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How to Start Your Journey to Lose Weight

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Whether you’re at the very beginning of your  weight-loss journey  or revisiting your game plan after hitting a plateau, a realistic and sustainable strategy is a must for your first 30 days and beyond.

To successfully lose weight and keep it off, it’s important to adopt a nutritious diet and create a calorie deficit (slightly less calories in than out through day-to-day living and exercise), add in regular movement , effectively deal with stress, make sure you’re getting enough sleep, surround yourself with a supportive community and keep your motivation up in the face of inevitable challenges and setbacks.

The good news is you don’t have to completely overhaul your lifestyle to lose weight — a simple back-to-basics plan is the way to go. That’s why we broke it down for you, week by week, for the first 30 days (or whenever you need a healthy reset).

WEIGHT LOSS JOURNEY WEEK 1: CREATE A FOUNDATION FOR CHANGE

Dedicate your first week to preparing your mind, environment and routine to support healthy living.

FIND YOUR “WHY”

“It’s common for motivation to wax and wane during weight-loss efforts, so it is imperative that you establish a clear ‘why’ in terms of the reason you are engaging in the weight-loss effort in the first place,” says Katie Rickel, PhD, a clinical psychologist and CEO of  Structure House , a residential weight-management facility in Durham, North Carolina.

This increases your sense of autonomy or self-control and helps you shift your perspective from “I have to” eat healthier and exercise to “I want to” create new habits to get me closer to the life I desire, thus empowering you to make positive changes, adds Alan Chu , PhD, director of the Motivation and Performance Research Lab and chair of the Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology Program at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay.

ACTIONS TO TAKE:

• Freewrite or make a list of your “whys,” from having the energy to keep up with your children or partner to feeling more comfortable in your body.
• Create a vision board or collage of your “why.”
• Write yourself a letter from your future self (after having achieved your weight-loss goals) to your current self, describing all the ways your life has improved as a result of your efforts.
• Put up notes around your home like on your bathroom mirror or fridge with mantras, photos or reminders of your “why.”

ESTABLISH YOUR BASELINE

Setting goals and tracking progress is important for any weight-loss plan, but for realistic goals you can actually hit, you need to figure out your baseline first. “Understanding your starting point will make it easier to pinpoint where to make meaningful changes that will get you the results you’re looking for,” confirms Christel Oerum, a certified personal trainer and owner of Diabetes Strong and Diabetic Foodie .

“This is also the beginning of mindful eating, a lifelong practice that can take a lifetime to fully develop but can help you eat less and enjoy what you’re eating more as well as improve your relationship with food,” adds Audra Wilson, RD, a certified strength and conditioning specialist, a board-certified specialist in obesity and weight management at the  Northwestern Medicine Metabolic Health and Surgical Weight Loss Center at Delnor Hospital .

• Use an  app like MyFitnessPal  and  log everything you eat and drink  for the whole week without judgment.
• As you go, note your emotions about food and brainstorm other coping mechanisms for stress, anxiety, worry or boredom, such as calling a friend or doing deep breathing exercises, suggests Wilson.
• Track your movement, step count and  workouts with the MyFitnessPal app  as well.

MASTER THE ESSENTIALS

Proper sleep, stress management and hydration are essential for your overall health and weight-loss efforts. If they’re not covered, it’s that much harder to lose weight when you have to battle increased cravings for comfort foods from off-kilter  hunger hormones due to sleep deprivation  and stress or feel hungry and low on energy because you’re not drinking enough water.

• Set a consistent bedtime and wake-up time to ensure you’re getting 7–9 hours of quality sleep each night.
• Make your bedroom a sleep sanctuary that’s cool, dark and comfortable.
• Incorporate a simple morning and evening routine to reduce stress with meditation, gentle stretching or other self-care activities.
• Keep a water bottle or large glass of water on hand to drink when you first wake up.

WEIGHT LOSS JOURNEY WEEK 2: SET GOALS AND PRACTICE SELF-COMPASSION

Now that you’ve built a springboard, make a nutrition and movement plan and swap perfectionism for self-compassion.

CREATE AND TRACK SMART GOALS

Focusing on progress boosts your drive and self-confidence while only paying attention to the outcome (the number on the scale) can hurt motivation when you don’t get the results you want, says Chu. That’s why progress-based  SMART goals  that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound are your secret weapon for weight loss.

With the information you collected during week 1, take a look at your baseline calorie and macronutrient intake and step count. Then, set a calorie goal for  slow-and-steady weight loss and a step count goal that makes sense for you and your lifestyle. Use the MyFitnessPal app to chart your progress so you can notice trends and make healthier choices.

EXAMPLES OF SMART GOALS: 

• Walk an average of  1,000 more steps per day  for one week with a midday walk during my lunch break.
• Eat within 100–200 calories of my calorie goal each day for one week by reducing portion sizes for snacks and dinner.

DIVERSIFY YOUR GROCERY LIST AND MAKE SMALL CHANGES

To avoid feeling deprived during your weight-loss journey, shift your focus from “giving up” high-calorie processed foods and sugary drinks to “ adding in ” tasty lower-calorie whole foods to your eating plan, suggests Rickel.

• Challenge yourself to try one new fruit or vegetable this week as a culinary adventure with new recipes and cuisines .
• Add more vegetables to your lunch and dinner by mixing them into soups, sauces, salads and more. “Any way you slice them, veggies are full of nutrients and will help you cut calories while still feeling satisfied at mealtime,” notes Wilson.
• Find satisfying swaps for some high-calorie indulgences such as banana berry “nice” cream instead of traditional ice cream or sparkling water for half of your week’s soda intake. If there’s no great substitute for an indulgence, enjoy a smaller portion size or adjust your intake elsewhere to stick with your overall calorie goal.

ADOPT A MINDSET OF SELF-COMPASSION

“For someone who has not practiced healthy habits before, it can be hard and exhausting to maintain them,” says Chu. Worse yet, if you see yourself as “lazy” for eating “bad foods,” this can zap motivation and trigger even worse habits (Think: “I already ate poorly. I might as well eat more junk food.”)

This is where treating yourself like you would a close friend — or adopting a mindset of self-compassion — can help  keep your motivation up  and protect you from negative thought spirals. Throughout this week, make it a point to notice when you’re being hard on yourself and practice self-compassion instead of toxic perfectionism.

HERE’S HOW TO DO IT IN THE MOMENT: 

• Be mindful and acknowledge your feelings (“I’m feeling really anxious and upset right now.”)
• Remind yourself that this is a common, human experience (“Everyone feels like this sometimes.”)
• Be kind to yourself (“I’m going to be compassionate with myself.”)

WEIGHT LOSS JOURNEY WEEK 3: REVIEW YOUR PROGRESS AND BUILD YOUR SUPPORT SYSTEM

Reflect on your first round of SMART goals, set new ones, and recruit friends and family to help you stick it out long-term.

SET SMARTER GOALS

Goal-tracking takes time, so block out 10–20 minutes each week—such as on a Sunday evening or Monday morning—to review your progress and set new goals. Rather than getting down on yourself if you haven’t met goals, use this intel to set  SMARTER  goals (with evaluation and revision), suggests Chu.

• Evaluate your progress. Did you hit your goals or fall short? How and why?
• Revise your goals to make them easier if you couldn’t reach them or a notch harder if you were successful.

CELEBRATE CONSISTENCY

Whether you met your calorie goal, increased your step count, or just managed to track both for the entire week, that’s progress worth celebrating. To boost your motivation, find ways to acknowledge meaningful wins each week regardless of whether you shed pounds, says Rickel.

• Put colorful stickers or check marks on your chart or calendar to mark days or weeks when you’ve reached a goal or hit a personal record.
• Reward yourself with a non-food prize such as new workout gear or a fun weekend activity.

If you had a challenging week, remember to practice self-compassion. Major lifestyle changes take time and research shows speaking to yourself in a positive manner helps you reach your goals faster.

FIND EXERCISES YOU LOVE AND GET SOCIAL

A  regular workout routine not only helps tip the calorie balance in your favor to make maintaining weight loss easier, but it also boosts mood levels and decreases stress. To be consistent, you shouldn’t dread your workout — instead, it should be something you genuinely love and look forward to doing. “Choose a workout that suits your routine and lifestyle, and recruit family or friends to join in,” says Chu.

• Pick a type of exercise that’s the optimal balance of challenging yet approachable, such as lifting weights once a week with a goal to eventually lift 2–3 times a week or brisk walks to gradually build up to walking or running a 5K .
• Find someone in your life who values fitness and healthy living as much as you do and agree to regular check-ins if you can’t work out together.
• On days when you don’t feel like working out, try lowering the difficulty or setting a goal just to start the workout (like giving yourself permission to stop after 15 minutes). “Once you do, you’re likely to feel good and exercise longer than initially expected,” notes Chu.

WEIGHT LOSS JOURNEY WEEK 4: CONTINUE BUILDING ON YOUR PROGRESS

For the last week of month one, take a look at how far you’ve come and add structure to make healthy lifestyle changes more sustainable.

REVISIT YOUR GOALS

By now, you should have a good idea of how to set, track and celebrate SMART goals. Like the week before, take some time to assess your progress and setbacks. Then set new, SMARTER goals to tackle this week.

Keep in mind that “every 2–4 weeks, it’s also a good idea to revisit your calorie goal and make adjustments as necessary to combat weight-loss plateaus,” notes Oerum.

START MEAL PLANNING

When it comes to  healthy eating , planning ahead can help you save calories and money by reducing impromptu drive-thru trips and delivery orders. Beginning this week, designate a day for meal planning.

• Follow this basic template for the week’s grocery shopping: 4–5 lean protein sources (such as beans  and legumes, tofu, fish, chicken, eggs and turkey), 2–3 complex carbohydrates (sweet potatoes, brown rice, quinoa, whole-grain pasta), and 4+ vegetables (mixed greens, kale, broccoli and cauliflower, asparagus, carrots), suggests Wyosnick.
• Buy pre-cut, washed and frozen produce, so it’s ready to go and easy to use.
• Use the  plate method  for healthy portion sizes at each meal (fill half your plate with non-starchy vegetables like leafy greens, a quarter with protein and a quarter with complex carbs).

ASK FOR HELP

Losing weight is challenging, and the first month of your weight-loss plan is just the beginning of a lifelong health journey. If you’re struggling to see results, stick with a routine or battling body image issues, don’t hesitate to reach out for professional help. Depending on your needs, a healthcare provider ,  registered dietitian ,  psychologist  or certified personal trainer could help you address underlying health issues and establish the perfect plan for you.

Originally published March 2016, updated with additional information in March 2021

Ready to take the next step? Unlock MyFitnessPal Premium to access custom goal settings, quick-log recipes, and guided plans from a registered dietitian. Premium users are 65% more likely to reach their weight loss goals!

About the Author

Lauren Krouse is a freelance writer who covers health, domestic violence, and self-advocacy. Her work appears in Women’s Health, Men’s Health, Prevention, Self, HuffPost, and elsewhere. When she’s not writing, you can find her trying to meditate more, weightlifting, or walking in the woods with her partner and black lab.

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How to start a weight loss journey — and stick with it

Ask your friends and family what their goals are for the summer and I’m sure you will hear a lot of this: “I am going to eat healthier,” “I’m going to eat more vegetables,” “I’m going to lose the quarantine 15 .”

It's probably not the first time they've had those goals and, after many attempts at dieting , you’d think it would be easier to get started. In reality, though, the contrary is usually true. Beginning a weight-loss journey, especially when you’ve had multiple failures in the past, can be overwhelming — and even flat-out daunting, but it can be done!

How to start losing weight — even if you've tried before

Here are five tips to help get you eat better this summer and beyond:

1. Look into your past

Most of us have a diet history. We know what works and doesn’t work. Perhaps you jumped on the keto bandwagon in 2019 only to fall off hard. Because, well, you just l-o-v-e your sourdough. You know if you’re a carbs-in-the-morning or a skip-breakfast-altogether person. Don’t attempt to make changes that you know won’t match your lifestyle and preferences. Be realistic about who you are.

In other words, if breakfast is your favorite meal of the day and you know you overeat later in the day when you skip it, intermittent fasting probably isn’t the best way to go for you.

If an afternoon snack is what you need to get you through your evening workout, then trying to stop all snacking isn’t the best route to take. Instead, come up with three or four healthy on-the-go snacks you can put into rotation.

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2. don’t give yourself a deadline.

It’s the journey that counts right? I’m all for goals, but when you give yourself a specific date to reach a goal , it often sets you up to fail for a couple of reasons.

One, if you don’t see progress being made fast enough, you may say, “Scrap this plan!” — even though you’ve actually made excellent progress.

Second, the stress of the date may work against you. Setting a deadline may only put extra pressure on you and cause your stress hormones to actually start working against you and your weight-loss goal. Instead, stay calm and healthy on.

Enjoy the life that you’re living and enjoy being in the best health and at the the best weight you can be, even if that means being off a certain weight goal by a couple of pounds. Remember patience and consistency are key, and enjoy the process of reaching better health each day.

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3. think about your sleep habits and stress levels.

It’s not all about the food. Even if you're focused and eating “perfectly,” other lifestyle factors may be working against you. Sleep and stress are two pillars of a nutritious life that I discuss regularly.

The good part is that if you’re not managing these well, making a few necessary changes can show up on the scale. Create a new sleep routine and stick to it. It’s just as important as diet!

Look for a daily activity to reduce stress .

Health & Wellness How your ‘killer headache’ can tell you something about your body

4. work on one change at a time.

Think about a not-so-great habit you have, that you do daily. Is it adding sugar to your coffee? Going for afternoon chocolate as a pick me up? Whatever it is, change it up with a new healthier alternative. You don’t necessarily need to start pounding healthy wellness shots that have become quite the rage, sometimes, the smallest changes make the biggest impact.

A change as simple as swapping out the syrup from a daily coffee saves you 80 calories, and 20 grams of sugar, each and every day!

Since it is only one change, it won’t be so overwhelming to adjust, and since it is something you do daily, that one improvement may have a great impact.

5. Reward yourself

Be good to you! Celebrate small goals with small rewards — and they don't have to involve food. Skipped soda all week? Feel good about that and reward yourself with a manicure.

Sometimes these rewards are enough to push us forward and up the motivation.

For more tips on how to live a nutritious life, follow Keri on Instagram @nutritiouslifeofficial

Keri Glassman, MS, RD, CDN, is a renowned nutritionist, healthy cooking expert and wellness thought-leader. She is the founder and CEO of Nutritious Life , a lifestyle and media company devoted to helping individuals discover and live their most nutritious (and happiest!) lives. Follow Keri on Instagram @nutritiouslifeofficial .

