Everything you should know about weight loss
Work smart, you’ll get there much faster.
Key takeaways:
Weight loss is a result of consuming less calories than your body burns every day. To lose 0.5kg per week, you would need a 500 calorie deficit per day.
An achievable and sustainable weight loss target is usually 0.25kg per week.
Modifying your diet allows you to reduce your daily calorie intake, and exercising allows you to increase the amount of calories your body burns.
The most effective diet is a diet that you can stick to for the long run. There is no need to stick to a diet if it’s making you feel miserable.
Aim to do 300 minutes of moderate intensity exercises or 150 of high intensity exercises per week - of which there should be at least 60 minutes of strength training.
Getting your goals and motivations clear will help you tremendously in your weight loss journey. It should be done thoroughly when developing your weight loss plan.
How do I begin to lose weight?
To start losing weight, one has to burn more calories than one consumes. When you consume less calories than you burn (i.e. calorie deficit), your body naturally turns to stored energy sources such as your fat and muscle for fuel to sustain your normal body function. This results in weight loss.
The opposite happens when you consume more calories than you normally burn, which results in weight gain.
There are two primary ways to approach weight loss.
Decrease your overall caloric intake
Apart from plain water, most things we consume have calories. When cutting down calories, we have to focus on both the quantity and quality of the calories that we ingest.
Quantity - The amount of food consumed. Sometimes we may over-consume in terms of the quantity of food that is on our plate. We don’t really realize that the portions we consume are more than what our body needs. The size of the plate, the different macronutrient nutrient breakdown (carbohydrates, protein and fats) all contribute to how much calories are going to be in that meal. Amongst the 3 macronutrients, fats are the most calorie dense at 9 calories per gram of fat, followed by carbohydrates and protein which both have 4 calories per gram. Typically, most people either consume a diet that is high in fats or carbohydrates which causes them to gain weight.
Quality - Not all calories are created equal. Eating 100 calories of milk tea is going to have a different effect on your body than 100 calories of vegetables. If we want to focus on sustainable weight loss, we have to begin to opt for more healthier choices in your diet. Better quality foods are full of essential nutrients that keep your body going and tend to be lower in calories. Eating right promotes a healthy lifestyle, enables us to maintain a healthy weight, improves athletic performance, enhances body functioning, and reduces our risk of illness.
Increase the amount of calories burnt
Any sort of physical activity increases the calories you burn. By exercising more or just by adding more movement or steps into your daily life, you will increase your calorie expenditure. Of course, taking the stairs occasionally isn’t going to give you visible results, but if you regularly choose stairs instead of an elevator, walk to the store instead of driving, do squats or planks while watching TV, this can add up to a significant difference in your daily energy expenditure!
Apart from that, you can also opt to do specific exercises to burn more calories. The most popular exercise activities would be: sports, leisure activities (e.g. jogging, swimming, cycling), strength or cardio training. These sorts of activities will help to burn more calories due to the nature of its intensity. Try to aim for at least 150 to 300 minutes of these kinds of exercise activities throughout the week.
Preparing for your weight loss journey
Before you begin your weight loss journey, make a list of why you want to lose weight. Do it on a post-it note, or a mini white board, or anywhere else which you pass by often in your home.
It sounds simple and maybe a little silly, but reminding yourself on a regular basis why it is important to lose weight and be healthy can go a long way. If you want to lose weight sustainably, you will need to change some habits. In order for habit change to happen, you will need to constantly remind yourself of your reasons for change. So print out a picture of your ideal physique, write down your reasons, imagine yourself achieving your weight loss goals - All of these will help motivate you to stick to your plan!
Understand that weight loss is not linear. Your weight will fluctuate on a day to day basis. There will be days your scale weight goes up. There will be days your scale weight goes down. And there will be days your scale weight does not change. It is important to prepare yourself mentally to accept these fluctuations and always look further ahead. Be patient. Trust that if you stick to the 2 fundamentals of weight loss - consuming less calories and increasing caloric expenditure, you will be able to see weight loss over a few weeks. However, if you do not see results after a few weeks, that would mean that your plan requires tweaking. You may benefit from speaking with a professional to help you get the plan right.
