Your weight loss checklist: 55 real-life lessons

This is the weight-loss checklist I wish I'd had as a plant-fueled athlete 10 years ago. Use this to get lean and strong as quickly as possible.

Oct 15, 2026

Your weight loss checklist: 55 real-life lessons

Contents

55 weight loss checklist lessons

Getting lean is simple.

Most people overcomplicate the process. I did for years, too.

I wish I had a weight loss checklist that wasn’t full of b.s. tips or fad diets. I wanted something rooted in lived experience, verified results, and proven systems. So I created the system myself.

Fat loss is simple: eat fewer calories than your maintenance calories. This tells your body to use its fat reserves for energy.

It’s like deciding to stop shopping and start relying on your pantry. You use the energy you already have instead of pouring more into an already-full pantry.

I’ve made the same weight-loss (fat-loss) mistakes as most people. I’ve obsessed over calories. I’ve used every dieting approach. I’ve tried intermittent fasting for months on end.

Some things worked. Others not so much. So things worked great when I had internet access. Others didn't work when I didn’t know how to navigate my health without 3 apps.

This guide is based on my 15 years of testing health protocols and 10 years of coaching others.

Absorb what’s useful, discard what’s not, and add what’s uniquely yours.

Less is more when you’re doing the right things.

As a side note: I’ve focused on the main, overarching principles of fat loss to keep things simple and, ideally, more effective.

You can also dive into more fat-loss lessons in the video below.

Tactics come and go. A pill, powder, or potion will always try to convince you it's the ‘best’ way to burn body fat. It’s not.

Nature has always given us the right tools to maintain a healthy, optimal body weight and body composition.

Instead of going deep into nutritional science and strategies, I’ve gathered my top 55 fat-loss insights into a simple guide below.

Let’s dive in.

