Fat Loss for Beginners: Where to Start

2. Eat enough protein

Protein protects your muscle while you diet and helps you feel full. A 2018 meta-analysis by Morton and colleagues (British Journal of Sports Medicine, 49 studies, 1,863 people) found that the benefit for muscle levelled off at around 1.6 g per kg of body weight a day, with 2.2 g/kg covering most people. While dieting, aim towards the top. The protein calculator works out your number.

If you have a lot of weight to lose, numbers based on your current weight come out very high. A common, simpler approach is to work from your goal weight instead. If you have kidney disease, speak to your doctor before raising your protein.

Practical ways to get there: a protein food at every meal (meat, fish, eggs, Greek yoghurt, tofu, beans and lentils) and a protein snack if you fall short. How to stop feeling hungry on a diet covers more ways to keep hunger down.

3. Lift weights

When you eat less, your body can lose muscle as well as fat. Lifting tells it to keep the muscle. A 2018 meta-analysis by Sardeli and colleagues (Nutrients) pooled six trials in older adults with obesity. Dieting alone cost about 0.76 kg (1.7 lb) of lean mass on average. Adding resistance training prevented more than 90% of that loss, and fat loss was about the same in both groups. The trials were in older adults (average ages of about 57 to 68), so the exact numbers may not apply to you, but they show what lifting does on a diet.

For a beginner, two to four full-body or upper/lower sessions a week is plenty:

• One or two exercises for each main pattern: a squat or leg press, a hip hinge such as a Romanian deadlift, a press, and a row or pull-down.
• Two to four sets each, finishing each set about 1 to 3 reps short of failure once you know the movement.
• Add a rep or a little weight when you can, and write it down.

If you have an injury or a health condition, speak to your doctor or a physiotherapist before you start.

4. Move more every day

The NHS recommends at least 150 minutes of activity a week. On top of that, a daily step target is one of the easiest ways to keep your energy use up while dieting, because walking is easy to recover from and does not get in the way of lifting. Pick a target a little above what you do now and hit it every day. How many steps a day for fat loss has more detail.

5. Sleep at least 7 hours

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society recommend that adults sleep 7 or more hours a night on a regular basis (Watson and colleagues, 2015).

Sleep affects what you lose, not just how you feel. In a small 2010 study by Nedeltcheva and colleagues (Annals of Internal Medicine), 10 adults dieted for two weeks twice: once with 8.5 hours in bed and once with 5.5. With more sleep they lost 1.4 kg (3.1 lb) of fat; with less, only 0.6 kg (1.3 lb), and more of their weight loss came from fat-free mass. They also reported more hunger when short of sleep.

How to tell if it is working

• Weigh yourself every morning, after the toilet and before eating, and compare weekly averages. Daily weight swings with water, salt and food.
• Expect a quick drop in the first week. Muscle stores at least 3 g of water with each gram of stored carbohydrate (Fernández-Elías and colleagues, 2015), so some early loss is water. Judge your rate from week two.
• Measure your waist every week or two, at the same point.
• Give it time. If your weekly average has not moved for two to three weeks and your tracking has been honest, make one small change: slightly fewer calories or a few more steps.

What beginners can ignore

You might hear	What the evidence says
"Take a fat burner"	The US National Institutes of Health's Office of Dietary Supplements says there is little scientific evidence that weight-loss supplements work, and some can have harmful side effects.
"Do sit-ups to lose belly fat"	In a 2011 study by Vispute and colleagues, six weeks of abdominal exercise did not reduce belly fat. You cannot choose where fat comes off.
"Only eat in an 8-hour window"	In the 2020 TREAT trial (Lowe and colleagues, JAMA Internal Medicine), eating between noon and 8pm for 12 weeks was no better for weight loss than three meals a day. Fasting works if it helps you eat less; it is not magic.
"Cut carbs" or "cut fat"	In DIETFITS, both worked about equally. The deficit matters more than the label.

Speak to your doctor first if...

You are pregnant or breastfeeding, have a condition such as diabetes, heart disease or kidney disease, take regular medicines, or have had an eating disorder. Your doctor or GP can tell you what a safe plan looks like for you. In the UK, the free NHS Weight Loss Plan app is a sensible place to start, and the NHS says you may be able to refer yourself to local weight management services.

How coaching helps

The five steps are simple. Doing them week after week, and knowing what to change when the scale stalls, is where most beginners struggle. With one-to-one coaching from CoachAk, your training program and your calorie, macro and step targets are set for you in a private app, and you log your workouts, your daily weight and the daily habits your coach sets. Each week you send a check-in that takes about three minutes, covering your weight, training and nutrition adherence, steps, sleep, energy, hunger and stress. Your coach replies with written feedback on what changes next week and why, and you can send form-check videos while you learn the lifts.

If you want to get your first fat loss phase right from the start, apply for coaching.