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10 Lessons I Learned from My Weight-Loss Journey

I've kept 70 pounds off for more than 10 years. Here are 10 key lessons I've learned along the way.

Elizabeth Ward is a registered dietitian and award-winning nutrition communicator and writer. She has authored or co-authored 10 books for consumers about nutrition at all stages of life.

• 1. You've Got to Meet Yourself Where You're At

2. Never Eliminate Anything Completely

3. you can do anything you set your mind to, 4. your get-moving options are endless, 5. invest in your own personal wellness, 6. reward yourself for the small wins, 7. you will not be perfect, 8. water really is your bff, 9. the mental transformation is just as important as the physical.

• 10. If You Want Lasting, Permanent Change—It's about Your Lifestyle

From a young age growing up in the Connecticut suburbs, the number on the scale ebbed and flowed as my relationship with sport did as well. At age 14, I was a soccer whiz, running laps up and down the field feeling confident and great. Come 17, I didn't make the junior varsity volleyball team because I couldn't run a sub-10:00 mile, and my interests became a lot less active. As I leaned heavily into the arts and a local youth group, the pounds crept on. Despite feeling excited by my extracurricular activities, I began feeling self-conscious and uncomfortable in my own body.

This carried on to college, and like many, I gained the freshman 15—or perhaps the freshman 30 would be more accurate. In the spring of 2007, I was procrastinating studying for a final exam when I decided to step onto a dusty scale I had tucked under my bunk bed. After what felt like an eternity, waiting for the screen to populate, the number that glared back at me from the floor took my breath away. I was forced to come to terms with a harsh reality: I had to change. While I believe that people can find health at different sizes, I was definitely not healthy or more importantly, happy. I knew that making changes wouldn't be easy, but even so, I was ready to start.

Over the next three years, I lost 70 pounds through making healthier eating choices and learning to love running. Today, movement is my medicine, enabling me to better show up both personally and professionally. Now a nine-time marathoner, certified personal trainer and run coach, and wellness coach with her own podcast , I've learned a handful of lessons along my journey that empower me to give back to others and help them determine what wellness looks like for them. Here's what I learned during my personal transformation, plus some insight into why I feel like a forever work in progress.

1. You've Got to Meet Yourself Where You're At

Especially in the age of social media, it's easy to compare yourself to others. Your journey is just that: Yours. Instead of being made to feel like you're not good enough based on what you see someone else doing, focus on where you are and progress from there. This is important in all aspects of wellness, whether it's trying out a new strength training routine or shifting your eating habits. Just because you can't do a difficult movement like a dumbbell snatch, for example, doesn't mean you won't get there one day. Have some grace, embrace honesty, and the rest will come with time.

Many popular diets advertise cutting things out—at least in small portions—like complex carbs or sugar. When we eliminate things from our diet, it's almost guaranteed that we will crave them more. In my experience, I'd binge the very thing that I told myself I couldn't have. (The restrict/binge/repeat eating cycle has been confirmed in a 2020 Binge Eating article.) Instead of eliminating things from your life, the practice of moderation and portion control is a much safer alternative. It's a practice that truly helped me along my journey.

Instead of nixing my college's famous banana chocolate chip ice cream completely, for example, I let myself have a scoop on Fridays. When it came to indulging in Grandma's Sunday sauce, I made sure to also serve myself a hearty helping of salad in addition to the oh-so-good pasta bowl. By embracing the foods that made me happy in smart amounts, I was able to enjoy the process without feeling like I was missing out.

I really, really wanted to love running. But in the earliest stages, I felt as though I would never. I felt as though because I wasn't "good" at it (see the high school volleyball reference above), it would never be for me. Toward the beginning of my personal weight-loss efforts, I worked at a summer camp, without access to a typical big box gym. This really encouraged me to give running another hard try, as it was one of the few ways I could get active and really break a sweat without any equipment.

The first week of running was awful. I did it for about 15 minutes per day, and ran the exact same route every single time. However, after a week of sticking it out, I slowly got to a place where I realized that it was nowhere as bad as I had been making it out to be. With time, the enjoyment grew. I didn't have to be the best runner. I just had to be me— running. This realization empowered me to try and stick with other things that felt hard in the past.

I went through phases over my three-year journey dabbling in a slew of different fitness modalities. I've done it all, from barre and Spin class to dance cardio and even CrossFit. Some of these love affairs lasted longer than others, but what I most enjoyed about the process was that I had the opportunity to mix up my routine as often as I liked. There was no reason to stick with something that didn't bring me joy or light me up. By diversifying my go-to sweat method, I had a lot more fun, and even made some great friends along the way. Plus, research published in 2020 in Translational Behavioral Medicine has shown that adding variety to an exercise program can increase your physical activity.

During the summer of 15-minute runs, I lived in Hanes white v-neck T-shirts and cotton leggings from Target. Over time, I began to realize that if I wanted to perform better and feel more comfortable, I needed to invest a little bit more in my workout wardrobe. The good news: There are tons of great options out there, from Old Navy to Champion, that have technical gear at lower price points. Rather than buy six-packs of T-shirts every month, I started to accrue a collection of gear that lasted the washing machine test, and also made me feel more confident when the workout began.

When I started my weight-loss journey, I didn't set out and say "I want to lose 70 pounds." Rather, I set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) goals that helped me go in the right direction. For instance, a goal like " I want to drink three bottles of water every day before 6 p.m. "

If I made it through two weeks of this goal, I would take some time to celebrate the positive progress, whether that be with a trip to the local mall or simply setting aside some "me" time to take an extra long walk come the weekend. When the journey is long, the small wins are what keep your tank fueled up and help you stay motivated for more.

How many times have you told yourself "OK, today I'm going to have a good day of eating," and then a few bites of a chocolate bar later, you feel as though you've completely blown it? Listen, we've all been there.

Here's the thing: That all-or-nothing mentality isn't going to do you any good. Have some grace with the idea that from time to time, things aren't going to go as planned. There will be slip-ups. Rather than get angry and throw your hands up in the air, be proud of yourself for prioritizing your own wellness in the first place. Every single second, you have an opportunity to start with a clean slate.

I've never been "good" at drinking water. I don't particularly love the taste of it (which sounds weird, perhaps) and making sure to get enough felt like a total struggle. Alas, H20 accounts for 60 percent of our body—or about 11 gallons or 92 pounds inside a 155-pound person—and is essential to every cell.

When I made getting healthier a priority, I started downing at least six glasses each day. With that, I started to notice a real difference. I felt better, my skin looked better, and I performed well when it came to my regular workouts, staving off that ever-annoying headache that likely was a result of previous dehydration.

Honestly, I'm still working on my inner dialogue and being kinder to myself. When a big transformation happens on the outside, it's important to take the time to really think about who it is that you are, what's important to you and who you want to be going forward. As a self-proclaimed forever work in progress, I find that regular journaling and making time to reflect on my feelings helps me stay grounded. I'll never forget about the teenage girl who had trouble finding jeans that fit standing in her local mall. But I know, now, that she's not who I am anymore.

10. If You Want Lasting, Permanent Change—It's about Your Lifestyle

This is something I can't stress enough. No amount of exercise will help you against an unhealthy diet. Remember how you feel once you hit your goal weight. Returning to that feeling of pride and happiness will empower you to continue to make healthy decisions going forward. This makes maintenance easier, and helps you keep a level head when it comes to the occasional overindulgent meal or streak of exercise-free days (and those can be important, too!). We want to focus on lasting change and better health for years to come.

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Simple 30-Day Plan for Weight Loss, According to a Dietitian

Learn 8 realistic nutrition and fitness tips to lose weight for the long haul.

Cara Rosenbloom RD is a dietitian, journalist, book author, and the founder of Words to Eat By, a nutrition communications company in Toronto, ON.

Melissa Rifkin is a Connecticut-based registered dietitian with over 15 years of experience working in the clinical setting.

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• Setting Goals

Creating a Nutrition Plan

Meal planning, physical activity, hydration and sleep, tracking progress, coping with challenges.

Healthy weight loss plans include eating well, being physically active, and getting enough sleep so you feel your best now and for the long term. Health is about more than a number on the scale, so this weight loss advice looks at the bigger picture.

There are no quick fixes or fad diets that are known to sustain weight loss in the long term. These weight loss plans and fad diets are based on restricting calories or removing specific food groups. Most of the time, it's impossible to follow these plans in the long term, so weight loss is not maintained over time. That's why this article offers sensible nutrition, exercise, and sleep goals, that can be sustained for life. A healthy lifestyle can help you feel your best now while preventing chronic diseases in the future.

Instead of going "on a diet" which you eventually go "off," this sustainable plan includes realistic goals and small changes that can last a lifetime. It also includes a variety of delicious and nutritious foods, as well as exercise that's fun and enjoyable, and tips on healthy sleep.

Setting Realistic Goals

First, decide if weight loss is the right strategy for your health. It's common to have an unrealistic view of what a healthy weight really is. Use this guide to determine what your ideal weight is so you can set an appropriate goal.

If you need to lose weight, aim to lose 1 to 2 pounds per week (or 4 to 8 pounds in 30 days). People who lose weight slowly and gradually are more likely to keep the weight off long term compared to those who lose a lot of weight very quickly.

Set SMART goals that are:

• M easurable
• A ttainable
• Ti me-bound

A goal such as "I will lose 10 pounds" is not time-bound (no timeline is set) and may not be attainable, since weight fluctuates based on many factors, such as hydration, hormones, medications, food intake, and activity level.

A SMART goal that contributes to weight loss may be: "I will replace my daily can of sugar-containing soda with water for the next 30 days." It's more important to set goals about sustaining a healthy lifestyle than about reaching a target number on a scale. The goal of reducing sugary drinks is more realistic than "I will lose 10 pounds," which is harder to control or achieve.

Eating well plays an important role in weight loss and maintenance. A winning strategy for weight loss includes both caloric restriction and adequate exercise. While calories are part of weight control, it's too narrow to think that energy-in and energy-out is the only factor to consider in weight loss. These factors are also involved:

• Medical conditions
• Physical activity levels
• Medications
• Environment
• Mental health

Your best bet is to work with a health care professional for a personalized weight loss plan. If that is not possible, you can follow the general information in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans about the role of nutrition in weight loss. It recommends a varied diet that includes:

• Vegetables and fruit
• Grains (including whole grains)
• Protein foods

The amount (portion) of food that you should eat is specific to your current weight and your weight loss goals. Learn more about how to set calorie goals here . Even if you cut back on calories, it is important to eat a variety of foods to get all of the protein, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals that your body requires. It's also vital to focus on aspects beyond food. Physical activity, hydration, sleep, and other components are all interconnected in your weight loss journey.

Your body requires nutrients every day so it functions properly. The Dietary Guidelines were designed to ensure that nutrient needs are met with a variety of foods including vegetables, fruit, protein, and grains. You can plan meals using the five food groups in the USDA's My Plate model. When you plan meals, consider these plate proportions:

• Make half your plate vegetables and fruits.
• Make a quarter of your plate grains. Choose whole grains at least half of the time.
• Make a quarter of your plate protein from foods such as poultry, fish, eggs, meat, legumes, nuts and seeds.
• Have a serving of calcium-rich foods such as milk, soy beverage, or yogurt.

The exact amount of food you will need depends on your goals (see section above). In addition to eating more whole foods like vegetables, you can also cut back on heavily processed foods like fast food, packaged snacks, baked goods, and candy.

A simple meal plan may look like this. You can repeat this 5-day plan 6 times to complete a 30-day plan.

• Breakfast : Plain Greek yogurt with strawberries and low-sugar (3 grams of sugar or less per serving), oat-based granola
• Snack : Almonds and grapes
• Lunch : Tuna melt sandwich with cheese and tomatoes on whole grain bread, served with carrots, red peppers, and an apple on the side
• Snack : Cucumber and hummus
• Dinner : Chicken with brown rice and stir-fried vegetables.
• Breakfast : Chia pudding with Greek yogurt and fruit
• Snack : Cheddar cheese and an apple
• Lunch : Poke bowl: fish (or tofu) with brown rice, mixed vegetables, seaweed and sesame seeds
• Snack : Trail mix
• Dinner : Pesto shrimp and broccoli served over whole-grain pasta
• Breakfast : Mashed avocado and ricotta cheese on whole grain toast with a side of berries
• Snack : Fresh peach, granola, and Greek yogurt
• Lunch : Turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomato and sweet peppers; banana
• Snack : Plain popcorn
• Dinner : Chickpea and cauliflower curry with quinoa
• Breakfast : Oatmeal with banana, peanut butter, and soy or cow's milk
• Snack : Hummus and carrots
• Lunch : Black bean and cheddar burrito in whole grain tortilla, with lettuce, tomato, sweet peppers, and avocado
• Dinner : Stir-fried chicken and mixed vegetables on soba noodles
• Breakfast : Scrambled eggs, whole grain toast, and tomato
• Snack : Medjool dates with peanut butter or almond butter
• Lunch : Chicken Caesar salad with parmesan cheese and croutons plus a pear
• Snack : Small portion of your favorite ice cream
• Dinner : Lemon-butter halibut with green beans and potatoes

It's easier to stay on a meal plan if you grocery shop and plan in advance. Learn tips for meal planning here .

Being physically active is associated with weight loss because exercise it burns calories. The CDC suggests 150 minutes per week of physical activity for health benefits. However, this amount may not be enough for weight loss. International guidelines recommend 300 minutes of exercise per week for people trying to lose weight.

Nutrition and exercise are both important factors in weight loss. Studies show that exercise only—without dietary changes — may help with a small amount of weight loss, but is not likely to result in meaningful weight loss. Diet and exercise are both important and should be paired together for the best results.

It's important to choose physical activities that you enjoy so you are more likely to stick to them for the long term. Choose a combination of both aerobic (biking, walking, dancing) and strength-building activities (weight lifting, resistance bands, push-ups) for the best benefits.

As a beginner, start by taking a walk every day and lifting light weights. Walk for longer and do more reps with your weights as the weeks go by. Consider these exercise tips for beginners .

Other factors that affect weight include hydration and sleep. When it comes to fluid and hydration, many Americans rely on sugar-sweetened beverages. However, excess intake of sweet beverages is linked to weight gain.