Which is more important for weight loss? Diet or Exercise?
Both exercise and dietary changes are important for weight loss. However, if you had to choose only one of the two, dietary changes alone (i.e. cutting your calorie intake) may promote weight loss more effectively than increasing exercise alone. For most individuals, it is simply easier to lower their calorie intake than it is to increase their calorie expenditure to achieve the same calorie deficit for weight loss. Below is an example:
On average, a 70kg man who runs at 10km/h for 30 minutes will burn around 370 calories. Most individuals will struggle to sustain that level of effort, let alone keep it up every single day.
But you could achieve the same calorie deficit of 370 calories a day just by cutting out your daily snacks — a can of Coca-Cola (160 calories) and two Tim Tams in the evening (200 calories), for example — or by slightly reducing the portion of your dinner (for example, if your dinner is Hainanese chicken rice, just by eating half the portion of rice and swapping to white rice).
Which sounds more do-able: a grueling stint of exercise, or small changes to what you eat? Most likely the diet changes. That is the reason that cutting calories through dietary changes tend to be more achievable for most to lose weight. But by doing both - cutting calories through diet and burning additional calories through exercise, you can lose more weight, more quickly.
What are some effective diets for weight loss?
Plant-based/ Vegan Diet
Plant-based/ vegan/ vegetarian diet restricts all animal products for ethical, environmental, religious or health reasons.
Veganism is the strictest form of vegetarianism. In addition to eliminating meat, it eliminates dairy, eggs, and animal-derived products, such as gelatin, honey.
Vegetarians on the other hand, refrain from consuming all meat products, but their diet does include eggs, milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, and even honey.
How it works:
Plant-based diets likely aid weight loss because they cut out many items which are high in calories(1). Focusing on foods that are low in calories and high in fibre. Fibre helps you to stay full for longer, further reducing the amount of calories you will likely consume in a day.
Things to note:
Though these diets can be very healthy, anyone considering adopting these diets need to be mindful of nutrition deficiencies in micronutrients such as vitamins B-12 and D, calcium, and omega-3 fatty acids(2). The reason for this is that plant-based diets cut out a lot of the sources of these micronutrients.
For instance, dairy products are a major source of calcium and vitamin D, so vegans and ovo vegetarians should eat lots of dark leafy greens (another good source of calcium) and choose foods that are fortified with calcium. Vitamin B12 is only naturally found in animal products, so you should also consume foods that are fortified with vitamin B12.
In some cases, iron and zinc status of vegans may also be of concern because of the limited bioavailability of these minerals in a plant-based diet.
Unless you regularly consume foods that are fortified with these nutrients, you might want to consider taking supplements for these nutrients.
Paleo Diet
The paleo diet claims that you should eat the same foods that your hunter-gatherer ancestors ate before agriculture developed. The theory is that most modern diseases can be linked to the Western diet and the consumption of grains, dairy, and processed foods.
The main idea of paleo diet is to consume whole foods (lean protein, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds) and avoid processed foods (sugar, dairy, and grains). Some more flexible versions of the paleo diet also allow for dairy like cheese and butter, as well as tubers like potatoes and sweet potatoes.
How it works:
A paleo diet is high in protein and fibre. It is also low in carbohydrates. This means that it helps to reduce caloric consumption. Research suggests that the paleo diet may be more filling than popular diets like the Mediterranean diet and low-fat diets. Which reduces the amount of food consumed and thus further reduces caloric intake(3)(4).
Keto Diet
A keto diet is one which almost entirely removes carbs from your diet. It encourages a predominantly fat, moderate protein, and low carb diet.
The ketogenic diet typically reduces total carbohydrate intake to less than 50 grams a day—less than the amount found in a medium plain bagel—and can be as low as 20 grams a day. Generally, ketogenic diets suggest obtaining about 70-80% of total daily calories from fat, 5-10% carbohydrate, and 10-20% protein. For a 2000-calorie diet, this translates to about 165 grams fat, 40 grams carbohydrate, and 75 grams protein. The protein amount on the ketogenic diet is kept moderate in comparison with other low-carb high-protein diets, because eating too much protein can prevent ketosis.