55 weight loss checklist lessons

Fat loss means eating less food than your body needs. The simplest way to do this is to reduce your fat intake and eat smaller portions.
However, eating less and moving less doesn’t support optimal health. Lifting weights helps preserve muscle during fat loss phases.
NEAT can be annoying during fat loss. NEAT is all of your non-exercise activities like walking, fidgeting, and random bodily movements. During fat loss, aim to hit 8k steps per day or more (12k or higher helps as you get leaner).
Sleep is underrated for fat loss. Exercising is overrated for fat loss. Aim to get 7-9 hours of quality deep sleep (8+ is a good rule of thumb, especially if you’re training).
Eating more dietary fat quickly makes fat loss harder. Keep fat intake minimal and focus on healthy fats like seeds, nuts, and high-fat fruits like avocado, but keep them to a minimum each week.
If you want to drop body fat and keep muscle (and even build a little), carbs are your best friend. Sure, they store 3 grams of water per 1 gram of carb… but we run on carbs. The healthier your carb sources (fruit-dominant, veggie-rich), the better your workouts will be. It also makes fat loss easier when you eat abundant, low-calorie, nutrient-rich meals.
Protein can help preserve muscle during fat loss phases. How much? It depends on each individual’s goals. If you’re plant-fueled, 0.8-1.0 grams per ideal bodyweight can help.
Lifting weights is how you preserve muscle during fat loss. Cardio improves heart health. A caloric deficit (eating less) is how you drop body fat.
‘Fat burning’ is a sexy marketing term for lipolysis, the process of releasing energy from a fat cell and oxidizing it for energy.
Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper is a great way to simplify fat loss. Eat your biggest meals earlier in the day and end your eating earlier in the evening. 3-4 hours before bed can reset your health, improve sleep, simplify digestion, and restore higher levels of health. Plus, it makes fat loss even faster and easier.
Start every meal with fruits, then wait 10-20 minutes before eating the next food group. Naturally, you’ll be fuller faster and less likely to overeat. You can do the same with vegetables, but fruits are much more hydrating.
Your first 20 pounds are much easier to drop compared to your next 20 pounds. The rule of fat loss: the leaner you get, the harder it is to get even leaner.
Be mindful of metabolic adaptation. Eventually, your body will adapt to your current calories and workouts. That’s okay. It’s just a sign you’ll need to make a few minor adjustments.
If anyone tries to sell you a fat loss supplement, pill, or drug, decline and walk away fast.
Most people would rather take a drug, pill, powder, or potion to solve their fat loss problems. It's more effective to take ownership of their habits, lifestyle, and identity. If you don’t solve the latter, you can’t get the former's results for life.
Fat loss is a personal journey. It’s deeply connected with our relationship with food, exercise, and psyche. The more you stop comparing your journey to someone else’s, the easier it will be to start to ‘see through’ your own health puzzle.
If you’re doing cardio for fat loss without focusing on a deficit first, you’ll spend most of your free time doing cardio and see minimal results. Moving more matters, but so do what you eat and how much.
A deficit by itself is great. But a deficit combined with nutrient-dense foods? This is the double-edged sword of fat-loss success. Combine this with food timing (when you eat) and food speed (how fast you eat), and you’ve got the 4 most powerful nutrition tools in your belt.
The fatter you are, the faster you can drop body fat without worrying too much about muscle loss. The opposite is true as you get leaner.
A healthy fat-loss rate is 0.5 to 0.75% of your body weight. This usually averages out to 0.5 - 1.25 pounds per week (in pounds lost). This number can be faster if your body fat percentage is higher, so around 2 pounds a week, but beware: the faster you drop body fat, the higher the risk you’ll regain it after you finish. So a sustainable rate is recommended.
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast when it comes to fat loss. You can use this quote for muscle building, sports performance, healing, and any other health or fitness goal.
It’s better to overeat in the morning or midday than in the evening. But even better: don't overeat at all.
The more in tune you get with your body, the easier it will be for you to see how unconscious your health habits were before.
If you think fat loss is hard, think about how hard it is to have diabetes, heart disease, or cancer.
We’ve normalized being overweight and obese to the point that when someone starts eating healthy and exercising, people think it’s restrictive and too hard. It’s not. Being unhealthy is always harder.
Food is for fuel first, not pleasure. If your fuel gives you pleasure, that’s an extra bonus. But if you’re living to eat vs. eating to live, fat loss will be much, much harder.
Eat for nutrients, not for pleasure. When you choose nutrient-dense food and prioritize your vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, fat loss gets even simpler. Most of what humans eat isn’t ideal for optimal health, longevity, or aging.
Fat loss is more about understanding your psyche than retraining your body. The body naturally wants to be healthy and lean. Since the body came from nature, its default is a natural healthy state. Unfortunately, the addicted mind, which is mostly archetypal, can drive the body into disease, illness, and obesity. Learning ‘to stop and see’ and come back to your Center can be one of the most transformative health practices, especially for fat loss. The Observing Self can break mental addictions better than any therapist.
The longer you’re in a fat loss phase, the hungrier, harder, and worse the impact will be on your body and health. So take a diet break every 4 months or so to rejuvenate your body.
Loading up on fat (even the healthy kind), salt, oil, and sugar makes fat loss harder. These are the easiest foods to overeat on. Rely on healthy carbs and lean proteins as needed.