Water is a better choice than sweet beverages when trying to manage weight since it contains no calories or sugar. Replacing sugary or calorie-rich beverages with water can help with weight loss. Some studies indicate that drinking water before meals may decrease food intake during meals, which may help eaters feel more satisfied with fewer calories. Staying hydrated is important because studies show that consistently being under-hydrated is associated with increased body weight.

Studies also show a connection between sleep patterns and weight. Poor sleep is linked to increased calorie intake, mostly from snacks that are high in fat and refined carbohydrates. Poor sleep also may affect hormones involved in weight, appetite regulation, and metabolism.

Some evidence suggests that people who sleep less than seven hours per night are more likely to have obesity. If you don't sleep for at least seven hours per night, consider working with a sleep specialist as part of your weight loss program. Here are some tips to help with better sleep .

If you set measurable goals, it's easier to track your progress. For example, if your goal was to drink water instead of soda at lunch for 30 days, you can mark each day on a calendar to check your progress.

Some people like to keep a food or exercise journal to monitor progress or use a mobile app to count calories or steps. Make sure to celebrate your successes. If you falter, start again as soon as possible.

One caution for tracking progress: try not to gauge your progress based on a number on the scale. Making lifestyle changes such as improving your eating habits or being more active has so many benefits beyond weight control.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recognize that losing weight is not easy and is best achieved with a commitment to lifestyle change over the long term and with the help of medical professionals.  

You will have a better chance of sustaining long-term weight loss if you make slow, steady progress that includes a combination of nutrition, fitness, sleep, and hydration changes.

In order to see real progress, don't make too many changes at once. Build up slowly instead. Perhaps the first 30 days of the journey may have progress such as:

• In the first week, you drink water instead of a soda at lunch.
• In the second week, you have water instead of soda and walk 10 minutes per day.
• In the third week, you continue the first two activities and add weight training twice a week.

Remember, 30 days is just the start of this journey. Maintaining these new habits lifelong is how you will see real progress.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Losing Weight.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.  Setting goals and developing specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objectives .

Damon L. Swift, Joshua E. McGee, Conrad P. Earnest, Erica Carlisle, Madison Nygard, Neil M. Johannsen, The Effects of Exercise and Physical Activity on Weight Loss and Maintenance . Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, Volume 61, Issue 2, 2018. Pages 206-213, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pcad.2018.07.014.

Wharton S, Lau DCW, Vallis M, et al. Obesity in adults: a clinical practice guideline .  CMAJ . 2020;192(31):E875-E891. doi:10.1503/cmaj.191707

 USDA. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025. 9th Edition. December 2020

USDA. My Plate .

USDA My Plate. Protein Foods .

USDA My Plate. Dairy .

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. How much physical activity do adults need?

O'Donoghue G, Blake C, Cunningham C, Lennon O, Perrotta C. What exercise prescription is optimal to improve body composition and cardiorespiratory fitness in adults living with obesity? A network meta-analysis .  Obes Rev . 2021;22(2):e13137. doi:10.1111/obr.13137

Teixeira DS, Rodrigues F, Cid L, Monteiro D. Enjoyment as a Predictor of Exercise Habit, Intention to Continue Exercising, and Exercise Frequency: The Intensity Traits Discrepancy Moderation Role . Front Psychol. 2022 Feb 18;13:780059. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.780059. PMID: 35250719; PMCID: PMC8894246.

Malik VS, Hu FB. The role of sugar-sweetened beverages in the global epidemics of obesity and chronic diseases .  Nat Rev Endocrinol . 2022;18(4):205-218. doi:10.1038/s41574-021-00627-6

Bracamontes-Castelo G, Bacardí-Gascón M, Jiménez Cruz A. Effect of water consumption on weight loss: a systematic review . Nutr Hosp . 2019;36(6):1424-1429. doi:10.20960/nh.02746

Corney RA, Sunderland C, James LJ. Immediate pre-meal water ingestion decreases voluntary food intake in lean young males.   Eur J Nutr . 2016;55(2):815-819. doi:10.1007/s00394-015-0903-4

Kerksick CM, Wilborn CD, Roberts MD, et al.  ISSN exercise & sports nutrition review update: research & recommendations .  Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition . 2018;15(1):38. doi:10.1186/s12970-018-0242-y

Papatriantafyllou E, Efthymiou D, Zoumbaneas E, Popescu CA, Vassilopoulou E. Sleep Deprivation: Effects on Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance .  Nutrients . 2022;14(8):1549. Published 2022 Apr 8. doi:10.3390/nu14081549

Primack C. Obesity and Sleep .  Nurs Clin North Am . 2021;56(4):565-572. doi:10.1016/j.cnur.2021.07.012

National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Changing your habits for better health.

By Cara Rosenbloom, RD  Cara Rosenbloom RD is a dietitian, journalist, book author, and the founder of Words to Eat By, a nutrition communications company in Toronto, ON.

A Guide to Starting a New Weight Loss Journey

Tuesday, Jan 2, 2024 | Featured , Lifestyle

Embarking on a weight loss journey can be both exciting and daunting. It’s a step toward a healthier, more vibrant life. However, starting might feel overwhelming with various approaches and information available. Remember, it’s not just about shedding pounds ; it’s about cultivating a sustainable and healthy lifestyle. 

In this guide, we’ll explore the importance of weight loss for overall well-being, how to start your journey, practical strategies to stay on track, essential precautions, and the significance of this transformative journey.

Article Overview:

• Importance of weight loss for healthy living

How to begin your weight loss journey

Strategies and life hacks to stay on track, precautions, importance of weight loss for healthy living.

Weight loss is more than just fitting into smaller clothes or looking a certain way. It’s fundamentally about your health. Excess weight can lead to various health concerns like heart disease, diabetes, joint issues, and more. Shedding even a modest amount of weight can significantly reduce the risk of these conditions. Moreover, it enhances energy levels, improves mood, and boosts self-confidence. 

Starting a weight loss journey can be a transformative step toward better health and well-being. Begin by establishing achievable and realistic goals . Avoid setting lofty or unrealistic targets that might be difficult to reach. Set small, attainable milestones that you can work toward gradually.

Reflect on your current habits regarding food intake, physical activity, sleep patterns, and stress levels. Identifying areas that need improvement can help in planning changes effectively. Before making significant changes to your diet or exercise routine, it’s advisable to consult a healthcare provider or a registered dietitian . They can offer guidance tailored to your specific health needs and goals.

Rather than making drastic changes overnight, focus on incorporating small, sustainable modifications into your daily routine. For instance, start by adding more vegetables and fruits to your meals or incorporating short bursts of physical activity into your day. Find enjoyable forms of physical activity that you can incorporate into your routine, whether it’s walking, jogging, cycling, dancing, or yoga. Aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week.

Drink an adequate amount of water throughout the day. Water not only keeps you hydrated but can also help control hunger and prevent overeating. Pay attention to what and how you eat. Slow down during meals, chew food thoroughly, and listen to your body’s hunger and fullness cues. Avoid distractions like screens while eating. Maintain a food journal or use the Healthi app to track your food intake, exercise, and progress. This can help you stay accountable and identify areas for improvement.

Embrace a balanced and nutritious diet that includes a variety of whole foods such as fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, whole grains, and healthy fats. Strive for moderation and portion control. The Healthi app is an excellent tool to help you stay on track with a balanced diet plan. It generates custom meal plans, while also providing you with recipes that you can try to mix things up. For those seeking to make healthier food choices, let Healthi’s BITES system be your guide. This feature assigns numerical values to food items, helping you make more informed and healthier choices. It gives you the power to track your progress and stay accountable, all while working toward a healthier you.

However, that’s not all! The Healthi app offers six distinct weight loss plans , each tailored to address specific dietary habits and preferences. 

The Better Balance plan is designed for individuals who regularly consume processed meals. It offers a flexible plan that’s less reliant on meticulous tracking and encourages a more balanced and nutritious approach to eating.

The Sugar Smart plan is geared toward individuals who frequent fast-food restaurants two or more times a week. It aims to break the cycle of fast food consumption, promote healthier alternatives, and encourage mindful choices when dining out.

The Carb Conscious plan is ideal for those who habitually consume processed carbs like bread, pasta, cereal, or chips. It helps curb carb cravings, promotes healthier carbohydrate choices, and provides a balanced approach to managing carb intake.

The Conquer Cravings plan is tailored for those who crave sweets after dinner or can’t resist finishing a bag of salty snacks in one sitting. It helps manage sugar and salt cravings effectively and encourages mindful indulgence without overdoing it.

The Calorie Command plan is perfect for individuals who already eat healthy but struggle with portion sizes. It is ideal for those who prefer a number-oriented approach to weight loss, and it provides clear parameters for portion control, ensuring balanced meals.

The Keeping Keto plan is tailored for those who feel deprived on other diets and prefer protein-rich, fatty foods over carbs. It is ideal for individuals who have tried various weight loss methods with limited success. The plan promotes a satisfying and sustainable approach to weight loss.

The Healthi app understands that one size does not fit all when it comes to weight loss. That’s why it offers these six diverse plans to cater to your specific dietary habits and cravings. Whether you’re a carb lover, sweet tooth, or fast-food enthusiast, there’s a personalized plan waiting for you. Choose the weight loss plan that aligns with your needs and preferences, and let the Healthi app guide you on your journey toward a healthier, happier you. 

Lastly, weight loss is a gradual process, and sustainable changes take time. Stay consistent with your efforts, and be patient and kind to yourself along the way. Keep in mind that every person’s weight loss journey is unique. It’s essential to find an approach that suits your lifestyle, preferences, and health requirements. Focus on building healthy habits that you can maintain in the long term rather than aiming for quick fixes. Celebrate small victories and stay committed to your journey toward a healthier you.

Staying on track during a weight loss journey involves implementing strategies and life hacks that help maintain consistency and motivation. Firstly, plan your meals in advance to ensure you have healthy options readily available. This can prevent impulsive eating and reliance on processed or unhealthy foods. Prep meals and snacks, portion them out, and store them for easy access during busy days.

Surround yourself with a supportive network of friends, family, or online communities that share similar goals. Having a support system can provide encouragement, accountability, and motivation throughout your journey. The Healthi app provides a dynamic hub where individuals with similar health objectives come together, fostering connections with like-minded people on various stages of their wellness journeys. This vibrant community serves as a supportive space, offering not only camaraderie and empathy but also a treasure trove of valuable tips and tricks to sustain motivation and stay focused on your goals.

Furthermore, use smaller plates, bowls, and utensils to control portion sizes. Focus on eating slowly, savoring each bite, and paying attention to your body’s hunger cues to avoid overeating. Be mindful of emotional eating triggers and practice mindful eating. Pause and assess your hunger levels before eating, distinguishing between physical hunger and emotional cravings.

Establish a consistent exercise routine that includes activities you enjoy. Mix up your workouts to prevent boredom and target different muscle groups. Schedule exercise sessions in your calendar to prioritize them. Additionally, define clear and specific goals for yourself. Whether it’s achieving a certain weight, fitting into a particular clothing size, or completing a fitness challenge, setting tangible goals can keep you motivated and focused.

Aim for 7-9 hours of quality sleep each night. Poor sleep can disrupt hormones related to appetite regulation, potentially leading to cravings and overeating. Manage stress through relaxation techniques such as meditation, deep breathing, or yoga. Chronic stress can contribute to emotional eating and hinder weight loss progress. Finally, understand that setbacks and plateaus are normal parts of the journey. Be kind to yourself, avoid self-criticism, and focus on the progress you’ve made rather than dwelling on temporary setbacks. 

Before starting any weight loss program or making significant changes to your diet or exercise routine, consult your healthcare provider or a registered dietitian. They can offer personalized advice based on your health status, medical history, and individual needs.

Steer clear of extreme or crash diets that promise rapid weight loss. These diets often lack essential nutrients, are difficult to sustain long-term, and can negatively impact your health. Instead, focus on gradual, sustainable changes to your eating habits. Be mindful of emotional eating triggers and be cautious not to rely on food as a coping mechanism for stress or emotions. Practice mindful eating and seek alternative stress-relief methods.

Be cautious when using weight loss supplements or products. Many over-the-counter supplements aren’t regulated and may contain potentially harmful ingredients. If considering supplements, consult your healthcare provider for advice.

Pay attention to your body’s signals. If you experience persistent fatigue, dizziness, headaches, or any other unusual symptoms, it’s crucial to address them promptly. Don’t ignore warning signs from your body. While regular exercise is essential for weight loss, over-exercising can lead to burnout, fatigue, and even injury. Gradually increase the intensity and duration of your workouts and allow your body adequate rest and recovery time.

By taking these precautions, you can ensure a safer and more effective weight loss journey while prioritizing your overall health and well-being. Always approach weight loss with a focus on sustainable and healthy lifestyle changes.

Starting a weight loss journey is an empowering decision toward a healthier you. Remember, it’s not just about reaching a number on the scale; it’s about adopting a lifestyle that nurtures your body and mind. Set realistic goals, make gradual changes, stay consistent, and celebrate small victories along the way. Be patient, stay resilient, and trust the process. Your journey to a healthier, happier you has just begun!

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• Weight loss

Weight loss: 6 strategies for success

Follow these proven strategies to reduce your weight and boost your health.

Hundreds of fad diets, weight-loss programs and outright scams promise quick and easy weight loss. However, the foundation of successful weight loss remains a healthy, calorie-controlled diet combined with increased physical activity. For successful, long-term weight loss, you must make permanent changes in your lifestyle and health habits.

How do you make those permanent changes? Consider following these six strategies for weight-loss success.

1. Make sure you're ready

Long-term weight loss takes time and effort — and a long-term commitment. While you don't want to put off weight loss indefinitely, you should make sure you're ready to make permanent changes to eating and activity habits. Ask yourself the following questions to help you determine your readiness:

• Am I motivated to lose weight?
• Am I too distracted by other pressures?
• Do I use food as a means to cope with stress?
• Am I ready to learn or use other strategies to cope with stress?
• Do I need other support — either from friends or professionals — to manage stress?
• Am I willing to change eating habits?
• Am I willing to change activity habits?
• Do I have the time to spend on making these changes?

Talk to your doctor if you need help addressing stressors or emotions that seem like obstacles to your readiness. When you're ready, you'll find it easier to set goals, stay committed and change habits.

2. Find your inner motivation

No one else can make you lose weight. You must undertake diet and exercise changes to please yourself. What's going to give you the burning drive to stick to your weight-loss plan?

Make a list of what's important to you to help you stay motivated and focused, whether it's an upcoming vacation or better overall health. Then find a way to make sure that you can call on your motivational factors during moments of temptation. You might want to post an encouraging note to yourself on the pantry door or refrigerator, for instance.

