfast would involve stuffing myself with as much food as I could fit in my morning stomach. I followed that with a light lunch around 2-3pm, and then almost no dinner (or a low-calorie snack if I was hungry – examples in the appendix).

This “big breakfast” diet worked for me because I need to feel full once a day to be satisfied. But at breakfast, you’re more easily filled up. An 800-1000 calorie breakfast feels huge and very satisfying, whereas you can easily engulf one and a half times as many calories for dinner and feel only a bit full. Having one meal a day where you know you’ll be feeling stuffed also means it’s easier to last through the food-less evening, since you have a nice massive breakfast to look forward to.

For my latest weight-loss campaign, I’m having a small breakfast and a bigger lunch. That’s clearly working too, but I think the “big breakfast” variant was definitely easier. Another advantage I have nowadays is that I have less pressure to eat a proper dinner, since my girlfriend also skips dinner .

It’s worth pointing out that for the first 3 to 5 days, you will feel very hungry in the evening. Have plenty of low-calorie snacks at hand (see appendix). Take heart: after the first few days, you don’t feel all that hungry in the evening anymore. You can eat if you must, but you’re not devoured by hunger anymore. I have actually sat by while others ate a delicious dinner and not felt hungry.

What to eat for breakfast? Anything you want, but I’ve had good luck with a full english breakfast (boiled+fried potatoes, eggs, bacon, the lot – no hash browns though), french-style crèpes (with ham and cheese – 5 small crèpes make for a very filling breakfast), and massive ham-and-cheese toasties (cooked in the oven).

If you don’t have any better ideas, I recommend you do what I did. Big breakfast (eat as much as you can!), light lunch, no dinner.

That’s it.

With those three simple principles I went from 83kg/22% two and a half years ago to 68.5kg/14.3% today (and it’s still dropping, I’m not done with this yet). All my friends will tell you that I have an extremely healthy appetite – I used to eat large portions of everything. I still do, sometimes. I love food, and consider it one of the pleasures of life. Eating less without the steps above is pretty much impossible for me.

And yet, I have done all this without ever feeling like I was making a titanic effort. I wouldn’t say it was easy, but the hardest step was really to do what most people consider downright weird: i.e. chart my weight, and decline to eat dinner .

Thanks to this approach, I feel in control of my weight, which is nice. I’ve never really fancied getting fat, and it looks like I’ll be able to avoid that for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for reading this far. The rest of the article contains some additional tips that don’t fit within the three steps of the method. It’s helpful advice, I think, but not critical.

Summary:

Successful weight loss is about willpower, not food

Step 1: Weigh yourself every day , including body fat percentage

, including body fat percentage Step 2: Chart your weight and BF% , update every day

, update every day Step 3: Eat less, for example, by eating a big breakfast, light lunch, and no dinner

Enjoy your new lower weight! It feels great.