The best thing I ever did for fat loss was stop complaining about the journey and take ownership of it. It makes fat loss 10x easier when you own that you’re on the journey.
The unfortunate truth about getting lean? It makes you realize how poor your health habits were before being lean. That reality check can be unsettling, but it can be life-changing if you take ownership of what you learn.
Most people start a weight loss journey to change how they look…but they keep going because of how it makes them feel.
I’d rather be lean, strong, and healthy than be unhealthy, sick, and overweight. Yet, my actions haven’t always reflected this. Understanding your psyche is how you win the fitness game.
After dropping 30 pounds once and 20 pounds later, I realized that staying unconscious about my health habits is an easy way to go backward. My solution is simple: set non-negotiable standards I won't let slip.
My top 7 health standards for staying lean year-round:
1. Walk 7-10k steps daily
2. Get 8 hours of quality sleep daily
3. Lift weights 3-4x a week at 85% intensity
4. Stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime
5. Eat an abundance of fruits, veg, wfpb, & plant protein
6. Eat biggest meals earlier in the day and smaller meals later
7. Eat slightly below fullness (where you feel ‘good ’, not stuffed)
If you’re going to bed hungry, that’s a good sign that fat loss is working.
I’d rather dial in my nutrition and meal quality than do 3-5 extra workouts to ‘burn off’ what I ate. Focus on what actually moves the needle vs. trying to ‘make up’ for poor behaviors.
If fat loss is hard and you’re struggling to stay consistent with your health behaviors, take a moment to reflect on whether this matters to you right now, or whether now is the right time to focus on fat loss. There’s no right or wrong answer, but there is a right answer for you.
My favorite sources of plant protein to hit 150 grams of protein daily:
1. TVP
2. Tofu
3. Tempeh
4. Pea protein
5. Fava beans
6. Rice protein
7. Lentils (carb but high protein)
Leucine matters during fat loss because it helps preserve muscle. A simple way to get enough leucine is to mix pea and rice protein in a 7:3 ratio (7 servings of pea with 3 servings of rice). An even simpler way? Just eat a diverse range of wfpb foods.
A deficit is still the main driver for fat loss regardless of what anyone tries to tell you.
If a deficit isn’t working for fat loss, there’s one other way to ignite fat loss (contradicting my last insight). Focus on optimizing your liver, kidney, and lymphatic system. The liver is the body's main detoxifier, and 9/10 people have sluggish livers. To build a high-performance liver that makes fat loss seamless, eat lots of fruit and green leafy veg, and minimize high-fat foods (including high-protein ones).
A quick way to derail your fat loss is to fill up your kitchen with high-fat, salty, and sugar-filled foods that are hard to resist. Prime your environment for health success, not failure.
Getting lean with plants is simpler than most people think. Sure, protein helps preserve muscle. Sure, eating less creates your deficit. And sure, lifting weights prioritizes fat loss over muscle loss. But at the end of the day, the main processes are simple. It’s simple, not easy.
Fat loss is tough mainly because many of us cling to unhealthy habits. Our inner "Puer Aeternus," or eternal child, often reacts with a tantrum when we try to change our habits, lifestyle, and identity. Patience, self-observation, and neutrality are the medicines to pacify the lower soul.
The best thing that happened to me during fat loss was the character I developed. The person I’ve become along the journey of fat loss and getting lean and strong is vastly different than the one who was overweight and unhealthy.
Living in a perma diet (permanent) isn’t sustainable. I’ve felt the pull to want to live longer in a deficit (than I should), and it’s unhealthy. Instead, once you’ve hit your body composition goal, give yourself grace to return to a healthy amount of food. Starving yourself and restricting food is a quick way to spiral your health downward.
A whole, plant-based, low-fat diet with minimal processed and refined foods, and low in salt, oil, and sugar, can be the best thing you do for your fat loss journey. Does it need to be perfect? No. But this simple way of eating can make your fat loss journey straightforward.
Eat food for fuel, not just pleasure. When you eat only for pleasure, your senses will fail you. When you eat for fuel and nutrients, you get the benefits of high-performance health while still enjoying pleasurable meals. I’ve yet to find an organic, ripe, fresh fruit I haven’t enjoyed.
One of my favorite quotes from Dr. Alan Goldhamer:
1. ‘Society is designed to keep you fat, sick, and miserable.’ Knowing this, why would I want to follow the masses and keep getting the same results they’re getting?
GLP’s may give you rapid weight and fat loss. But they won’t improve your character development or who you are. If you don’t go within, you will go without. They also aren’t guaranteed to work long-term or for life, unlike changing your habits and lifestyle choices.
If your liver is sluggish (9/10 people), drink lemon water first thing in the morning using this method: 16-32 ounces of room temperature water with a freshly squeezed lemon (1/2 lemon per 16 ounces). Use clean, filtered water, and drink it right after you wake up, before eating or drinking anything else; then wait 20 minutes before eating or drinking anything else. This will power up your liver’s natural detox systems like nothing else.
Fat loss or weight loss ultimately comes down to returning to natural health and natural hygiene. The more we get in tune with our bodies, release mental addictions that don’t serve us, and slow down, the easier it is to see how insane society is and all the crazy behaviors we engage in each day.
At my leanest, standing on stage at around 5-6% body fat, I realized I cared more about my health and family than having an 8-pack. Sometimes the destination isn’t what you think it will be, but it will change you regardless.