While you have to take responsibility for your own behavior for successful weight loss, it helps to have support — of the right kind. Pick people to support you who will encourage you in positive ways, without shame, embarrassment or sabotage.

Ideally, find people who will listen to your concerns and feelings, spend time exercising with you or creating healthy menus, and share the priority you've placed on developing a healthier lifestyle. Your support group can also offer accountability, which can be a strong motivation for sticking to your weight-loss goals.

If you prefer to keep your weight-loss plans private, be accountable to yourself by having regular weigh-ins, recording your diet and exercise progress in a journal, or tracking your progress using digital tools.

3. Set realistic goals

It may seem obvious to set realistic weight-loss goals. But do you really know what's realistic? Over the long term, it's smart to aim for losing 1 to 2 pounds (0.5 to 1 kilogram) a week. Generally to lose 1 to 2 pounds a week, you need to burn 500 to 1,000 calories more than you consume each day, through a lower calorie diet and regular physical activity.

Depending on your weight, 5% of your current weight may be a realistic goal, at least for an initial goal. If you weigh 180 pounds (82 kilograms), that's 9 pounds (4 kilograms). Even this level of weight loss can help lower your risk of chronic health problems, such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

When you're setting goals, think about both process and outcome goals. "Walk every day for 30 minutes" is an example of a process goal. "Lose 10 pounds" is an example of an outcome goal. It isn't essential that you have an outcome goal, but you should set process goals because changing your habits is a key to weight loss.

4. Enjoy healthier foods

Adopting a new eating style that promotes weight loss must include lowering your total calorie intake. But decreasing calories need not mean giving up taste, satisfaction or even ease of meal preparation.

One way you can lower your calorie intake is by eating more plant-based foods — fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Strive for variety to help you achieve your goals without giving up taste or nutrition.

Get your weight loss started with these tips:

• Eat at least four servings of vegetables and three servings of fruits daily.
• Replace refined grains with whole grains.
• Use modest amounts of healthy fats, such as olive oil, vegetable oils, avocados, nuts, nut butters and nut oils.
• Cut back on sugar as much as possible, except the natural sugar in fruit.
• Choose low-fat dairy products and lean meat and poultry in limited amounts.

5. Get active, stay active

While you can lose weight without exercise, regular physical activity plus calorie restriction can help give you the weight-loss edge. Exercise can help burn off the excess calories you can't cut through diet alone.

Exercise also offers numerous health benefits, including boosting your mood, strengthening your cardiovascular system and reducing your blood pressure. Exercise can also help in maintaining weight loss. Studies show that people who maintain their weight loss over the long term get regular physical activity.

How many calories you burn depends on the frequency, duration and intensity of your activities. One of the best ways to lose body fat is through steady aerobic exercise — such as brisk walking — for at least 30 minutes most days of the week. Some people may require more physical activity than this to lose weight and maintain that weight loss.

Any extra movement helps burn calories. Think about ways you can increase your physical activity throughout the day if you can't fit in formal exercise on a given day. For example, make several trips up and down stairs instead of using the elevator, or park at the far end of the lot when shopping.

6. Change your perspective

It's not enough to eat healthy foods and exercise for only a few weeks or even months if you want long-term, successful weight management. These habits must become a way of life. Lifestyle changes start with taking an honest look at your eating patterns and daily routine.

After assessing your personal challenges to weight loss, try working out a strategy to gradually change habits and attitudes that have sabotaged your past efforts. Then move beyond simply recognizing your challenges — plan for how you'll deal with them if you're going to succeed in losing weight once and for all.

You likely will have an occasional setback. But instead of giving up entirely after a setback, simply start fresh the next day. Remember that you're planning to change your life. It won't happen all at once. Stick to your healthy lifestyle and the results will be worth it.

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• Hensrud DD, et al. Ready, set, go. In: The Mayo Clinic Diet. 2nd ed. Mayo Clinic; 2017.
• Duyff RL. Reach and maintain your healthy weight. In: Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Complete Food and Nutrition Guide. 5th ed. John Wiley & Sons; 2017.
• Losing weight: Getting started. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/losing_weight/getting_started.html. Accessed Nov. 15, 2019.
• Do you know some of the health risks of being overweight? National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-topics/weight-control/health_risks_being_overweight/Pages/health-risks-being-overweight.aspx. Accessed Nov. 15, 2019.
• 2013 AHA/ACC/TOS guideline for the management of overweight and obesity in adults: A report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines and The Obesity Society. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2014; doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2013.11.004.
• 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture. http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines. Accessed Nov. 15, 2019.
• Physical activity for a healthy weight. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/physical_activity/index.html. Accessed Nov. 15, 2019.

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How To Kickstart Your Weight Loss Journey

It doesn't take much to start your weight loss journey.

Every weight loss journey is a personal one. Because a lot of information is available for beginning the path to weight loss, it can take a lot of work to figure out how to get going. Still, there are ways to ease yourself into losing weight, like changing what and how you eat and getting better sleep . 

However, weight and body mass index (BMI) are not always accurate indicators of overall weight. For example, BMI does not consider body composition, ethnicity, sex, race, and age. Likewise, there is no "normal" body weight, and certain foods and behaviors are not "good" and "bad." 

Consult a healthcare provider if you plan on starting a weight loss journey. For example, a registered dietitian nutritionist can help ensure you get enough nutrients and offer tips that fit your needs . Also, if you have a history of disordered eating, talk to a mental healthcare provider before changing your eating patterns.

Weight and Health

Research has found no singular, universal diet for weight loss. Instead, weight loss depends on each person's unique goals and needs. Also, the best diet is one that you can maintain for long periods.

Therefore, setting realistic goals is key before kickstarting a weight loss journey. Generally, weight loss depends on the amount and type of food you eat and when you eat your meals. From there, some evidence suggests that your personal goals should fulfill your nutritional needs, be safe and effective, culturally acceptable, and be inexpensive.

Consulting a healthcare provider may help you figure out your personal goals. For example, a healthcare provider can identify areas you can improve. For example, if you eat out several times per week, you might limit eating out to every Friday. Or, if you find yourself eating for emotional reasons, a healthcare provider can help you adopt other coping skills.

After identifying those areas and making changes, keeping track of your habits helps monitor and maintain your weight loss journey. Then, regularly check in with a healthcare provider to update your goals as needed.

Factors That Affect Weight Loss

Several factors may affect your ability to lose weight, like:

• Social determinants of health :  Where you live and work can influence your diet. For example, some communities might have different access to fresh fruits and vegetables than others.
• Health conditions:  Some diseases impact a person's ability to lose weight. For instance, illnesses that cause hormonal changes and insulin resistance can cause obesity. Examples include polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), Cushing's disease, and diabetes. Also, mental health conditions that impact how you manage stress can also lead to weight gain.
• Medications:  Steroids and antidepressants may cause weight gain.
• Genetics:  In some cases, overweight and obesity run in families. For example, your genes may determine how your body stores fat.

How To Kickstart Weight Loss

There are a few lifestyle changes that you can implement to kickstart your weight loss journey. However, keep in mind that certain foods and behaviors are not "good" or "bad." You can still make room for your favorite indulgences in moderation. 

Fill Your Meals With Vegetables

Adding more vegetables to your diet can help you start losing weight. Vegetables are rich in nutrients like magnesium and vitamin A. Magnesium helps build strong bones, while vitamin A supports your immune system and eyesight.

Vegetables are also low in calories but high in both fiber and water. By making vegetables the main meal staple, you'll eat fewer calories without giving up nutrition. Also, the fiber will add bulk to your meals, satiating your appetite and helping you feel full. 

The amount of vegetables you ought to eat depends on factors like age or activity. A good place to start would be to have at least one to two cups (a cup is the size of a tennis ball) at each meal, including breakfast.

For breakfast, you could scramble a few eggs with the following: 

• Italian seasoning
• Black pepper
• A handful or two of chopped vegetables (e.g., spinach, tomatoes)

You can also enjoy your scramble with a side of fresh fruit. 

Then, at lunch, opt for a salad or include ingredients on a sandwich or wrap, like lettuce or tomato. Add vegetables to grain dishes at dinnertime, such as quinoa with roasted vegetables or whole grain pasta with sautéed broccoli. Or spiralize, chop, or shred vegetables to create fun alternatives like zoodles (zucchini noodles) with pesto or tomato sauce.

Cauliflower rice is another good option. Take four cups of cauliflower florets and chop them using the pulse feature on a food processor until they look like rice grains.

To complete a meal and ensure you're getting essential macronutrients, include a lean protein source, such as salmon, chicken breast, or lentils. Then, add a healthy fat, like avocado, nuts, or seeds.

What Are Healthy Fats?

Healthy fats consist of unsaturated fats in foods from plants and animals, like monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Those healthy fats have several health benefits, like:

• Lowers LDL ("bad") cholesterol, which helps protect your heart
• Protects against dry eyes
• Reduces inflammation
• Promotes the functions of your brain and nervous system

Be Mindful of Your Drinks

Opting for certain drinks can lead to weight loss, too. One review published in 2022 in  JAMA Network Open  found that drinking low- and zero-calorie sweetened beverages rather than sugar-sweetened beverages helped lower body weight and fat percentage.

Water is also a great choice since it has benefits beyond helping manage weight. Drinking water keeps you hydrated, protects your spinal cord, and helps your body get rid of waste. You do not have to give up coffee in the morning, but be sure to include a side of water.

Also, if you don't love the taste of water, add flavor by using the following:

• Fresh mint 
• Ginger root
• Mashed berries
• Squeezed lemon, lime, or orange

Consider experimenting with teas, as well. Many teas, like green tea, are rich in antioxidants.

Of note, people can lose water from the body in many ways, like sweating more if they're very active, being sick with a fever, or living at high altitudes or temperatures. Those and other factors (e.g., age, sex) determine if a person should consume more or less water daily. In other words, not everyone will have the same daily water needs.

Snack Throughout the Day

Snacking is a great way to increase nutrition and energy between meals when you are hungry. Aim to choose snacks that contain fiber, fat, and protein. Those snacks will keep you satisfied and provide essential nutrients.

Consider the following snacks, for instance:

• Nuts or seeds along with fruit
• A cup of raw vegetables with hummus or roasted chickpeas
• String cheese or yogurt
• Air-popped popcorn

Although, keep in mind that snacks can be for pleasure, as well. Incorporate some of your favorite indulgences throughout the week.

Get Enough Sleep

Chronic insufficient sleep can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. A lack of sleep may also result in weight gain. 

According to a 2019 study, people who slept for shorter periods had increased hunger, food cravings, food reward, and food intake the next day compared to people who slept longer.

What Is Food Reward?

Food reward concerns how a person measures the short-term value of food (e.g., if they like or dislike it) while they eat it.

Also, some evidence suggests poor sleeping patterns increase snacking on high-carb and high-fat foods.

Generally, quality sleep promotes successful weight loss. Aim to get the quality sleep you need, which is at least seven hours for adults. Engaging in good sleep hygiene , like going to sleep at the same time every night and limiting time spent looking at screens, can also help you get quality sleep.

A Quick Review

It can take a lot of work to start when you want to lose weight. Fortunately, you can do a few things that can help, such as adding more vegetables to your diet and opting for low-calorie drinks or water. Practicing good snacking and sleeping habits can also benefit weight loss efforts. 

If you need help kickstarting your weight loss, consulting a healthcare provider can help. For example, a registered dietitian nutritionist can offer guidance and insight on how to help you lose weight.

Kim JY. Optimal diet strategies for weight loss and weight loss maintenance .  J Obes Metab Syndr . 2021;30(1):20-31. doi:10.7570/jomes20065

Koliaki C, Spinos T, Spinou Μ, et al. Defining the optimal dietary approach for safe, effective and sustainable weight loss in overweight and obese adults .  Healthcare (Basel) . 2018;6(3):73. doi:10.3390/healthcare6030073

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Freeman AM, Pennings N. Insulin resistance . In:  StatPearls . StatPearls Publishing; 2022.

Office on Dietary Supplements. Magnesium .

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MedlinePlus. Facts about polyunsaturated fats .

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McGlynn ND, Khan TA, Wang L, et al. Association of low- and no-calorie sweetened beverages as a replacement for sugar-sweetened beverages with body weight and cardiometabolic risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis . JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(3):e222092. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.2092

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Water and healthier drinks .

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. The health benefits of tea .

Yamada Y, Zhang X, Henderson MET, et al. Variation in human water turnover associated with environmental and lifestyle factors .  Science . 2022;378(6622):909-915. doi:10.1126/science.abm8668

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. How much water do you need?

MedlinePlus. Snacks for adults .

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sleep for a good cause .

Yang CL, Schnepp J, Tucker R. Increased hunger, food cravings, food reward, and portion size selection after sleep curtailment in women without obesity . Nutrients . 2019;11(3):663. doi:10.3390/nu11030663

Papatriantafyllou E, Efthymiou D, Zoumbaneas E, Popescu CA, Vassilopoulou E. Sleep deprivation: effects on weight loss and weight loss maintenance .  Nutrients . 2022;14(8):1549. doi:10.3390/nu14081549

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Are you getting enough sleep?

Related Articles

How to Lose Weight by Shifting Your Mindset

Start your weight loss journey by understanding your motivation and setting realistic goals.

This article is based on reporting that features expert sources.

Getty Images |

Get your mind right for weight loss.

Every diet and weight loss strategy has its pros and cons, but for any to really work, you’ve got to get your mind right.

“Without the right mindset, your weight loss journey will be more difficult to start, and your goals will be more difficult to achieve,” says Sara Riehm, a registered dietitian and certified specialist in obesity and weight management with Orlando Health in Florida.

Unfortunately, some people try to lose weight while in the worst state of mind possible: wanting to "fix" themselves. They jump into diets and exercise plans, become obsessed with quick results and lose sight of sustainability and even health.

"This type of thinking can be destructive," says Dr. Kevin Campbell, a cardiologist with Health First in Melbourne, Florida. “Rather than focusing on the good that can come from weight loss – such as better health, a longer life, more enjoyment in everyday activities and the prevention of diabetes and heart disease – these folks focus on negative thoughts. Ultimately, a negative mindset leads to failure."

But you don’t have to stay mired in negative thinking.

Here, we offer nine tips for shifting your mindset to support your journey of losing weight.

(Getty Images) |

1. Make your mindset about being healthy, not a number on the scale.

Labels matter – and they can undermine your weight loss efforts.

