*UPDATE* In 2001, there was a weight loss chat room that a reader asked me to check out and give them my opinion on. While that chat room hasn’t existed for years now, my commentary on what I saw then and how I responded will ALWAYS be relevant. So, here it is in its full original form…
A reader recently emailed me and thanked me for the information I’ve written for this site about weight loss. They told me that they lost 30 pounds by following my advice, which is always nice to hear. They then went on to tell me about a weight loss chat room that they go into every once in a while and claimed the people in there didn’t know very much about losing weight. So, they wanted me to check it out and let them know what I thought.
Soon after, I decided to go in a take a look at this weight loss chat room. What I saw was pretty bad and actually kind of funny, in pathetic sort of way though. The main subject of this room was of course the almighty question… how do I lose weight? I am going to answer that question for you right now plain and simple and by only using 8 easy words that everyone can understand even if you know nothing about weight loss.
The main thing in this weight loss room that caught my attention was that every once in a while, someone would come in and say that they lost weight. Everyone else in the room would then congratulate them on losing the weight and within the next 5 seconds, EVERYONE in the room would all ask this person one question all at once…. “How did you lose it???”
Honestly, I find that question to be extremely funny. I just can’t figure out how anyone can ask it seriously. Someone loses weight and you ask them how they lost that weight? What kind of stupid question is that? To me that question is just as funny as if someone said “I just walked to the store” and someone asks them “Really? How did you walk there?” The obvious answer is “by using my legs and walking.”
And the answer to the question “how did you lose weight” is just as simple and as obvious as that… and that is why I find it so funny.
How Do You Lose Weight?
You see, despite the hopes and dreams of many lazy people, there is only one way to lose weight. No, that wasn’t a typo. You can only lose weight 1 way, by doing 1 thing. Here it comes… get your pads and pens ready and write this one down. Here are those 8 simple words that I mentioned before. Here is how weight loss happens.
Drum roll please…
If you want to lose weight, you need to “eat fewer calories than you are currently eating.”
There you have it ladies and gentlemen, the 8 simple words. Eat fewer calories than you are currently eating! That’s it! That is ALL that works!! EVERYTHING else is USELESS! If weight loss and losing weight is your goal, then you just need to eat fewer calories than you are currently eating and THAT’S IT!!!!
When people ask the “how did you lose weight” question, it’s like they are expecting to hear something other then “I ate less,” but you will NEVER EVER hear any other honest answer to that question. I mean seriously, when these people ask that question to someone, do they really expect them to say “Well, I bought one of those fancy ab machines 3 weeks ago and LOOK AT ME NOW!!” Hell no, you will never hear that!
Do you think someone is going to answer them with “I went to the supplement store and bought these amazing fat burning pills to help me lose weight and I lost it all in no time. The pills did all the work for me!” You will never hear that either! The only answer that they will ever hear is that this person lost weight by eating less. Do you know why that is the only answer they will ever hear?
It’s because that is the ONLY thing that works. There are no weight loss secrets, no ab machines with super powers, and no magical pills, products or supplements.
Magical Herbal Tea?
Another thing that I found so funny in this room was how these people who all claim they want to lose weight will try just about anything (no matter how stupid) as long as it doesn’t require them to eat correctly and do all of the hard work that is needed in order for weight loss to happen. One of the many stupid conversations that I saw in this weight loss room was something about some type of herbal tea that is supposed to allow your body to burn 4% more calories than it normally does.
Are you kidding me? The person who started this magic herbal tea conversation also mentioned that they had about 60 pounds to lose. If you have 60 pounds to lose and you’re wasting your time talking about drinking magic herbal tea because it is supposed to allow you to burn 4% more calories, then you might as well start eating herbal potato chips and herbal Mcdonalds cheese burgers because you are herbally out of your mind.
But wait, there’s more! The next wonderful weight loss conversation that started was about how you should drink cold water instead of warm water because the colder water requires your body to warm it up, and this “warming” of the water burns calories, which will of course make you lose weight. I swear I’m not making this up.
Warm Water?
First of all.. who the hell is drinking warm water in the first place? Secondly, do you honestly think that the calories that “supposedly” get “burned” while your body is “warming” up this water is going to make any difference whatsoever in terms of weight loss? OF COURSE NOT! Not one single little bit! This conversation proved 2 things to me.
One, that people will try anything to lose weight as long as it doesn’t require them to work hard. And two, that I could start the “eating snow diet” and tell people that all they need to do is move somewhere where it snows a lot and just start eating snow 5 times a day, and they will lose weight because their body will be “warming” the snow all day long.
Weight Loss Is Simple Unless You Make It Complicated
Don’t just think I sat there and watched this. I jumped right in to try to help and explain what was wrong and why it was wrong and how they should just be focusing on just eating a little less, not on useless crap like herbal tea and cold water and other little weight loss tips they read about or heard about that won’t make one damn difference.
The only tip there is when it comes to how to lose weight, and the only tip that will make a difference, is to just eat fewer calories than you are currently eating. They refused to listen to me though. At one point, I just came out and said these exact words: “Weight loss is SIMPLE” and half the room sounded like they wanted to fight me.
They refused to believe that it was simple. Crazy huh? It took me a few minutes, but I figured out why they didn’t want to believe me. These people obviously have not lost weight yet. Therefore, they want to believe that weight loss is confusing, hard and impossible. If they believed it was simple, they would hate themselves for not being able to do something that was simple.