It's easy to type into Claude or GPT and get the top 50+ fat-loss lessons.

I could have done this with this guide or any of the guides I write here on our website.

But lived experience matters more than generic tips. That is why every guide I write on the blog is handwritten, personal, and free of the nonsense artificial intelligence spits out from its dozens of references.

I’ve lived every one of these lessons over the past 15 years of my fitness and health journey.

I’ve learned a lot along the way and realized that much of what I did wasn’t best for my health.

The journey is always about progress, not perfection.

Consistency compounded over time in the right direction can yield tremendous results.

Most people never realize this for themselves because society is built to keep us fat, sick, and miserable.

It’s the sad reality that we all live in.

But taking ownership of my health and body has been the single greatest fat loss lesson I’ve learned over the past decade and a half.

When you take ownership of your health and say ‘if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me’, something interesting starts to happen inside:

You stop resisting the journey. And you start to accept your choices.

It doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes or go backward. But it does mean you’ll know where you want to go and how fast you want to get there.

These are the 55 fat loss lessons I’ve learned over the past 15 years.

Use this weight loss checklist to your health advantage.

Health is truly wealth.

Contents

55 weight loss checklist lessons

Fat loss means eating less food than your body needs. The simplest way to do this is to reduce your fat intake and eat smaller portions.

However, eating less and moving less doesn’t support optimal health. Lifting weights helps preserve muscle during fat loss phases.

NEAT can be annoying during fat loss. NEAT is all of your non-exercise activities like walking, fidgeting, and random bodily movements. During fat loss, aim to hit 8k steps per day or more (12k or higher helps as you get leaner).

Sleep is underrated for fat loss. Exercising is overrated for fat loss. Aim to get 7-9 hours of quality deep sleep (8+ is a good rule of thumb, especially if you’re training).

Eating more dietary fat quickly makes fat loss harder. Keep fat intake minimal and focus on healthy fats like seeds, nuts, and high-fat fruits like avocado, but keep them to a minimum each week.

If you want to drop body fat and keep muscle (and even build a little), carbs are your best friend. Sure, they store 3 grams of water per 1 gram of carb… but we run on carbs. The healthier your carb sources (fruit-dominant, veggie-rich), the better your workouts will be. It also makes fat loss easier when you eat abundant, low-calorie, nutrient-rich meals.

Protein can help preserve muscle during fat loss phases. How much? It depends on each individual’s goals. If you’re plant-fueled, 0.8-1.0 grams per ideal bodyweight can help.

Lifting weights is how you preserve muscle during fat loss. Cardio improves heart health. A caloric deficit (eating less) is how you drop body fat.

‘Fat burning’ is a sexy marketing term for lipolysis, the process of releasing energy from a fat cell and oxidizing it for energy.

Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper is a great way to simplify fat loss. Eat your biggest meals earlier in the day and end your eating earlier in the evening. 3-4 hours before bed can reset your health, improve sleep, simplify digestion, and restore higher levels of health. Plus, it makes fat loss even faster and easier.

Start every meal with fruits, then wait 10-20 minutes before eating the next food group. Naturally, you’ll be fuller faster and less likely to overeat. You can do the same with vegetables, but fruits are much more hydrating.

Your first 20 pounds are much easier to drop compared to your next 20 pounds. The rule of fat loss: the leaner you get, the harder it is to get even leaner.

Be mindful of metabolic adaptation. Eventually, your body will adapt to your current calories and workouts. That’s okay. It’s just a sign you’ll need to make a few minor adjustments.

If anyone tries to sell you a fat loss supplement, pill, or drug, decline and walk away fast.

Most people would rather take a drug, pill, powder, or potion to solve their fat loss problems. It's more effective to take ownership of their habits, lifestyle, and identity. If you don’t solve the latter, you can’t get the former's results for life.

Fat loss is a personal journey. It’s deeply connected with our relationship with food, exercise, and psyche. The more you stop comparing your journey to someone else’s, the easier it will be to start to ‘see through’ your own health puzzle.

If you’re doing cardio for fat loss without focusing on a deficit first, you’ll spend most of your free time doing cardio and see minimal results. Moving more matters, but so do what you eat and how much.

A deficit by itself is great. But a deficit combined with nutrient-dense foods? This is the double-edged sword of fat-loss success. Combine this with food timing (when you eat) and food speed (how fast you eat), and you’ve got the 4 most powerful nutrition tools in your belt.