“The first area where I think people sabotage themselves is by thinking that they’re ‘dieting’ or a ‘dieter.’ I would really love to hear people start saying, ‘I want to change my lifestyle to be healthier, and I want to eat more healthfully for me,’” says Dana Ellis Hunnes, a senior clinical dietitian at UCLA Medical Center and assistant professor at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health in Los Angeles.

That simple shift could have big benefits. Rather than focusing on how much you weigh, you'll be thinking longer term about overall health and well-being.

You can also pair this shift in mindset with a healthier eating plan.

“Focus on eating a healthy diet that is high in quality – as high as (you) can personally afford – and not just on the numbers on the scale because it is very possible to have a shift in body composition ( more muscle, less fat ) but not see changes in the scale number,” Hunnes advises. “Let’s be our healthiest self or our fittest self – not our ‘skinniest’ self.”

2. Make small, sustainable changes.

Adopting a non-diet thought process can support longer-term success.

“Diets are not sustainable and are usually temporary," says Cesar Sauza, a registered dietitian and nutrition manager with AltaMed Health Services in Los Angeles. "Any success with ‘diets’ (is) usually short-term, and weight is typically gained back once the ‘diet’ ends.”

Instead, focus on figuring out your motivation to lose weight and then making small, sustainable changes, which can add up quickly.

These changes can include:

• Cutting out sugary beverages.
• Reducing the amount of processed foods (junk food) and simple carbohydrates you consume.
• Cooking at home more often.
• Boosting your intake of fresh fruits and vegetables .
• Using smaller plates and bowls so that your serving sizes appear bigger than they are in relation to the plate.
• Eat the healthiest foods first so you’re too full to eat the less healthy foods.
• Keep a food and exercise journal, or otherwise track your progress .
• Know your trigger foods – including the ones that make you want to keep eating to excess – and remove them from your pantry.
• Get to bed earlier, and sleep longer .

3. Talk with your health care provider or a dietitian.

Seeking health education from your doctor or a registered dietitian can help ground your weight loss journey in solid, evidence-based information that's tailored to your specific needs.

"Dietitians are usually capable of investigating the underlying cause of excess weight, and they can advise their clients to connect with therapists," notes Sara Bagheri, a health coach and registered dietitian at CalOptima Health in Orange County, California.

Resources for dieters can include:

• Online guides.
• Advice from your physician.
• Support options through wellness benefits at work.
• Educational books focused on weight loss and dieting initiatives.

4. Set goals that support good health.

Changing your body means changing many aspects of your life, including sleeping better, moving more, drinking more water and controlling stress better.

For example, a reasonable and realistic goal might be to eat five servings of fruits and veggies today or to get eight hours of sleep . Did you get them in? If so, you can check another goal off of your list.

To make goal-setting easier, focus on making SMART goals :

• Measurable.
• Attainable.
• Time-bound.

Think of weight loss as just one aspect of taking care of your whole self.

5. Seek accountability.

Finding a workout buddy who will hold you to your set workout times can be a life-changing aspect of any health journey. It can also help you lose weight.

Hunnes also recommends “letting someone you trust wholeheartedly know about your journey."

"They may want to join you and/or support you in it," she adds. "It helps to have support!”

Even something as seemingly unrelated to weight loss can make a world of difference. For example, adopting a dog and taking it out for daily walks can help you move more. Along the way, you may just end up losing some weight while gaining the companionship of a loyal creature.

6. Rethink rewards and punishments.

Food is not a reward, and exercise is not a punishment. They are both ways of caring for your body and helping you feel your best, and you deserve both. Riehm suggests celebrating – without a focus on food – when you hit a milestone.

“It’s difficult to stay focused and maintain motivation for a large goal that won’t be achieved for many months or even years,” she says. “For example, if your goal is to consume at least three servings of fruits and vegetables per day, when you accomplish that goal for the week, treat yourself to a new book or a hot bath. Our rewards should not counteract the changes we’re making.”

7. Don't step on the scale.

While the scale isn't intrinsically bad, a lot of us have learned to associate it with self-destructive thoughts and actions. If that's you, don't even bother stepping on the scale until you get to a place where the number on it doesn't define your worth.

A healthy weight is more than a number on a scale, so find other ways to note your progress, such as changes in how your clothes fit, whether your blood pressure has improved and your overall mood and feeling.

Incremental improvements in these areas can be a great way of tracking your progress without ever stepping on the scale.

Getty Images | iStockphoto

8. Lose the "foods are good or bad" mentality.

Somewhere along the line, we've learned to feel either proud or guilty about every food choice we make. But it's just food, and you shouldn't have to feel guilty about wanting the occasional cookie.

Food is food; it doesn’t make you a bad person or a failure if you eat dessert sometimes. Instead of thinking about what you can’t eat, focus on adding more, healthier foods to your plate at each meal.

9. Don’t let setbacks derail you.

Setbacks are common, and you should expect some bumps in the road.

“Many people get discouraged when their weight loss journey isn’t linear. There may be weeks when your weight is a bit higher than it usually is, but it’s normal for weight to fluctuate from day to day and week to week," Riehm explains.

Rather than focusing on a single number, look at the bigger picture.

"If your weight is trending down overall, functional capabilities are improving and mental outlook is enhanced, you can consider yourself successful in your efforts,” she adds.

What’s more, how much you weigh is just one piece of the overall puzzle of whether you’re healthy. Riehm notes that even a loss of 5% to 10% of your body weight can improve your health.

Lastly, Bagheri urges you to not be afraid of failure.

"Be consistent, and do not give up," she advises. "Enjoy the ride, because along the way you are learning new things and experiencing new habits."

Top tips to shift your mindset and lose weight

• Make your mindset about being healthy, not a number on the scale.
• Make small, sustainable changes.
• Talk with your health care provider or a dietitian.
• Set goals that support good health.
• Seek accountability.
• Rethink rewards and punishments.
• Don't step on the scale.
• Lose the "foods are good or bad" mentality.
• Don’t let setbacks derail you.

More From U.S. News

The Best Foods for Weight Loss

Healthy Meals for Weight Loss

Best Fast Weight Loss Diets

The U.S. News Health team delivers accurate information about health, nutrition and fitness, as well as in-depth medical condition guides. All of our stories rely on multiple, independent sources and experts in the field, such as medical doctors and licensed nutritionists. To learn more about how we keep our content accurate and trustworthy, read our  editorial guidelines .

Bagheri is a health coach and registered dietitian at CalOptima Health, a community-based health insurance plan that serves the low-income population in Orange County, California.

Campbell is a cardiologist with Health First in Melbourne, Florida.

Hunnes is a senior clinical dietitian at UCLA Medical Center, assistant professor at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and author of "Recipe for Survival" with Cambridge University Press. She is based in Los Angeles.

Riehm is a registered dietitian and certified specialist in obesity and weight management with Orlando Health in Florida.

Sauza is a registered dietitian and the clinical nutrition manager at AltaMed Health Services in Los Angeles, California.

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A guide to nutrition and wellness from the health team at U.S. News & World Report.

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Weight Loss for Beginners: A Complete Guide

Published in Weight Loss

Heather Davis, MS, RDN, LDN

According to the CDC, about 41.9 percent of adults in the U.S. are obese. This number has increased by more than 11 percent since 1999, signaling that obesity and being overweight are on the rise.

Being overweight or obese can put people at an increased risk for a number of health conditions , including high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and mental health disorders like depression and anxiety.

But when it comes to weight loss, there’s no simple formula that works for everyone. The good news is that healthy and sustainable weight loss is possible when you create and stick to a plan that’s designed for your unique health needs and goals.

In this beginner’s guide to weight loss, we’ll be covering the basics of nutrition, exercise, and other lifestyle factors that can help you succeed in your weight loss journey.

Why Is Weight Loss So Complicated?

Your body’s ability to manage or lose weight is contingent on many different factors. Genetics, medical history, activity levels, stress, sleep, nutrition, and even blood sugar levels can affect weight loss . 

But for many people, weight loss isn’t as simple as eating a low-calorie diet or exercising seven days a week. As anyone who has ever started on a weight loss journey may know, the progress you’re seeing can plateau over time, you may experience cravings , lack motivation, or start to feel burnt out along the way.

But don't fall for the weight loss plateau myth —and if you find yourself experiencing less progress despite following the same healthy habits, your body may simply need time to adapt into a weight mantenance phase.

Reaching a healthy body weight is not only positive for your overall health, it can also reduce your risk of developing metabolic disorders, such as type 2 diabetes . For example, it’s estimated that :

• 38 percent of U.S. adults have prediabetes
• 11.3 percent of the U.S. population has type 2 diabetes

So if you’re someone who’s figuring out how to start your journey, there are a lot of things to keep in mind and many ways to get off track. With this beginner’s guide, our goal is to break through all the weight loss myths out there and provide the information you need to start this journey on the right foot.

Check out what our dietitian Heather Davis, MS, RDN, LDN had to say about one common weight loss myth in her conversation with certified health and fitness coach Caroline Jordan:

5 Tips For Starting On a Weight Loss Journey

Now that we've taken a closer look at some of the ways that being overweight can impact your metabolic health, here are some weight loss tips to keep in mind when starting out on your journey.

1) Start out by setting weight loss goals: Realistic and specific goals can keep you motivated and help you monitor your progress along the way. 

2) Consult a dietitian to create a balanced diet plan: A dietitian can work with you to create a balanced diet plan that is made up of whole foods, limits processed and fast foods, and is tailored to your specific health, calorie, macronutrient, and micronutrient needs.

3) Create a workout plan you can follow consistently and that is appropriate for your body: Exercise is a critical component of weight loss for many people, and creating a realistic and appropriate workout plan that you can actually stick to is important. 

4) Outline which lifestyle habits you may need to optimize: Getting enough sleep, staying hydrated, and taking care of your mental health are all lifestyle habits that may impact your weight loss journey. Your personal dietitian can help you with these as well. 

5) Consider tracking your symptoms . Key symptoms of metabolic and neuroendocrine health include energy levels, digestive health, sleep quality, mood, and cognition, among some others. These symptoms can tell us a lot about what might be holding us back on our bigger-picture health and weight loss success. 

Is Your Diet Important for Weight Loss?

When it comes to weight loss, your diet plays a key role. But research shows that losing weight is actually a lot more complicated than eating fewer calories than you burn. 

Different foods with the same amount of calories can affect the body differently, and our weight can be highly influenced by other factors like hormones. 

With that in mind, here are some dietary tips that go beyond the simple “calories in, calories out” equation. 

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Dietary Tips for Beginners

Eat adequate protein.

Our bodies use protein to build and maintain our bones, muscles, and skin, and can help weight loss by increasing satiety and thermogenesis . Learn more about how protein can support weight loss here .

Eat Enough Fiber

• High Fiber Fruits: Raspberries, pears, apples, and bananas
• High Fiber Veggies: Spinach, broccoli, brussels sprouts, romaine lettuce
• High Fiber Whole Grains: Barley, quinoa, oatmeal, popcorn, brown rice
• High FIber Seeds and Nuts: sunflower seeds, chia seeds, almonds
• High Fiber Legumes: Split peas, lentils, and black beans

Studies show that fiber intake may help promote weight loss , independently of caloric intake and intake of other macronutrients. Unfortunately, only five percent of Americans have enough fiber in their diet. Find out more about how this carbohydrate can be beneficial for your weight loss journey here .

Monitor Your Total Calorie Intake

As mentioned earlier, counting the number of calories you consume can’t tell you everything about how to succeed at weight loss. However, your caloric intake still plays an important role in your weight. 

Eating too few or too many calories for your individual needs can both sabotage weight loss success. Consuming more calories than you need can lead to weight gain , but so can undereating for your needs. If you need a hand to keep you on track, here are some weight tracker apps that can help you monitor your daily calorie intake.

Reduce Your Intake of Processed Foods

Foods that are highly processed tend to contain more ingredients like refined sugar, salt, and trans and saturated fats. High intake of these foods can contribute to weight gain and serious health problems , so when it comes to weight loss snacks , try opting for more whole foods.

Avoid Sugary Drinks and Other Sources of Empty Calories

Avoiding or reducing your intake of sugary drinks can go a long way in helping you lose weight. These drinks not only add empty calories to your diet, which are calories from foods that have little or no nutritional value, they also contain a lot of added sugar .

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Creating a Weight Loss Workout Plan for Beginners

A good weight loss strategy should include a workout plan. Aim for a weight loss plan that suits your individual needs, that you are able to do consistently, and that incorporates both full body strength training and cardio. To learn more about how cardio can benefit your weight loss goals, read our article on cardio exercise .

Strength training is another type of exercise that has been linked to weight loss and improved lean muscle mass. Here’s what you need to know about how it can benefit your weight loss . 

Common Cardio and Strength Training Exercises

Some common cardio exercises are:

• Brisk walking
• Jumping rope
• High intensity interval training (HIIT)

You can also include strength training exercises to lose weight or build muscle while on your journey. Start out with a beginner workout plan that can be done with dumbbells, a barbell, or with your own body weight. 

Check out our sample glute and hamstring workout and a chest and shoulder workout to start with. If you're a beginner, working with a personal trainer can be a great way to get started. 

Sample Weekly Workout Plan

Here is a sample of what a weekly workout plan can look like. This is a great starting point, but be sure to make it work for your specific needs, which may include extra rest days at the beginning.

Doing more than your body is capable of can lead to injury or worsened current health or medical conditions, so it’s always a good idea to start slow and work your way up to more vigorous exercise.

Other Lifestyle Changes for Sustainable Weight Loss

As we mentioned earlier, it isn’t just your diet and exercise habits that affect your weight. Here are some other lifestyle factors to focus on to optimize your weight loss.  

Drink Adequate Water and Stay Hydrated

It’s important for many functions in the body to make sure to drink water and stay hydrated throughout the day. Drinking sufficient water may also be linked to weight loss and may also help people burn more calories . 

One study found that obese women who replaced high-caloric beverages with water experienced an average weight loss of two to 2.5 percent. Learn more about how to stay hydrated here .

Get Plenty of Sleep Each Night

Sleep is also crucial for the functioning of your body, and research shows that not getting enough sleep can affect your mental health , increase your risk of serious health conditions, and even lead to weight gain . 

On the flip side, studies show that getting enough sleep may help with weight loss . Read more about proper sleep hygiene here . 

Aim to Reduce Stress Throughout the Day

Long-term elevated cortisol levels are linked to an increase in abdominal obesity . Stress can also make you more likely to reach for comforting foods that are higher in calories, and may even lead to moving and exercising less. Here are some tips for managing stress that may also support weight management.