How it works:
The premise of the ketogenic diet for weight loss is to deprive the body of glucose—the main source of energy for all cells in the body, which is obtained by eating carbohydrate foods, to switch to an alternative fuel called ketones which is produced from stored fat(5). During fasting, or when very little carbohydrate is eaten, the body first pulls stored glucose from the liver and temporarily breaks down muscle to release glucose. If this continues for a period of time and stored glucose is fully depleted, blood levels of a hormone called insulin decrease, and the body begins to use fat as its primary fuel. The liver produces ketone bodies from fat, which can be used in the absence of glucose.
Eliminating/ drastically limiting your carb intake also limits your food options. This can noticeably reduce calorie intake especially if you’re a fan of carbs, which is key for fat loss. This diet also tends to help suppress appetite. Ketogenic diets help you feel full for a longer period of time due to the high fat consumption, which is highly satiating. This is supported by positive changes in hunger hormones, including leptin and ghrelin(6).
Things to note:
Following a very high-fat diet may be challenging to maintain. Possible symptoms of extreme carbohydrate restriction that may last days to weeks include hunger, fatigue, low mood, irritability, constipation, headaches, and brain “fog” (7). Though these uncomfortable feelings may subside, staying satisfied with a limited variety of foods and being restricted from otherwise enjoyable foods like a crunchy apple or a pack of potato chips may present some challenges. If you can’t imagine going without carbohydrates like rice/ noodles/ bread for a month, it will be very difficult for you to maintain a keto diet!
Intermittent fasting
Intermittent fasting is a diet regimen that cycles between brief periods of fasting - with either no food or significant calorie reduction, and periods of unrestricted eating.
It doesn’t specify which foods you should eat but rather when you should eat them. In this regard, it’s not really considered a diet in the conventional sense but can be more accurately described as an eating pattern.
The most common methods are fasting for a set time frame, on alternate days, for whole days with a specific frequency per week.
Time-restricted feeding—Following a designated time frame for fasting. The popular would be a 16 hour fast, followed by a 8 hour eating window. For example, having your meals between 12pm-8pm, fasting during the remaining hours of the day.
Alternate-day fasting—Alternating between days of no food restriction with days that consist of one meal that provides about 25% of daily calorie needs. Example: Mon-Wed-Fri consists of fasting, while alternate days have no food restrictions.
Whole-day fasting—1-2 days per week of complete fasting or up to 25% of daily calorie needs, with no food restriction on the other days. Example: The 5:2 diet approach advocates no food restriction five days of the week, cycled with a 400-500 calorie diet the other two days of the week.
How it works:
The main reason that intermittent fasting works for weight loss, is that it helps you eat fewer calories. On top of that, when you are fasted your insulin levels will go down and your fat cells can then release their stored sugar, to be used as energy. The conceptual idea of intermittent fasting also allows your insulin levels to be reduced for long enough that your body is in a fat-burning state, burning additional calories(8).
Which diet is the best for losing weight?
There is no “best” diet in weight loss. The best diet for you is one that you can stick to for the long run. If you try to lose weight with a diet that you hate, what happens is that once you achieve your target weight, you are going to slowly break the diet and eat the things you love or crave for again. More often than not, you may end up consuming more than before because psychologically you are craving for these foods. This leads to a quick regain of weight, sometimes even reaching a higher weight than before. Constant fluctuations in weight have been shown to be harmful to your cardiovascular health!(9)
The main reason why diets help with weight loss is because they do 2 things: 1) reduce the amount of calories you consume and 2) improve the quality of your food intake. Instead of strictly following a diet that you dislike, we recommend looking at your current diet, and finding ways to tweak it so that it achieves those 2 objectives. This requires you to do a bit of research into nutrition (our nutrition article is a good place to start), thinking through what are sustainable changes you can make to your diet. The benefit? It is going to be a diet that you will be comfortable with, and a diet you can stick to for the long run. If you want to cut through the trial and error process that could take months, consider speaking with a professional to work with you to figure out the best way to modify your diet for sustained weight loss.
How can exercise help with weight loss?