They’d much rather believe that they can’t do something that is extremely complicated. Sometimes I think people would much rather just have a good excuse for not being able to lose weight, than to actually lose it. So, after a few minutes of wasted time arguing, I wished them all good luck with their herbal tea and cold water and left.
“I Tried That Diet Too.”
A few days later I was crazy enough to go back in. This time the conversation was about gimmick diets (or fad diets), and I mean EVERY gimmick diet. Everything from the Weight Watchers Diet Plan, to the low carb diet, to Atkins, to Slim Fast, to stuff I could swear these people had to be making up on the spot, like the “cabbage soup diet.”
This was really the conversation that annoyed me the most. To me, the worst part was how after someone mentioned one of these diets, everyone else would say something like “yeah, I tried that one, it was ok” or “I tried that one for a while” or something along those lines.
This means that basically all of these people have “tried” all of these different diets at some point to lose weight. What I can’t understand is how they could just “try” a diet. How can you expect the diet to work if you just “try” it?
These people go on one of these diets for a week, come into this stupid chat room or read some stupid magazine or see some stupid commercial for some other diet and they think to themselves, “wow this one looks like the best weight loss program of all, I’m going to “try” this one!”
DEAR GOD HELP ME! You can not “TRY” diets!!! You have to “DO” diets!!! Do it and keep doing it! That’s it! And if these people were just “trying” the diets to see which one would better fit their lifestyle or preferences, it would be fine.
But no, they “try” them to see which one will allow them to lose 20 pounds in a week. They fail to understand that unless they are on the “cut your left leg off diet,” these results can NOT happen EVER. Weight loss takes hard work and consistency! Sadly for these people, these were 2 things they did not want to “try.”
The next thing that bothered me was the gimmick weight loss diets themselves. Now, before I go any further, let me just say that if you like these types of diets and they work for you, then please, keep doing it. You should do whatever works for you and keeps you happy and healthy.
Take Slim Fast For Example
Now, getting back to these gimmick diets… you do NOT need them! They don’t do anything special, they just make it seem like they do so they can get your money. None of these types of diets really do anything great at all in terms of losing weight. For example, Slim Fast.
Do you know what Slim Fast is? It’s calories. Sure, its a “delicious shake,” but all it really is is just calories. I don’t know how many calories are in Slim Fast, but for this example, lets pretend it has 250 calories. The thing about Slim Fast is that it is just these calories. There is no weight loss magic in it.
You would get the same results by eating 250 calories worth of good food like chicken, fruits and vegetables, walnuts or oatmeal. The only difference I see between 250 calories worth of Slim Fast and 250 calories worth of these high quality foods is that you will probably be fuller and feel like you ate more after eating the actual food instead of drinking a Slim Fast shake. See my point?
Silly Weight Loss Spam and Scams
Moving on, another thing that really made my day in this weight loss room was the constant spam. If you don’t know what spam in a chat room looks like compared to an email, it’s kind of like this: Pretend you are in a chat room and all of a sudden someone comes in and says “Looking to buy life insurance? Click here NOW!!!!!!!” and then they leave the room right after. Exciting, huh?
It seemed like once every 20 seconds someone new would come in and spam their useless weight loss crap. Sometimes they’d stay for a while and put on a whole act that sadly only I was able to figure out was a spam act.
They’d say “I feel great, just lost 50 pounds!” Then of course, the whole room asked them how, and they say “It was easy since I used herbal-meta-slim-weight-fast-quickfix-watchers-pill” or whatever the name of the useless product or gimmick was and then, magically, this person just happens to have a website for everyone else in the room to buy this product from.
Remember before when I said the only way to lose weight was to eat fewer calories than you are currently eating and that this was the only answer anyone would ever give you if you asked them how they lost weight? Well, let me add a second half to that.
If anyone EVER tells you they lost weight some other way or even just says that another way of losing weight exists, then they are lying and trying to get you to buy something. Remember that.
Weight Loss REALLY Is As Simple As I Claim
You know what though? In the end, weight loss IS simple! There is nothing to it actually, just learn what you need to do and then just keep doing it. Ready to learn? Here’s how…
Your weight works like this. There is a certain number of calories that you need to eat each day in order for your body to maintain its current weight. If you eat about 500 calories less than this maintaining number, then you will lose weight at a rate of about 1 pound per week.
Combine this with making sure the calories you do consume come from high quality satisfying sources, drinking plenty of water, getting enough sleep, and doing some form of exercise, and weight loss will happen as ideally as it can and should happen.
How do you like that? You didn’t have to spend any money and there were no fancy gimmicks. What I just described works. It ALWAYS works! If it doesn’t work, then you are NOT human! How’s that for a guarantee? So if you do it and it doesn’t seem to be working, then guess what? You were NOT doing it right! It’s just that simple.
I know I just gave a very broad description, but all of the weight loss diet and workout specifics are already explained throughout this website. In fact, EVERYTHING you need in order to lose weight and keep it off forever is here for you, for free.
Start Here…
Start with my article about How To Lose Weight and go from there.
Weight loss isn’t rocket science. It isn’t confusing and it isn’t complicated. It is simple, whether you choose to believe it or not. Just eat fewer calories than you are currently eating, and that’s it. Oh, and one more thing… please never invite me to any more weight loss chat rooms. Thanks.
***NEW*** If you still have any questions or need some help setting up your weight loss diet (or workout), then I have some good news. After nearly 10 years of people asking for it, the entire diet and workout system I’ve used to help countless men and women permanently lose fat is now available!
You can learn all about it right here: The Ultimate Fat Loss & Muscle Building Guide