As a personal trainer most of my time is spent with clients that need to Lose Weight.  Some people find Weight Loss complicated and are confused how to go about it.  Weight loss is not complicated and is very simple.  It’s when people try to make little adjustments to the diet that things become difficult and therefore not effective.

So everyone can agree that to lose weight you do need to diet and exercise.  Although you can lose weight with just dieting, it takes much longer and usually the people who do this will put the weight back on shortly after they lost it.  Plus they will not look or feel as good and will not get any of the health benefits from regular exercise.

Now lets talk about the diet, and I will make this very simple on how you can follow a weight loss diet without being confused.  When people come to me and need to lose weight the first thing I do is put them on a diet.  There is no negotiation with this.  Since I will be doing the workouts with them I know that if they follow the diet that weight loss will happen…and will happen rapidly.  If I am training someone and they are not losing weight quickly, I know that their diet is off.

As a trainer I have a habbit of looking in people’s Shopping Cart whenever I go to the grocery store.  Let me tell you almost everytime I go, I have to end up biting my lip from what I see.  I’m sure you have seen this as well…a person who is overweight, or even worse a whole family that is overweight and you see the cart is filled to the top with a bunch of garbage.   I mean it’s bad when a person is doing it to themselves but the kids really don’t have a choice and don’t know any better…do they want their kids to have the same problem as them?   And by garbage I mean anything that is high carb junk that they obviously should not be eating.

Get this…if you are overweight then it’s pretty certain that you cannot handle carbs period or your body is very inefficient at handling them.  At either rate you do have to eliminate them totally from your diet and just get them from vegetables, nuts, and some fruits.

So it’s no surprise that there is a high correlation in what is in your shopping cart and your body composition.  Most people will not go drive out somewhere to get junk food once they are at home…or it makes it much less probable.  The problem is when you keep junk at your house that it is easy to give into the temptation.

Ok so I’m going to make this very easy and simple like I promised.  If you want to lose weight follow these steps when you go to the grocery store:

1. Go to the produce section(mostly green vegetables)
2. Go to the meat section(beef/pork/chicken/fish/etc)
3. Grab some eggs and nuts
4. Grab olive oil, coconut oil and some seasonings-WITH NO SUGAR IN THEM
5. Go to cashier, pay, and leave

As you may have heard before these items are usually on the perimeter of the supermarket.  There is no need to go in the middle lanes as that where all the garbage is.  And definitely skip the bakery section.  Yes even brown or whole wheat bread is garbage, same with wraps or whatever…you are overweight you cannot eat it.  Follow these guidelines closely there are no exceptions, there are no adjustments…there are no healthier choices…it is black and white when it comes to weight loss…don’t fool yourself.

There is also the overweight person with the shopping cart full of foods they think that are healthy or good for weight loss.  Such things as:

• whole wheat bread
• whole wheat pasta
• brown rice
• natural peanut butter(9/10 times they will eat too much of it to be effective for weight loss)
• yogurt(way to much sugar)

There are others but I can’t think of them off the top of my head, but you get the idea.  This is what needs to be done until the person gets lean.  Once a person gets lean their body can handle carbs better and then we can worry about adding them back in sparingly or at different times, like on the weekend.  Here it is, a simple blueprint for your diet and weight loss.