The fatter you are, the faster you can drop body fat without worrying too much about muscle loss. The opposite is true as you get leaner.

A healthy fat-loss rate is 0.5 to 0.75% of your body weight. This usually averages out to 0.5 - 1.25 pounds per week (in pounds lost). This number can be faster if your body fat percentage is higher, so around 2 pounds a week, but beware: the faster you drop body fat, the higher the risk you’ll regain it after you finish. So a sustainable rate is recommended.

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast when it comes to fat loss. You can use this quote for muscle building, sports performance, healing, and any other health or fitness goal.

It’s better to overeat in the morning or midday than in the evening. But even better: don't overeat at all.

The more in tune you get with your body, the easier it will be for you to see how unconscious your health habits were before.

If you think fat loss is hard, think about how hard it is to have diabetes, heart disease, or cancer.

We’ve normalized being overweight and obese to the point that when someone starts eating healthy and exercising, people think it’s restrictive and too hard. It’s not. Being unhealthy is always harder.

Food is for fuel first, not pleasure. If your fuel gives you pleasure, that’s an extra bonus. But if you’re living to eat vs. eating to live, fat loss will be much, much harder.

Eat for nutrients, not for pleasure. When you choose nutrient-dense food and prioritize your vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, fat loss gets even simpler. Most of what humans eat isn’t ideal for optimal health, longevity, or aging.

Fat loss is more about understanding your psyche than retraining your body. The body naturally wants to be healthy and lean. Since the body came from nature, its default is a natural healthy state. Unfortunately, the addicted mind, which is mostly archetypal, can drive the body into disease, illness, and obesity. Learning ‘to stop and see’ and come back to your Center can be one of the most transformative health practices, especially for fat loss. The Observing Self can break mental addictions better than any therapist.

The longer you’re in a fat loss phase, the hungrier, harder, and worse the impact will be on your body and health. So take a diet break every 4 months or so to rejuvenate your body.

Loading up on fat (even the healthy kind), salt, oil, and sugar makes fat loss harder. These are the easiest foods to overeat on. Rely on healthy carbs and lean proteins as needed.

The best thing I ever did for fat loss was stop complaining about the journey and take ownership of it. It makes fat loss 10x easier when you own that you’re on the journey.

The unfortunate truth about getting lean? It makes you realize how poor your health habits were before being lean. That reality check can be unsettling, but it can be life-changing if you take ownership of what you learn.

Most people start a weight loss journey to change how they look…but they keep going because of how it makes them feel.

I’d rather be lean, strong, and healthy than be unhealthy, sick, and overweight. Yet, my actions haven’t always reflected this. Understanding your psyche is how you win the fitness game.

After dropping 30 pounds once and 20 pounds later, I realized that staying unconscious about my health habits is an easy way to go backward. My solution is simple: set non-negotiable standards I won't let slip.

My top 7 health standards for staying lean year-round:

Walk 7-10k steps daily
Get 8 hours of quality sleep daily
Lift weights 3-4x a week at 85% intensity
Stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime
Eat an abundance of fruits, veg, wfpb, & plant protein
Eat biggest meals earlier in the day and smaller meals later
Eat slightly below fullness (where you feel ‘good ’, not stuffed)

If you’re going to bed hungry, that’s a good sign that fat loss is working.

I’d rather dial in my nutrition and meal quality than do 3-5 extra workouts to ‘burn off’ what I ate. Focus on what actually moves the needle vs. trying to ‘make up’ for poor behaviors.

If fat loss is hard and you’re struggling to stay consistent with your health behaviors, take a moment to reflect on whether this matters to you right now, or whether now is the right time to focus on fat loss. There’s no right or wrong answer, but there is a right answer for you.

My favorite sources of plant protein to hit 150 grams of protein daily:

TVP
Tofu
Tempeh
Pea protein
Fava beans
Rice protein
Lentils (carb but high protein)

Leucine matters during fat loss because it helps preserve muscle. A simple way to get enough leucine is to mix pea and rice protein in a 7:3 ratio (7 servings of pea with 3 servings of rice). An even simpler way? Just eat a diverse range of wfpb foods.

A deficit is still the main driver for fat loss regardless of what anyone tries to tell you.