Try Using a Weight Loss App to Stay Accountable

Weight loss apps can be a great tool to keep you accountable to your weight loss goals. Many apps, including the Nutrisense app , have features that allow you to track your meals and physical activity, as well as other lifestyle factors that affect weight like sleep and stress.

Check out our article about our favorite weight loss apps here !

3 Key Takeaways for Getting Started with Weight Loss

Engage with Your Blood Glucose Levels with Nutrisense

Your blood sugar levels can significantly impact how your body feels and functions. That’s why stable blood glucose levels can be an important factor in supporting overall wellbeing.

With Nutrisense, you’ll be able to track your blood glucose levels over time using a CGM , so you can make lifestyle choices that support healthy living.

When you join the Nutrisense CGM program , our team of credentialed dietitians and nutritionists are available for additional support and guidance to help you reach your goals.

Ready to take the first step? Start with our quiz to see how Nutrisense can support your health.

Find the right Nutrisense program      to help you discover and reach your health potential .

Reviewed by: Heather Davis, MS, RDN, LDN

Heather is a Registered and Licensed Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN, LDN), subject matter expert, and technical writer, with a master's degree in nutrition science from Bastyr University. She has a specialty in neuroendocrinology and has been working in the field of nutrition—including nutrition research, education, medical writing, and clinical integrative and functional nutrition—for over 15 years.

Learn more about Heather

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4-Week Plan To Kick-Start Your Weight Loss Journey

Slow and steady. While weight loss can sometimes feel like a race, we’re here to remind you that it doesn’t have to be that way. There may be a starting point to your weight loss journey, but successful changes take time, so being consistent ( or steady ) in approaching your health is way more important than any finish line.

Go ahead and ditch that all-or-nothing mentality. Instead, slowly ease into your weight loss journey with the help of our four-step plan.

Each week you’ll focus on mastering one concept. This will lay a pretty solid foundation for success while keeping you feeling motivated and excited. We didn’t make this method up either — it’s backed by science and used by professionals to help create long-lasting changes.

Let’s get started.

Week 1: Gain Insight

Time to take inventory. When getting started, it’s crucial to understand your current dietary habits. This allows you to easily identify what you want or need to change. 

Begin by logging what you eat and drink in an app, like Lose It!, as often as it feels good for you. This habit will allow you to visualize and, therefore, better understand your dietary patterns. Challenge yourself to learn about the spacing of your meals, the composition, the calories, and even the satisfaction level. Strive to gain insight into what’s working for your health goals and what’s not. 

The final step this week is to write a list of pros and cons. The pro is why you want to change, and the con is why you want to stay the same. Experts agree that successful change happens when your list of pros outweighs the cons.

Week 1 To Do:

Begin logging in Lose It! Understand your data Build your list of pros and cons Form your goals

Week 2: Prep, Prep, Prep

This week is all about the prep. But not the traditional food prep you may think of, like chopping vegetables in the kitchen. Instead, this prep involves a mental shift toward commitment. 

Last week, you found clarity about why you want to change. Keep this list handy, as it will help reconfirm your motivation on more challenging weeks. This week you’re going to work on creating a support plan. Work on finding medical professionals, individuals, or organizations to help you succeed. This might look like finding a food delivery service if you intend to avoid cooking, signing up with a dietitian or nutritionist if you need more tailored advice, or joining a gym to allow for exercise no matter the weather. You can also rethink your environment at this step and reorganize to make the healthiest choice the easiest.

Week 2 To Do:

Continue to tweak your goals Prepare a plan of action Gather your support Set up your environment

Week 3: Focus on Food

Week three is when you’ll start to make changes, and this week, it’s all about the food. 

By now, you’re used to logging your foods, and your environment is set up for success. Based on your written goals, start with the one that involves food choices. In general, you’ll want to work on making more conscious choices about what foods to eat. 

Be sure to also pay attention to how those foods make you feel and function. Aim for variety in food groups, flavors, cuisines, and cooking methods. Begin to read nutrition labels identifying healthier or more convenient swaps. Grocery shopping may take a bit longer now, but see it as a chance to discover something new. Remove distractions when eating and be more present with the speed at which you take bites.

Week 3 To Do:

Focus on the food — what you’re eating and how you’re eating Be more intentional with reading food labels Continue logging foods for accountability

Week 4: Move More

Week four encourages you to layer in movement. But not moving your body only because you must burn a certain amount of calories, instead moving your body because it feels good and makes you happy. 

The key is finding something you enjoy. It might look like stretching, walking, yoga, strength training, cycling, dancing, or a combination.  It might be a class outside of the house or streaming something so you can stay in. The general recommendation for exercise is to complete 150 minutes each week. Take this guideline and translate it into something that feels doable for your life. Remember, any type of movement is better than nothing.

Week 4 To Do:

Move more Find consistency in an exercise routine Keep movement fun

Bonus: Calculate Your Daily Calorie Goal

If you want to track calories as part of your weight loss or maintenance plan, this calculator can help determine your ideal daily calorie intake.

Note: This is intended to be a general guide only. For more individualized recommendations, please talk with your doctor or dietitian.

The Bottom Line

Making small changes to your health will add up to big results. This four-week approach helps to ensure that you are not only in the right mindset to make the changes but also have the proper support and tools to succeed. While your food and exercise goals will likely continue beyond this month, we hope this slow approach keeps you steady and motivated to find sustainable, long-term success.

Anna Smith , MS, RDN, LDN

Meet Anna, a Nashville-based registered dietitian on a mission to make healthy eating easier. Her upbeat and encouraging guidance simplifies complex nutrition concepts into practical, easy-to-follow tips to inspire a happier, healthier you.

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This 7-Day Diet Plan For Weight Loss Helps You Eat Healthy And Stay Full

Here's how to pack your plate for long-term results.

Devoting time to meal prep can be a helpful component of weight loss, she says. “For many individuals, planning ahead is key to successful weight loss since it may help decrease the guesswork and negative outside influences at meal time,” Gans says. To help, she has offered up several healthy food options that will help you stay full, satisfied, and support your weight loss goals.

Check out the 7-day meal plan for weight loss below, including a handy grocery list to take with you on your next stopping trip (because eating healthy shouldn’t be complicated).

Meet the expert: Keri Gans , RD, is a New York City-based nutritionist and the author of The Small Change Diet .

7-Day Diet Plan For Weight Loss

Every meal on this eating plan is a good mix of protein, fat, and carbs to help you fill up, stay satisfied, and hold your blood sugar steady—all key factors in losing weight.

Breakfast : A piece of 100 percent whole wheat toast topped with half an avocado, two slices of tomato, and two poached eggs

Lunch : Mixed green salad with carrots, cucumbers, ½ avocado sliced, and 3 to 4 ounces broiled salmon, topped with a dash of olive oil and vinegar

Snack: Three cups air-popped popcorn

Dinner : One cup of cooked pasta (whatever kind you prefer) tossed with 3 ounces of grilled shrimp, as much asparagus as you want, sautéed garlic, and a dash of olive oil

Breakfast : One cup cooked oatmeal mixed with one tablespoon of peanut butter and a medium-sized banana sliced on top

Lunch: Fresh roasted turkey sandwich on 100 percent whole wheat bread with lettuce, sliced tomato, and 1 tablespoon of mayo (or drizzle of olive oil)

Snack: ¼ cup raw almonds

Dinner : Three to four ounces of broiled salmon with baked potato (you can add a pat of butter or dollop of sour cream), and as much broccoli as you want

Snack: Two pieces of dark chocolate

Dinner : Four ounces of grilled chicken breast with one medium-sized sweet potato and sautéed spinach

Breakfast : A cup of plain Greek or Icelandic yogurt topped with 1 cup of sliced strawberries and 1 ounce of sliced almonds

Lunch : One individual can of tuna mixed with 1 tablespoon of mayo (or dash of olive oil) on 100% whole grain bread, topped with lettuce, two slices of tomato, and a few slivers of red onion

Snack: A small handful of dates

Dinner : Four ounces of grilled chicken breast with one medium-sized sweet potato, steamed, and sautéed spinach

Breakfast : One cup of cooked oatmeal mixed with one tablespoon of peanut butter and a medium-sized banana sliced on top

Snack: Carrot or celery sticks dipped in ½ cup cottage cheese

Dinner : One cup of cooked pasta (whatever kind you prefer) tossed with 3 ounces of grilled shrimp, as much asparagus as you want, sautéed garlic, and dash of olive oil

Breakfast : One piece of 100 percent whole wheat toast topped with half an avocado, two slices of tomato, and two poached eggs

Lunch : Fresh roasted turkey sandwich on 100% whole wheat bread with lettuce, sliced tomato, and 1 tablespoon of mayo (or drizzle of olive oil)

Snack: Hummus with pita chips and/or veggies for dipping

Lunch : Fresh roasted turkey sandwich on 100 percent whole wheat bread with lettuce, sliced tomato, and 1 tablespoon of mayo (or drizzle of olive oil)

Snack: One cup raspberries, blueberries, or strawberries

Dinner : One cup of cooked pasta (or zucchini noodles!) tossed with 3 ounces of grilled shrimp, as much asparagus as you want, sautéed garlic, and dash of olive oil

7-Day Healthy Eating Plan

Add this list of food staples to your pantry to encourage healthy meals all week long.

• Greek yogurt (2 cups)
• Pint of strawberries
• Tomatoes (3)
• Avocado (2)
• Sweet potatoes (3)
• Mixed greens
• Bananas (2)
• Garlic clove
• Baked potato (2)
• Zucchini (1)
• Red onion (1)
• Container of old-fashioned oats
• Sliced almonds (2 ounces)
• No sugar-added peanut butter
• Loaf of whole wheat bread
• Dried pasta of your choice (3 cups)
• Salmon (12 ounces)
• Chicken (12 ounces)
• Frozen shrimp (9 ounces)
• Individual can of tuna (2)
• Boneless frozen turkey (or 1 pound of turkey lunchmeat)
• Small container of mayo or olive oil
• Air-popped popcorn
• Raw almonds
• Dark chocolate
• Cottage cheese
• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Blueberries

Tips For Weight Loss

Being on a weight loss journey can feel overwhelming, but little changes go a long way. In addition to following the above meal template, prioritizing nutrient-packed foods can help you feel satiated while dropping weight sustainably.

One pro tip? Add more veggies and fiber-rich foods to your routine. "Always start your dinner and lunch with a large mixed green salad [and] light on the dressing of your choice," Gans says. "Salads are packed with fiber and help to fill you up."

If you love dessert and snacking throughout the day, try a cup of berries or a piece of fruit, like oranges and apples. Over time, this can help satisfy your sweet tooth while encouraging less-processed foods—which is key for losing weight in a healthy way.

Emily Shiffer has worked as a writer for over 10 years, covering everything from health and wellness to entertainment and celebrities. She previously was on staff at SUCCESS , Men's Health , and Prevention magazines. Her freelance writing has been featured in Women's Health , Runner's World , PEOPLE , and more. Emily is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she majored in magazine journalism at the Medill School of Journalism and minored in musicology. Currently residing in Charleston, South Carolina, Emily enjoys instructing barre, surfing, and long walks on the beach with her miniature Dachshund, Gertrude.

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06: What Happens After You Get Off Ozempic: Challenges & Natural Alternatives

• Mar 18 2024
• Length: 7 mins

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** Click Here to join the 21 Day Quick Start and jump start your weight loss journey! **

In this enlightening episode of Women, Weight Loss, and Semaglutide, host Marcelle Pick, an OB/GYN and pediatric nurse practitioner, embarks on a comprehensive exploration of the latest craze in weight loss drugs, focusing on the significant drawbacks that have emerged. Marcelle delves deep into the real issues faced by millions of Americans who are currently using or considering medications like Ozempic, Wegovy, and their alternatives. With an alarming trend of weight regain plus extra pounds post-medication cessation, Marcelle highlights the urgent need for sustainable, healthy weight maintenance strategies.

Discover the shocking reality of "cheap Ozempic" alternatives gaining popularity on platforms like TikTok, posing severe health risks. Marcelle addresses the metabolic challenges and the illusion of a quick fix through these medications, revealing that 93% of the population is metabolically unhealthy, contributing to a cycle of weight loss and gain, diminished muscle mass, and unaddressed internal health issues.

This episode is not just a critique but offers hope and practical advice. Marcelle introduces natural alternatives, emphasizing the importance of dietary changes, the inclusion of bitter foods and fiber, and her innovative creation - homeopathic drops designed to reduce food cravings and support a healthy lifestyle transformation. Learn about the broader implications of GLP-1 medications, their effectiveness, limitations, and the critical need for a holistic approach to obesity and weight management.

Tune in for an eye-opening discussion that challenges the status quo of the weight loss industry and empowers listeners with knowledge and natural solutions for lasting health and wellness. Join Marcelle each week for more insights into achieving and maintaining optimal health beyond the scale.

What listeners say about 06: What Happens After You Get Off Ozempic: Challenges & Natural Alternatives

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The rise of Ozempic: how surprise discoveries and lizard venom led to a new class of weight-loss  drugs

ARC Future Fellow, School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland

Disclosure statement

Sebastian Furness receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Australian Research Council.

University of Queensland provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are taking drugs like Ozempic to lose weight. But what do we actually know about them? This month, The Conversation’s experts explore their rise, impact and potential consequences .

Every now and then, scientists develop treatments that end up being even more popular for another condition entirely. Think of Viagra, originally for high blood pressure , now used for erectile dysfunction. Or thalidomide, a dangerous morning sickness treatment that is now a valuable cancer treatment .

The blockbuster drug Ozempic was originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, a condition that results in too much glucose, or sugar, in the blood. This is because the body can’t effectively use the insulin it produces.

In the 1980s, medications to treat type 2 diabetes would often lead to weight gain, which could worsen the condition. Patients would end up needing insulin replacement therapy.

But the class of drugs Ozempic belongs to would change this and generate A$21 billion of sales in 2023 alone for its maker.

The start of the journey

In the 19th century, French physiologist Claude Barnard sought to explain why large amounts of glucose (the main sugar in your blood) can be taken orally, whereas if glucose is given intravenously, small amounts overload the body’s systems.

In 1922 Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered the hormone insulin, which controls glucose use. But this didn’t explain the difference between oral and intravenous glucose tolerance.

Read more: Explainer: what is diabetes?

In 1932, Belgian Jean La Barre identified there was a hormone in the gastrointestinal tract responsible for stimulating insulin secretion. La Barre named this “incrétine” (incretin), a blending of ingestion and secretin, and suggested it may be a diabetes treatment.

