If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

​​We live in a world where from an early age there’s been almost an expectation to lose weight. No matter the price, the constant strive to lose weight is there. And we want results, now! 

It’s never – “I want to lose 30-40 pounds in a year sustainably that works with my lifestyle”, instead more often than not it’s “I have a _____ coming up in a month, how can I lose 20 pounds in 4 weeks” 

And in case you didn’t believe me, the first search on Google is in a month.  On the bright side, when you type 30 pounds, it gives 3 months before anything else. Not amazing, but better than 20 in a month, that’s for damn sure.  

lose 20 pounds

I want to add a note, that if you have a 100+ pounds to lose initial weight will come off quicker, could very much be 10,20, 30 pounds in the first month or two. However, if the 15,20,30 pounds is the total that you’re trying to lose, sometimes it can be harder and take longer. 

 But why are we even talking about quick weight loss? Oh, right, because companies will do anything, and I mean a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g to get you to buy their product by the promise, or even more so a guarantee of you dropping pounds in days and not months.  

So welcome, my dearest reader (yes, I watched Bridgerton recently and if you haven’t, what are you doing?) to the list of 

7 bullshit things you don’t need to lose weight. 

! let’s get into it !

1 – Fad Diets

What the hell is a fad diet? While there’s no exact definition, I shall offer my interpretation of what it is. 

FAD diet is a diet that promises you quick results, usually asks you to eliminate something out of your current diet, becomes really popular for a while, then disappears and comes back a few years later (Atkins now becoming KETO) with a whole new finesse and new research to back it up. 

Hey, listen, truth is, fad diets do work. You want to know why? Because by cutting out a whole food group (which is usually the case) you are eating less. As you’re consuming fewer calories that puts you into a caloric deficit, which is why you can lose weight. 

Here’s the catch! None of these diets tells you what to do when you reach your goal. So, naturally, once you get to where you want to be, you bring back the foods you cut out, you raise calories drastically, and you gain weight back, if not more that you had before. 

FAD diets often perpetuate the yo-yo dieting cycle. You believe it didn’t work and move to another trendy diet just to repeat the cycle. 

2 – Juice Cleanses 

If I had a dollar for every time I heard “I’m just going to do a little juice cleanse for a week, I want to detox”. Let’s unpack everything that’s wrong with this sentence.  

First of all, juicing is not sustainable, and I think there’s an understanding of this because people only do it for a week or two, but the results that come out of juicing are not sustainable either. The weight will drop, a lot of water weight, maybe a few pounds with that, but the moment you introduce “normal” food back. This also leads back to yo-yo dieting cycle, and it just goes on. 

Secondly, by juicing your fruits and veggies you are stripping them of fiber, that we need to feed good gut bacteria, so as a consequence of that you’re also losing some healthy gut bacteria while you’re juicing.

Thirdly, you have not 1, but 2! organs, inside your body, your kidneys and your liver, that are responsible for detoxing your body. By taking away nutrients that your body needs, you’re likely doing the opposite of helping. 

Now, that doesn’t take away for certain liquid diets to give your digestion system a rest but it’s not a weight loss strategy nor a long term, sustainable plan.

3 – Detox Tea

While regular teas are great for you, black, green, white, fruit, mint, you name it, detox teas are not really good quality teas. Will they successfully get you to lose weight? To an extent, sure. If you spend the majority of your day in the bathroom having major, for the lack of a better word, diarrhea, you will shed a couple pounds. You can also do the same trick with the morning trip to the bathroom and weight yourself before and after the fact. Chances are the scale will go down a bit. 

Point is, detox teas include diuretics, hers, laxatives, high levels of caffeine (that one alone can get you going to the bathroom), as well as medications and even illegal chemicals like phedra, that can cause major health complications and even death. 

On a good day you might just have a good trip to the bathroom, on a not so good day you can face one of the side effects like heart attack, stroke and seizure. 

If you want to get some tea benefits, drink some green tea in the morning and even throughout the day and see how that makes you feel. 

4 – Fat Burners

Fat burners are not FDA approved and some can contain potentially harmful ingredients. Some of the main ingredients are caffeine, green tea extract, carnitine, yohimbe, soluble fiber and so many other ingredients, some of them with very little research on how they work and potential side effects that they could cause.

Another huge factor to look at is, if you have a medical condition or heart health issues or blood pressure condition, it might be dangerous to take fat burners without consulting with your doctor first.

Lastly, fat burners will not do the work for you. They could potentially enhance the results that you’re getting, but you gotta be putting in the work with your nutrition and workouts. There’s no magic pill that will melt the fat without you showing up and doing the things that actually work.

I actually took a fat burner once in college once and it did was leave me feeling nauseous and weird. Don’t make the same mistake I did!

5 – Doing cardio every day for hours

While cardio is generally good for you, it can become one of those “too much of a good thing is bad” king of situation. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying don’t do cardio, it’s great for your cardiovascular health and can also boost your metabolism and give you a good workout.

The issue arises when you’re only doing cardio, every day or almost every day for a long period of time. What can happen is by doing so you can start losing your lean muscle mass, that can help you burn calories as well as boost your metabolism. Doing only cardio changes the way your body uses energy, it makes you more endurance focused and with that, your body stores fat that it can use for energy to keep you going for hours. Another potential outcome is that it can raise your appetite, and cause you to eat more, so you won’t be losing weight.

6 – Waist trainers

If you wrap yourself with something, anything really, around your waist, do exercise for an hour or two and then take the wrapping off, chances are you’ll be sweaty underneath.

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be as bad if that was the only thing that the waist trainers did. The list of issues with those is one to be aware of. Waist trainers can weaken core muscles, restrict air flow to the organs, cause musculoskeletal issues, put pressure on your organs, lead to digestive issues by causing acid reflux and even fracture the ribs.

When you see a celebrity you like promoting it online, just remember that that’s something that makes them money. They have their personal trainer, chef and a group of people helping them to be in the shape that they are, so any waist trainer or a magic concoction they are promoting is more likely than not to make money.

7 – Eating 1200 calories for years

I can’t believe that we still need to talk about this one, but it happens so much more often than it ever really should. . The real problem is under eating in general, however 1200 does provide a pretty good example of that. What happens when you’re under eating is, your metabolism adjusts to it. So, say you should be eating 2000 calories, but you’re eating 1200, your baseline now is 1200. While this becomes the baseline, your body still knows that it’s less than what you’re supposed to be getting. When you decide that you want to lose weight and bring the calories even lower than 1200, your very smart body freaks out, now it goes into the protection mode and stores everything, because it thinks that you can starve or give even less food. So, to keep your body and organs safe, it stores all the calories you’re consuming to make sure if food stops coming, you have something to work off.

The issue with this is that to recover your metabolism, it’s going to take a long time. Raising your calories up to a healthy adult level before you can attempt a weight loss phase again.

I can go on and on and on about so many other things, like a magic booty workout or a 7-day workout that’ll get your abs, or a 500 calorie a day plan to look like your favorite K-pop celebrity. Point is, the way to lose weight is not a quick fix (if you want to keep it off, of course), and it takes time and effort.

There are only a few simple steps, though:

Moderate Calorie Deficit

Daily Movement 

Healthy amount of sleep

Stress Management

Focusing on whole foods and minimizing highly processed foods

And you really need to show up, day after day and put in the work, and results will follow.

If you want to get on a route to healthy weight loss, check out our Master Your Health Ebook that breaks down a lot of these practical core principles.