If a deficit isn’t working for fat loss, there’s one other way to ignite fat loss (contradicting my last insight). Focus on optimizing your liver, kidney, and lymphatic system. The liver is the body's main detoxifier, and 9/10 people have sluggish livers. To build a high-performance liver that makes fat loss seamless, eat lots of fruit and green leafy veg, and minimize high-fat foods (including high-protein ones).

A quick way to derail your fat loss is to fill up your kitchen with high-fat, salty, and sugar-filled foods that are hard to resist. Prime your environment for health success, not failure.

Getting lean with plants is simpler than most people think. Sure, protein helps preserve muscle. Sure, eating less creates your deficit. And sure, lifting weights prioritizes fat loss over muscle loss. But at the end of the day, the main processes are simple. It’s simple, not easy.

Fat loss is tough mainly because many of us cling to unhealthy habits. Our inner "Puer Aeternus," or eternal child, often reacts with a tantrum when we try to change our habits, lifestyle, and identity. Patience, self-observation, and neutrality are the medicines to pacify the lower soul.

The best thing that happened to me during fat loss was the character I developed. The person I’ve become along the journey of fat loss and getting lean and strong is vastly different than the one who was overweight and unhealthy.

Living in a perma diet (permanent) isn’t sustainable. I’ve felt the pull to want to live longer in a deficit (than I should), and it’s unhealthy. Instead, once you’ve hit your body composition goal, give yourself grace to return to a healthy amount of food. Starving yourself and restricting food is a quick way to spiral your health downward.

A whole, plant-based, low-fat diet with minimal processed and refined foods, and low in salt, oil, and sugar, can be the best thing you do for your fat loss journey. Does it need to be perfect? No. But this simple way of eating can make your fat loss journey straightforward.

Eat food for fuel, not just pleasure. When you eat only for pleasure, your senses will fail you. When you eat for fuel and nutrients, you get the benefits of high-performance health while still enjoying pleasurable meals. I’ve yet to find an organic, ripe, fresh fruit I haven’t enjoyed.

One of my favorite quotes from Dr. Alan Goldhamer:

‘Society is designed to keep you fat, sick, and miserable.’ Knowing this, why would I want to follow the masses and keep getting the same results they’re getting?

GLP’s may give you rapid weight and fat loss. But they won’t improve your character development or who you are. If you don’t go within, you will go without. They also aren’t guaranteed to work long-term or for life, unlike changing your habits and lifestyle choices.

If your liver is sluggish (9/10 people), drink lemon water first thing in the morning using this method: 16-32 ounces of room temperature water with a freshly squeezed lemon (1/2 lemon per 16 ounces). Use clean, filtered water, and drink it right after you wake up, before eating or drinking anything else; then wait 20 minutes before eating or drinking anything else. This will power up your liver’s natural detox systems like nothing else.

Fat loss or weight loss ultimately comes down to returning to natural health and natural hygiene. The more we get in tune with our bodies, release mental addictions that don’t serve us, and slow down, the easier it is to see how insane society is and all the crazy behaviors we engage in each day.

At my leanest, standing on stage at around 5-6% body fat, I realized I cared more about my health and family than having an 8-pack. Sometimes the destination isn’t what you think it will be, but it will change you regardless.

It's easy to type into Claude or GPT and get the top 50+ fat-loss lessons.

I could have done this with this guide or any of the guides I write here on our website.

I’ve lived every one of these lessons over the past 15 years of my fitness and health journey.

I’ve learned a lot along the way and realized that much of what I did wasn’t best for my health.

The journey is always about progress, not perfection.

Consistency compounded over time in the right direction can yield tremendous results.

Most people never realize this for themselves because society is built to keep us fat, sick, and miserable.

It’s the sad reality that we all live in.

But taking ownership of my health and body has been the single greatest fat loss lesson I’ve learned over the past decade and a half.

When you take ownership of your health and say ‘if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me’, something interesting starts to happen inside:

You stop resisting the journey. And you start to accept your choices.

It doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes or go backward. But it does mean you’ll know where you want to go and how fast you want to get there.

These are the 55 fat loss lessons I’ve learned over the past 15 years.

Use this weight loss checklist to your health advantage.

Health is truly wealth.