In the 1960s, researchers showed the incretin effect was responsible for about two-thirds of people’s insulin response. New and sensitive ways to measure blood hormone levels then allowed researchers to show a hormone called GIP (glucose‐dependent insulinotropic polypeptide) was partly responsible for the incretin effect.

This meant there must be another hormone, whose discovery had to wait until the age of cloning in the 1980s. Cloning the GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide 1) gene, biochemist Svetlana Mojsov demonstrated it stimulated pancreatic insulin secretion at 1/100th of the concentration needed for GIP. So GLP-1 was identified as the other incretin responsible for people’s insulin response.

The glucose-lowering effects of GIP and GLP-1 excited scientists, but they couldn’t be used as medicines because they metabolised too quickly in the body.

Enter a poisonous lizard

In the 1980s John Pisano, a biochemist with a penchant for venoms, and a young gastroenterologist Jean-Pierre Raufman were working with poisonous lizard venom from the Gila monster, a slow-moving reptile native to the south of the United States and north of Mexico. By the 1990s, Pisano, Raufman and colleague John Eng identified a hormone-like molecule they called exendin-4. This stimulated insulin secretion via action at the same receptor as GLP-1.

Excitingly, exendin-4 was not quickly metabolised by the body, and so might be useful as a diabetic therapeutic.

Eng was convinced this would work, but pharmaceutical companies didn’t want to give people a hormone mimic from a venomous lizard. Even the medical centre where Eng was working wouldn’t help fill the patent.

Eventually he and Raufman convinced a small start-up called Amylin Pharmaceuticals. Amylin quickly showed synthetic exendin-4 rapidly normalised blood glucose in type 2 diabetic mice. Exendin-4 then proved safe and effective in humans, leading to the 2005 US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of exenatide, under the name Byetta.

It soon became evident that many taking Byetta were experiencing sustained weight-loss ( around 5% , but with some experiencing much more ), with the benefit of reversing their diabetic symptoms.

News of this weight-loss effect spread and within six months Byetta was being used off-label for weight-loss, foreshadowing the widespread use of Ozempic.

Read more: Wegovy was inspired by Gila monster venom – here are some other drugs with surprising origins

From a lizard toxin to Ozempic

Meanwhile, Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk had been developing a long-acting GLP-1-mimicking drug, as it had done for insulin in the past. Its research showed high levels of GLP-1 could correct diabetes in mice and they would lose weight.

During the 1990s, there was controversy over how GLP-1 led to weight loss, however it later became clear there were GLP-1 receptors in the brain that suppressed the desire to eat.

Novo Nordisk’s new GLP-1 drug had been designed to be long-acting. One consequence of this design was it was better at accessing brain GLP-1 receptors.

This new drug, liraglutide, approved as Victoza in 2010 in the United States, was better for weight-loss than Byetta ( typically 10% weight-loss), but still needed daily injections.

Daily injections aren’t popular, and Novo Nordisk’s team had been working on an even longer acting drug, semaglutide, approved as Ozempic in 2017 as a once-weekly injection. It had improved brain GLP-1 receptor targeting, further enhancing weight loss.

Due to its safety profile and weight-loss efficacy (of around 15% ), a higher dose of semaglutide gained FDA approval as Wegovy in 2021 as a stand-alone obesity treatment.

So how do these drugs actually work?

Your gastrointestinal tract contains specialised cells that measure the quantities and qualities of incoming food (as well as the absence of food) and communicates this with the rest of your body, including your brain.

You may remember Pavlov’s dogs, which were conditioned to expect a meal at the sound of a bell, kind of like what happens when you’re presented with a delicious plate of food. Not only does your brain make you salivate, it also starts the process of releasing digestive juices and even causes insulin levels to rise.

Ozempic and other GLP-1-mimicking drugs slow gastric emptying, which increases your sense of fullness.

Insulin secretion increases because there are nerves with GLP-1 receptors close to the wall of your gastrointestinal tract. This sends messages to the unconscious part of your brain that interpret these and send messages back (via nerves) to your gastrointestinal tract and pancreas to secrete insulin.

What about the new drug, Mounjaro?

Remember the other incretin hormone, GIP? GIP also suppresses appetite and can stimulate insulin secretion, but not as well as GLP-1.

Unlike GLP-1, GIP increases the secretion of another hormone, glucagon. Glucagon promotes energy use but also increases blood glucose during periods of fasting. Many felt the actions of glucagon needed to be blocked for effective anti-diabetic and weight-loss medications. But this doesn’t seem to be the case.

German physician and scientist Matthias Tschöp and American chemist Richard DiMarchi, who had met at Eli Lilly, were working on synthetic versions of glucagon to treat sudden drops in blood glucose when they unexpectedly found long-term dosing caused weight-loss in obese mice. Since GLP-1 and GIP are closely related, they thought it might be possible to target both receptors with a single drug.

In 2013, they showed a dual-acting drug was effective in obese mice. This led to the development of tirzepatide (Mounjaro and Zepbound, which is a slightly higher dose). Compared with GLP-1 drugs, it also stimulated metabolism, particularly fat use.

Read more: Mounjaro: type 2 diabetes drug more effective than Ozempic to launch in the UK — here’s what you need to know

Clinical trials of Zepbound showed it to be more effective than Ozempic for weight-loss ( typically 18% of body weight). Mounjaro was approved for type 2 diabetes in 2022 and Zepbound was approved for obesity in 2023 .

GIP and GLP-1 are similar to glucagon so Tschöp and DiMarchi set out to develop a drug targeting all three. In 2014 they showed that a triple-targeting drug, which would become retatrutide, was superior in obese mice. Now in mid-stage clinical trials , Eli Lilly’s drug retatrutide (once-weekly injection) results in a weight loss of around 24% in obese adults.

Why can’t you take them in a pill?

These current drugs are big molecules (peptides) and for this reason must be injected as they’re not absorbed effectively in the gut.

In 2019, Novo Nordisk managed to reformulate semaglutide so some would make it through the stomach intact and enough got absorbed (about 1%) to be clinically effective. It repackaged this as Rybelsus.

But although enough of the drug gets into circulation to assist with type 2 diabetes, it requires 100 times the dose for weight-loss.

Both Pfizer and Eli Lilly have small-molecule drugs targeting the GLP-1 receptor. These are designed to be taken orally, are formulated for once-a-day, and would be less expensive than Ozempic or Mounjaro.

Pfizer’s drug, Danuglipron, has had mixed success in clinical trials. One formulation has been discontinued because of high clinical-trial drop-out rates (due to gastrointestinal side-effects such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and pain). But both formulations do control type 2 diabetes and lead to about 10% weight-loss .

Eli Lilly’s trials of Orforglipron have shown promising weight-loss for obese participants of about 10% .

Plenty of weight-loss drugs have failed, too

Anti-obesity drugs with other targets – such as those sold under the brand names Qsymia , Contrave , Reductil and Accomplia – resulted in weight loss (typically less than 10%) but were accompanied by side effects such as increased heart rate, heart disease and psychological safety concerns such as anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

This resulted in market withdrawals and scared participants away from clinical trials.

Ozempic’s safety profile and effectiveness has reversed this, though there are a number of potential side effects (mainly gastric upsets) and people who stop taking Ozempic typically have big weight rebounds. Clinical trial recruitment is becoming easier and many pharmaceutical companies are playing catch up.

Read more: Ozempic is in the spotlight but it's just the latest in a long and strange history of weight-loss drugs

Read the other articles in The Conversation’s Ozempic series here.

• Medical research
• Weight loss
• Type 2 diabetes
• Semaglutide
• Weight loss drugs
• tirzepatide

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Israel’s Deadly Airstrike on the World Central Kitchen

The story behind the pioneering aid group and how it mistakenly came under attack..

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

The Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers delivering food in Gaza has touched off outrage and condemnations from across the world. Today, Kim Severson on the pioneering relief crew at the center of the story, and Adam Rasgon on what we’re learning about the deadly attack on the group’s workers. It’s Thursday, April 4.

Kim, can you tell us about the World Central Kitchen?

World Central Kitchen started as a little idea in Chef José Andrés’ head. He was in Haiti with some other folks, trying to do earthquake relief in 2010. And his idea at that point was to teach Haitians to cook and to use solar stoves and ways for people to feed themselves, because the infrastructure was gone.

And he was cooking with some Haitians in one of the camps, and they were showing him how to cook beans the Haitian way. You sort of smash them and make them a little creamy. And it occurred to him that there was something so comforting for those folks to eat food that was from their culture that tasted good to them. You know, if you’re having a really hard time, what makes you feel good is comfort food, right? And warm comfort food.

So that moment in the camp really was the seed of this idea. It planted this notion in José Andrés’ mind, and that notion eventually became World Central Kitchen.

And for those who don’t know, Kim, who exactly is Chef José Andrés?

José Andrés is a Spanish chef who cooked under some of the Spanish molecular gastronomy greats, came to America, really made his bones in Washington, DC, with some avant-garde food, but also started to expand and cook tapas, cook Mexican food. He’s got about 40 restaurants now.

Yeah. And he’s got a great Spanish restaurant in New York. He’s got restaurants in DC, restaurants in Miami.

Come with me to the kitchen. Don’t be shy.

He’s also become a big TV personality.

Chef, are you going to put the lobster in the pot with the potatoes?

We’re going to leave the potatoes in.

Leave the potatoes in!

He’s one of the most charismatic people I’ve ever been around in the food world.

He’s very much the touchstone of what people want their celebrity chefs to be.

So how does he go from being all those things you just described, to being on the ground, making local comfort food for Haitians? And how does this all go from an idea that that would be a good idea, to this much bigger, full-fledged humanitarian organization?

So he started to realize that giving people food in disaster zones was a thing that was really powerful. He helped feed people after Hurricane Sandy, and he realized that he could get local chefs who all wanted to help and somehow harness that power. But the idea really became set when he went to Houston in 2017 to help after Hurricane Harvey.

And that’s when he saw that getting local chefs to tap into their resources, borrowing kitchens, using ingredients that chefs might have had on hand or are spoiling in the fridge because the power is out and all these restaurants needed something to do with all this food before it rotted — harnessing all that and putting it together and giving people well-cooked, delicious — at least as delicious as it can be in a disaster zone — that’s when World Central Kitchen as we know it today sort of emerged as a fully formed concept.

The first pictures now coming in from Puerto Rico after taking a direct hit — Hurricane Maria slamming into the island. And as you heard, one official saying the island is destroyed.

Shortly after that, he flew to Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria had pretty much left the entire island without water and in darkness.

He flew in on one of the first commercial jets that went back in. He got a couple of his chef buddies whose kitchens were closed, and they just decided to start cooking. They were basically just serving pots of stew, chicken stew, in front of the restaurants.

The lines got longer. And of course, chefs are a really specific kind of creature. They really like to help their community. They’re really about feeding people.

So all the people who were chefs or cooks on the ground in Puerto Rico who could wanted to help. And you had all these chefs in the States who wanted to fly down and help if they could, too. So you had this constant flow of chefs coming in and out. That’s when I went down and followed him around for about a week.

And what did you see?

Well, one of the most striking things was his ability to get food to remote places in ways the Salvation Army couldn’t and other government agencies that were on the ground couldn’t. You know, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, doesn’t deliver food. It contracts with people to deliver food.

So you have all these steps of bureaucracy you have to go through to get those contracts. And then, FEMA says you have to have a bottle of water and this and that in those boxes. There’s a lot of structure to be able to meet the rules and regulations of FEMA.

So José doesn’t really care about rules and regulations very much. So he just got his troops together and figured out where people needed food. He had this big paper map he’d carry around and lay out. And he had a Sharpie, and he’d circle villages where he’d heard people needed food or where a bridge was out.

And then he would dispatch people to get the food there. Now, how are you going to do that? He was staying in a hotel where some National Guard and military police were staying to go patrol areas to make sure they were safe. He would tuck his big aluminum pans of food into the back of those guys’ cars, and say, Could you stop and drop these off at this church?

During that time in Puerto Rico, he funded a lot of it off of his own credit cards or with cash. And then he’s on the phone with people like the president of Goya or his golf buddies who are well-connected, saying, hey, we need some money. Can you send some money for this? Can you send some money for that?

So he just developed this network, almost overnight. I mean, he is very much a general in the field. He wears this Orvis fishing vest, has cigars in one pocket, money in the other. And he just sets out to feed people.

And there were deliveries that were as simple as he and a couple of folks taking plastic bags with food and wading through a flooded parking lot to an apartment building where an older person had been stuck for a few days and couldn’t get out, to driving up to a community that had been cut off. There was a church that was trying to distribute food.

We drive through this little mountain road and get to this church. We start unloading the food, and the congregation is inside the church. José comes in, and the pastor thanks him so much. And the 20 people or so who are there gather around José, and they begin praying.

And he puts his head down. He’s a Catholic. He’s a man who prays. He puts his head down. He’s in the middle of these folks, and he starts to pray with them. And then, pulls out his map, circles another spot, and the group is off to the next place.

And when Russia invades Ukraine, he immediately decided it was time for World Central Kitchen to step into a war zone. You know, so many people needed to eat. So many Ukrainians were crossing the border into Poland.

There are refugees in several countries surrounding Ukraine. So a lot of the work that they did was feeding the refugees. They set up big operations around train stations, places where refugees were coming, and then they were able to get into cities.

One of their operations did get hit with some armaments early on. Nobody was hurt badly. But I think that was the first time that they realized this was an actually more dangerous situation than perhaps going in after there’s been an earthquake.

But the other thing that really made a difference here is, José Andrés and World Central Kitchen would broadcast on social media, live from the kitchens. In the beginning, he’d be holding up his phone and saying, we put out 3 million meals for the people of Puerto Rico, chefs for Puerto Rico. It was very infectious.

And now, one of the standard operating procedures for people who are in the World Central Kitchens is to hold up the phone like that — you can see the kitchen, busy in the back — and talk about how many meals they’ve served. They have these kind of wild meal counts, which one presumes are pretty accurate. But they’re like, we served 320,000 meals this morning to the people of Lviv.

I mean, that scale seems important to note. This is not the kind of work that feeds a few people and a few towns. When you’re talking about 300,000 meals in a morning, you’re talking about something that begins, it would seem, to rival the scope and the reach of the groups that we tend to think of as the most important in the disaster-relief world.