Although people appropriately focus on diet when they're trying to lose weight, being active is also an essential component of a weight-loss program. When you're active, your body uses energy (calories) to move, helping to burn the calories you take in with food you eat. Exercise can help you maintain your weight loss. Studies show that people who lose weight and keep it off over the long term tend to get regular physical activity(10)(11).
There are a few different exercise types which can aid with weight loss.
Cardio / aerobic training
Cardiovascular exercise, also known as aerobic exercise, means that you’re doing an activity which uses large muscle groups, such as your legs or upper body. It increases your heart rate and keeps your body in an aerobic zone for most of the exercise. Examples include running on the treadmill or even taking a brisk walk on your lunch break.
Regular physical activity is a great way to increase the amount of calories expended, and aerobic exercises are one of the fastest ways to burn calories. With aerobic exercise you can burn a good amount of calories and at the same time improve cardiovascular health(12).
Walking is always a great place to start because you can do it anywhere and you can control how hard you work. It's easy to increase the intensity by speeding up or walking up hills.
How to start cardio/ aerobic training:
Whichever exercise you choose to do, start with three days of that exercise, working at a moderate level of intensity.
Work for as long as you can, shooting for 20 or more minutes each time. Increase your time each week towards a goal of 30 to 45 minutes of continuous exercise.
Other common forms of cardio include jogging, swimming, cycling, basketball, soccer, badminton and fitness classes. Cardio machines may include a rower, elliptical, stair climber, upright or recumbent bike, and treadmill. If you're just starting out, choose an activity that feels good to you, and that you enjoy.
Strength/ resistance training
Resistance training increases muscle strength by making your muscles work against a weight or force. Different forms of resistance training include using free weights, weight machines, resistance bands and your own body weight.
When you think about the best type of workouts for weight loss, your mind might not immediately jump to strength training, but it should. When you’re losing weight by doing only cardio, you’ll generally lose both fat and muscle. If resistance training isn’t part of your workout routine, you could actually be slowing down your metabolism by losing lean muscle mass, especially if you are also restricting your calories(13)(14).
While it’s true that you may burn more calories during a cardio session as compared to a resistance training session, the calorie burn for a resistance training session continues to run for up to 72 hours after the workout. And more importantly, the lean muscle mass you’ve gained will keep burning calories for as long as you have it. This means that it permanently increases your metabolism and burns calories 24/7, even when you are on your couch watching Netflix after your workout.
Strength training also gives you the ability to endure more during your aerobic training. This means you can increase your performance in cardio-based activities. For example, having strong quads, hamstrings and glutes for running helps you go faster for longer, which burns more calories. And doing exercises to strengthen your core can help you maintain form for biking, which can also help you burn more calories and prevent injuries.
How to start strength/ resistance training:
It’s a good idea to start easy, doing higher repetitions (15-20) and focus on compound exercises (e.g. squats, push ups, burpees, pull ups, deadlifts) before progressing to either heavier weights or more challenging exercises. Compound exercises are exercises which work multiple muscle groups at the same time, as compared to isolation exercises which only work a specific muscle group. For instance, a squat is a compound exercise which works the quads, glutes, hamstrings, calves, core, while a bicep curl is an isolation exercise which works only your biceps.
Tip: Try to incorporate exercises that work the major muscle groups as that will help you to burn more calories as well. For example, lower body exercises like squats and deadlifts, burn more calories than push up or pull up.
Some people might tend to focus on beach body muscles (chest, abs, arms, shoulders), and overlook lower body training. This approach for weight loss is not as effective as one which incorporates lower body exercises. When it comes to strength training, the lower body burns more calories than the upper body when you exercise at the same intensity. The muscles in the lower body are larger and are able to generate more force, resulting in higher calorie expenditure.
By working more muscles, you are creating an anabolic environment for your body to burn more calories because more work needs to be done. So while it’s essential to work your upper body muscles to look good, do not neglect lower body training as they are critical to burning more calories and creating a well-balanced physique which will help you achieve your weight loss goals.
If you are seeking to maximize calories burnt, you can also burn a great amount of calories during a strength-training session! Here are some techniques to help you intensify your strength training and burn more calories:
Reduce your rest time between sets.
Move faster when doing your exercises (do this carefully with proper form to avoid injury)
Increase your reps.
Using heavier weights (but not too heavy that you risk injury).