Absolutely. And the meals — there are lots and lots and lots of meals. But also, World Central Kitchen hires local cooks. They’ll hire food truck operators, who obviously have no work, and pay them to go out and deliver the meals. They’ll pay local cooks to come in and cook. That’s what they do with a lot of their donations, which is very different than other aid organizations. And this then helps the local economy. He’s trying to buy as much local food as he can. That keeps the economy going in the time of a disaster. So that’s a piece of his operation that is a little different than traditional aid operations.

So walk us up to October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel. What does Chef José Andrés and the World Kitchen do?

Well, he had had such impact in Ukraine. And I think the organization itself thought that they had the infrastructure to now take food into another war zone. Gaza, of course, was nothing like Ukraine. But World Central Kitchen shows up. They’re nimble. They start to connect with local chefs.

Right now, they have about 60 kitchens in the areas around Gaza, and they’ve hired about 400 Palestinians to help do that. But getting the food into Gaza became the difficulty.

How do you actually get the food into the Gaza Strip? Large amounts of food that require trucks? You’ve got to realize, getting food into Gaza right now requires going through Israeli checkpoints.

And that slows the operation down. You might get eight trucks a day in, and that is such a small amount of food. And this has been incredibly difficult for any aid operations.

So World Central Kitchen, playing on the experience that they had in a war zone and working with government entities and trying to coordinate permissions — they took that experience from Ukraine and were trying to apply it in the Gaza Strip. Now, they had worked for a long time with Israeli officials. They wanted to make sure that they could get their food in.

And they decided that the best way to do it would be to take food off of ships, get it in a warehouse, and then get that food into Gaza. It took a long time to pull those permissions through, but they were able to get the permissions they needed and set this system up, so they could move the food fairly quickly into North Gaza.

And once they get those permissions, how big a player do they become in Gaza?

World Central Kitchen became a kind of a fulcrum point for getting food aid in to Gaza in a way that a larger and more established humanitarian aid operations couldn’t, in part because they were small and nimble in their way. So the amount of food they were moving maybe wasn’t as large as some of the more established humanitarian aid organizations, but they had so much goodwill. They had so much logistical knowledge.

They were working with local Palestinians who knew the food systems and who understood how to get things in and out. So they were able to find a way to use a humanitarian corridor to have permissions from the Israeli government, to be able to move this food back and forth. And that’s always been the secret to World Central Kitchen — is incredibly nimble. So —

Just like in Puerto Rico, they seemed to win over just about everybody and do the seemingly impossible.

Right. And World Central Kitchen says they delivered 43 million meals to Gazans since the start of the war. And I don’t think there was any other group that could have pulled this off.

Hey, this is Zomi and Chef Olivier. We’re at the Deir al-Balah kitchen. And we’ve got the mise en place. Tell us a little bit about it, Chef.

And then, this caravan, this fairly efficient caravan of armored vehicles, labeled with World Central Kitchen logo on the roof, on the sides — the idea was they head on — this humanitarian quarter, they head on this road. The seven people who went all in vests — three of whom are security people from Great Britain — you have another World Central Kitchen employee who has handled operations in Asia, in Central America. She’s quite a veteran of the World Central Kitchen operation.

And you have a young man who someone told me was like the Michael Jordan of humanitarian aid, who hooked up with World Central Kitchen in Poland. He was a hospitality student and had just become an indispensable make-it-happen guy. And you have a Palestinian guy who’s 25, a driver.

So this is the team. They have all the clearances. They have the well-marked vehicles. It seemed like a very simple, surgical kind of operation. And of course, now, as we know, it was anything but that.

After the break, my colleague Adam Rasgon on what happened to the World Central Kitchen workers in that caravan. We’ll be right back.

So Adam, what ends up happening to this convoy that our colleague Kim Severson just described from World Central Kitchen?

So what we know is that members of the World Central Kitchen had been at a warehouse in Deir al-Balah in the Central Gaza Strip. They had just unloaded about 100 tons of food aid that had been brought via a maritime route to the coast of the Gaza Strip. When they departed the warehouse, they were in three cars.

Two of the cars were armored cars, and one was a soft-skinned car, according to the organization. When the cars reached the coastal road, known as Al Rashid Street, they started to make their way south.

And what do we know about how much the World Central Kitchen would have told the Israeli military about their plans to be on this road?

Yeah. So the World Central Kitchen said that its movements were coordinated. And in military speak or in technical speak, people often refer to this as deconfliction. So basically, this process is something that not only the World Central Kitchen but the UN, telecommunications companies going out to repair damaged telecommunications infrastructure, others would use, where they basically provide the Israeli military with information about the people who are traveling — their ID numbers, their names, the license plate numbers of the cars they’ll be traveling in.

They’ll sort of explain where their destination is. And the general process is that the Israelis will then come back to them and say, you’re approved to travel from this time, and you can take this specific route.

And do we know if that happened? If the IDF said, you’re approved, use this route on this night?

So we heard from the World Central Kitchen that they did receive this approval. And the military hasn’t come out and said that it wasn’t approved. So I think it’s fair to assume that their movements were coordinated and de-conflicted.

OK. So what happens as this seemingly pre-approved and coordinated convoy trip is making this leg of the journey?

They started to make their way south towards Rafah. And the three cars suddenly came under fire. The Israeli army unleashes powerful and devastating strikes on the three cars in the convoy, most likely from a drone. The strikes rip through the cars, killing everyone inside.

Shortly thereafter, ambulances from the Palestine Red Crescent are dispatched to the location. They retrieve the dead bodies.

They bring those bodies to a hospital. And at the hospital, the bodies are laid out, and journalists start to report to the world that indeed, five members of the World Central Kitchen staff have been killed. And the Palestine Red Crescent teams were continuing to search for other bodies and eventually brought back two more bodies to the hospital for a total of seven people killed in these airstrikes.

And when the sun comes up, what does it end up looking like — the scene of these struck trucks from this convoy?

So early in the morning when the sun comes up, a number of Palestinian journalists headed out to the coastal road and started taking pictures and videos. And I received a series of videos from one of the reporters that I was in touch with, essentially showing three cars, all heavily damaged. One had a World Central Kitchen logo on top of it, with a gaping hole in the middle of the roof.

A second car was completely charred. You could barely recognize the structure of the car. The inside of it had been completely charred, and the front smashed.

And do we know if the strike on this convoy was the only strike happening in this area? In other words, is it possible that this convoy was caught in some kind of a crossfire or in the middle of a firefight, or does it appear that this was quite narrow, and was the Israeli army targeting these specific vehicles, whether or not they realized who was in it?

We don’t have any other indication that there was another strike on that road around that time.

What that suggests, of course, is that this convoy was targeted. Now, whether Israeli officials knew who was in it, whether they were aid workers, seems like a yet-unresolved question. But it does feel very clear that the trucks in this convoy were deliberately struck.

Yes. I do think the trucks in this convoy were deliberately struck.

What is the reaction to these airstrikes on this convoy and to the death of these aid workers?

Well, one of the first reactions is from the World Central kitchen’s founder, José Andrés.

Chef José Andrés, who founded World Central Kitchen, calling them angels.

He said he was heartbroken and grieving.

And adding the Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing.

And then, he accused Israel of using food as a weapon.

What I know is that we were targeted deliberately, nonstop, until everybody was dead in this convoy.

And he just seemed devastated and quite angry.

And so what is the reaction from not just World Central Kitchen, but from the rest of the world to this airstrike?

There’s, frankly, fury and outrage.

The White House says it is outraged by an Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers in Gaza, including one American.

President Biden, who has been becoming increasingly critical of Israel’s approach to this war — he came out and said that he was outraged and heartbroken.

Certainly sharper in tone than we have heard in the past. He says Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians. Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen. Israel also has not —

And we’re seeing similar outrage from foreign governments. The British Foreign Secretary David Cameron —

The dreadful events of the last two days are a moment when we should mourn the loss of these brave humanitarian workers.

— said that the airstrikes were completely unacceptable. And he called on Israel to explain how this happened and to make changes to ensure that aid workers could be safe.

So amid all this, what does Israel have to say about the attack — about how it happened, about why it happened?

The response from Israel this time was much different, compared to other controversial airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. Often, when we’re reporting on these issues, we’ll hear from the army that they’re investigating a given incident. It will take days, if not weeks, to receive updates on where that investigation stands.

There are instances where Israel does take responsibility for harming civilians, but it’s often rare. This time, the Prime Minister —

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

— Benjamin Netanyahu comes out with a video message —

— saying that Israel had unintentionally harmed innocent civilians. And that was the first indication or public indication that Israel was going to take responsibility for what had happened.

The IDF works together closely with the World Central Kitchen and greatly appreciates the important work that they do.

We later heard from the military’s chief of staff. Herzi Halevi issued a video statement in English.

I want to be very clear the strike was not carried out with the intention of harming aid workers. It was a mistake that followed a misidentification.

And he said this mistake had come after a misidentification. He said it was in the middle of a war, in a very complex condition. But —

This incident was a grave mistake. We are sorry for the unintentional harm to the members of WCK.

He was clear that this shouldn’t have happened.

I want to talk about that statement, because it seems to suggest — that word, “misidentification”— that the Israeli army believed that somebody else was in this convoy, that it wasn’t a bunch of aid workers.

That’s possible, although it’s extremely vague and cryptic language that genuinely is difficult to understand. And it’s a question that us in the Jerusalem Bureau have been asking ourselves.

I’m curious if the Israeli government has said anything in all of its statements so far about whether it noticed these markings on these three cars in the convoy. Because that, I think, for so many people, stands out as making misidentification hard to understand. It seems like perhaps a random pickup truck could be misidentified as perhaps a vehicle being used by a Hamas militant. But a group of World Central Kitchen trucks with their name all over it, driving down a known aid corridor — that becomes harder to understand as misidentification.

Yeah, it’s an important question. And at this moment, we don’t know exactly what the Israeli reconnaissance drones could see, and whether or not they were able to see, in the darkness of the night, the markings of the World Central Kitchen on the cars. But what is clear is that when the cars were found in the morning, right there was the big emblazoned logo of the World Central Kitchen.

Mm-hmm. I’m curious how you think about the speed with which Israel came out and said it was in the wrong here. Because as you said, that’s not how Israel typically reacts to many of these situations. And that makes me think that it might have something to do with the nature of the aid group that was the target of these airstrikes — the World Central Kitchen — and its story.

I think it does have to do with this particular group. This is a group that’s led by a celebrity chef, very high-profile, who is gone around the world to conflict zones, disaster areas, to provide food aid. And I also think it has to do with the people who were killed, most of who were Western foreign aid workers. Frankly, I don’t think we would be having this conversation if a group of Palestinian aid workers had been killed.

Nor, perhaps, would we be having the reaction that we have had so far from the Israeli government.

I would agree with that.

Adam, at the end of the day, what is going to be the fallout from all of this for the people of Gaza? How do we think that this attack on World Central Kitchen is going to impact how food, medicine, aid is distributed there?

So the World Central Kitchen has said that it’s suspending its operations across Gaza. Because it essentially seems that they don’t feel they can safely operate there right now. And several ships that carried aid for the organization, which were sort of just on the coast — those ships ended up turning back to Cyprus, carrying more than 200 tons of aid.

So aid that was supposed to reach the people of Gaza is now leaving Gaza because of this attack.

Yes. And it’s also had a chilling effect. Another aid group, named INARA, has also suspended its operations in Gaza. And it seems that there is concern among humanitarians that other aid groups could follow.

So in a place where people are already suffering from severe hunger, poor sanitation, the spread of dangerous disease, this is only going to make the humanitarian situation, which is already dire, even worse.

Well, Adam, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Thanks so much for having me.

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. The magnitude-7.4 earthquake that struck Taiwan on Wednesday has killed nine people, injured more than 1,000, and touched off several landslides. It was Taiwan’s strongest quake in the past 25 years. But in a blessing for the island’s biggest cities, its epicenter was off the island’s east coast, relatively far from population centers like Taipei.

And the first patient to receive a kidney transplant from a genetically modified pig has fared so well that he was discharged from a Massachusetts hospital on Wednesday just two weeks after surgery. Two previous transplants from genetically modified pigs both failed. Doctors say the success of the latest surgery represents a major moment in medicine that, if replicated, could usher in a new era of organ transplantation.

Today’s episode was produced by Lynsea Garrison, Olivia Natt, and Carlos Prieto, with help from Asthaa Chaturvedi. It was edited by Marc Georges, with help from Paige Cowett, contains original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

• April 5, 2024   •   29:11 An Engineering Experiment to Cool the Earth
• April 4, 2024   •   32:37 Israel’s Deadly Airstrike on the World Central Kitchen
• April 3, 2024   •   27:42 The Accidental Tax Cutter in Chief
• April 2, 2024   •   29:32 Kids Are Missing School at an Alarming Rate
• April 1, 2024   •   36:14 Ronna McDaniel, TV News and the Trump Problem
• March 29, 2024   •   48:42 Hamas Took Her, and Still Has Her Husband
• March 28, 2024   •   33:40 The Newest Tech Start-Up Billionaire? Donald Trump.
• March 27, 2024   •   28:06 Democrats’ Plan to Save the Republican House Speaker
• March 26, 2024   •   29:13 The United States vs. the iPhone
• March 25, 2024   •   25:59 A Terrorist Attack in Russia
• March 24, 2024   •   21:39 The Sunday Read: ‘My Goldendoodle Spent a Week at Some Luxury Dog ‘Hotels.’ I Tagged Along.’
• March 22, 2024   •   35:30 Chuck Schumer on His Campaign to Oust Israel’s Leader

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Kim Severson and Adam Rasgon

Produced by Lynsea Garrison ,  Olivia Natt ,  Carlos Prieto and Asthaa Chaturvedi

Edited by Marc Georges and Paige Cowett

Original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

The Israeli airstrike that killed seven workers delivering food in Gaza has touched off global outrage and condemnation.

Kim Severson, who covers food culture for The Times, discusses the World Central Kitchen, the aid group at the center of the story; and Adam Rasgon, who reports from Israel, explains what we know about the tragedy so far.

On today’s episode

Kim Severson , a food correspondent for The New York Times.

Adam Rasgon , an Israel correspondent for The New York Times.

Background reading

The relief convoy was hit just after workers had delivered tons of food .

José Andrés, the Spanish chef who founded World Central Kitchen, and his corps of cooks have become leaders in disaster aid .

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The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

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Kim Severson is an Atlanta-based reporter who covers the nation’s food culture and contributes to NYT Cooking . More about Kim Severson

Adam Rasgon reports from Israel for The Times's Jerusalem bureau. More about Adam Rasgon

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