Focus on doing lower body exercises.
It is important to include both cardio and strength type of training in a successful weight-loss plan. In general, It is recommended to do strength training at least 2-3 times a week for 30 to 45 minutes.
In short, strength/ resistance training helps to increase muscular strength, lean muscle mass, metabolism, cardio performance, and burn calories. So it should be incorporated into your weight loss plan!
Flexibility training
Flexibility exercises are not big calorie burners, but they help your body to move more comfortably and encourage an increase in movement. Increased daily movement plays an important role in weight loss.
The best thing about flexibility training is that you don't have to do it very often or for very long to enjoy the benefits. Just a few minutes of stretching each day will help to improve the range of motion in your joints, may help to decrease the risk of injury during exercise, and reduce stress.
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) can be another way to increase your daily calorie expenditure. It is basically “unintentional exercise”. For example, choosing to walk up a flight of stairs rather than taking the escalator, alighting a bus stop earlier to get some extra steps, doing the housework, taking a short break by standing up and going for a short walk every couple of hours to refresh your mind. All of these little minutes add up over the entire day and can account for 15% to 50% of one’s daily energy expenditure(15) depending on your baseline activity levels. This is why being active is extremely beneficial to helping one lose weight.
How much exercise should I do to lose weight?
The World Health Organization recommends that adults aged 18–64 should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity throughout the week or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity activity. This is the general guideline to keep healthy and prevent chronic diseases.
If you are aiming for weight loss, you should aim for 300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity or 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity per week, or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity activity.
If you are hoping to lose weight without changing your diet, you may have to increase your physical activity levels to 225 - 420 mins per week in order to achieve significant weight loss. This can be quite challenging for most individuals. Hence, we would recommend incorporating dietary changes and increasing the amount of exercise to lose weight, rather than just focusing on exercising alone.
Putting a weight loss plan together
*Read this section to learn how to lose 0.25kg or 0.5kg per week! Wish there was someone to plan it all for you? Check out our digital coaching program NOVI Optimum!Just like everything else, if we want to see good results we have to make a plan! Without a proper plan, you are going to get poor results or sometimes even find yourself gaining weight - making you give up prematurely.
Here’s a quick and easy way to come up with a basic weight loss plan:
Establish goals
Figure out your caloric requirements
Understand current diet and exercise habits
Develop diet plan
Develop exercise plan
Step 1: Establishing goals
Is your goal purely to lose weight? Or do you have other goals like sculpting a better physique or leading a healthy lifestyle? Writing all of these down will serve as a guide for your planning.
You should aim to pen down your goals, and start working backwards. This will ensure that you are on the right track to achieving those goals. For instance, if your goal was weight loss but you are eating more calories than you should, this will help to identify the right direction you should be moving towards.
Remember to set yourself an achievable time frame and keep it challenging, yet realistic. In the case of weight loss, an achievable rate is losing around 0.25 kg per week. A moderate amount of commitment and effort will get you losing about 0.5kg per week and to shred off 1kg a week will require a lot of discipline and dedication.
Step 2: Calculate your caloric requirements
Use a caloric calculator to find out what your daily calorie requirements are. This gives you an idea of how much calories you should consume a day to maintain your weight. To lose about 0.5kg of weight a week, you would need to consume 500 calories below your daily calorie requirements. Use our free weight loss planner to figure out how to lose 0.5kg or 0.25kg a week.
Step 3: Understand your current diet and exercise habits
Doing this will help you to scope out your diet and exercise plans.
Use a mobile app to track the foods you consume and estimate the amount of calories you consume daily. Make it a point to track every drink and snack you eat as well, sometimes these can contribute significantly to your calorie intake without you realizing it. Review what you eat regularly to see how much calories you are actually consuming and where you can make some changes. We can almost guarantee that you will find yourself consuming more calories than you expected!
For your exercise log, log down the exercises/ activity you do and how long/ often you do them, or use a fitness tracker. This will keep you accountable to your fitness progress, which will also determine if you’ve been doing the same routine repeatedly and therefore causing you to stall on your weight loss progress. For instance if you’re a runner, track the distance you run, and how fast you took to complete it.
If you wish to lose weight, you need to constantly increase the intensity of your workouts! This is because our body will adapt to our activity levels - once your body is used to a certain workout routine, it learns to burn just the right amount of calories to prevent burning any reserve energy. The result is that we find ourselves being stuck at a certain weight.
Make tracking of diet and activity a habit! It will help you to measure your progress, and fine tune your training program to achieve your fitness goals.
Step 4: Develop your diet plan
You now know your caloric budget and the amount of calories you are currently consuming per day. Based on these 2 numbers, how much fewer calories do you need to consume daily? Where in your diet can you cut those calories out without making you feel miserable?
Here’s an example of developing a diet plan:
Kevin is a 35 year old male, is 170cm tall and weighs 80kg. He is holding a sedentary office job, and therefore his daily energy expenditure would be approximately 2100 calories. This will mean that he will have to eat around 1600 calories per day for a week, to burn off roughly 0.5kg per week.
Kevin can now start identifying the areas for improvement. Some common areas that he can make dietary changes to see quick results are:
Cutting down on carbohydrates (rice, fries, noodles), and replacing the carbohydrates with vegetables and meat.
Reducing consumption of sweetened beverages.
Reducing alcohol consumption.
Reducing fat consumption (esp in fried/ oily foods and baked goods).
Swapping out high calorie snacks with low calorie snacks (e.g. swap sweetened milk tea to a non-sweetened tea, or swap crackers for fresh apple slices).
The above examples make use of these 3 principles for reducing caloric intake:
Reducing portion sizes - Cut out the number of meals/ snacking, or ask for less rice when ordering food.
Swapping food items - Instead of eating a carb heavy item that you like (e.g. seafood fried rice), swap it for another item with less carbs and calories that you also like (e.g. grilled salmon with vegetables).
Modifying your meal - e.g. when ordering chicken rice, ask for less rice and add meat/ egg/ veg so that you still feel full, but the amount of calories is reduced.
Write down your ideas and put them into a plan. How much soft drinks can you take per week? What food should you eat less/more of? Better yet, plan out your meals every week!
Step 5: Develop your exercise plan
Finding an exercise that you really enjoy is key to helping you consistently do it. A good idea is to involve your friends in it! Find people who will take fitness classes/ play sports with you to make the process more enjoyable.
Take into account your personal preferences of exercises, your time schedule and your caloric budget, to help figure out how much exercise you should do. Again, try to aim for at least 150 minutes of exercise a week. If you have a hard time changing your diet, consider increasing the amount of exercise you’re doing to make up for the extra calories you are consuming. Try to spread out your exercise over the week instead of exercising for a long duration (>2hrs) on only 1 day of the week.
Remember though - you can’t out-train a bad diet. Exercising more doesn’t give you the license to eat anything you want - that is the surest way to put back on the weight you’ve lost!
The most common barrier to getting regular exercise is finding time. The solution is straightforward - block out time on your calendar. Treat it as an event that is as important as your weekly department meeting.
Other tips to help you come up with a sustainable exercise plan include:
Arrange to workout with friends. on top of making it more enjoyable, it’s harder to ditch your friends than your exercise plan.
Set an alarm with a message to remind you of your goals.
Get yourself a digital or in-person fitness instructor.
Sign up for a gym membership and make yourself maximise that membership fee.
Find places near your workplace where you can workout - make it a point to workout before going home.
As you progress through your weight loss journey, you will have to modify your plans to adapt to your body as well as to keep things interesting for yourself. Trust us when we say this - it will get more fun once you get the hang of it and see the results!
Getting support
We understand that it can be a bit overwhelming when you are just starting out. There is just too much information to absorb and many conflicting opinions online that it’s difficult to know what exactly will work for you. The process of trial and error when trying to lose weight can be daunting and demoralising when you don’t see significant improvement.
We hope this resource hub can give you some pointers for starting out. If you want someone to help you cut out the fluff online and find the most effective weight loss plan for you, we are here to help! Our dieticians and fitness coaches will help you understand your body better and develop a personalised weight loss plan for you. They will also be available to you via our app to motivate you and tweak your plan so that you will see continued progress. Click the button below to learn more.
References
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