There are thousands of different diets out there. So what are the best nutrition tips for fat loss that actually work? Over the last 12 years as a nutrition coach in Toronto, here’s what I’ve found effective. This is for people who want to feel better, lose fat, and improve their health in terms of common markers like blood test scores and blood pressure. The truth is, good nutrition is really pretty simple.

*This post isn’t necessarily for high performance athletics or for others in unique circumstances. There’s always a level of individualisation needed to optimise your plan. Having said that, the best nutrition tips in this video are an incredible starting point for 95% + people out there.

The Best Nutrition Tips For Fat Loss: WHAT TO DO

• Eat lots of colourful vegetables at all (or most) meals. Ideally these should cover half your plate or more.
  
  

• Eat foods with protein as their dominant nutrient at all (or most) meals. This typically means eating a variety of meat or fish, although there are a handful of vegetarian friendly options too.
  
  

• Avoid sugar. Whether it’s from fruit juice or a Snickers bar (your body can’t tell the difference), alcohol, white carbs or other processed foods. Successfully avoiding sugar means you’ll have to read ingredient lists and nutrition info. [If you’re not sure exactly what to look for, I can quickly solve that problem once and for all here.]
  
  

• Chew your food thoroughly and eat slowly. This improves digestion (i.e. causes less bloating/gas and a greater chance to suck up all the nutrients from your food) and gives enough time for stomach to signal to your brain when you’re full. This signally process happens rather slowly, and that makes it easy to overeat without initially realising it.
  
  

• If we want to get into lifestyle, start with getting enough sleep. That means 8-hrs for most of us. To understand why this is so critical, read this.
  
  

Sure, some people respond faster, others slower. Others still get stuck on long plateaus that’re difficult to overcome. But with these tips, change will happen over time without you feeling low energy and hungry all the time. While I’ve seen many instances where calorie counting or tracking macronutrient targets (so called “if it fits my macros”) miss the mark, when these habits are followed consistently, I’ve never seen a failure to produce results.

The COMMON THEMES Of GOod Nutrition

What does all this boil down to? I don’t have anything catchy, but I guess something like: chomp on lots of vegetables, chew up some protein, and get rid of the junk that’s wrecking your body. Perhaps Michael Pollan put it more eloquently in his excellent book In Defence of Food: “Eat food [meaning unprocessed ‘real’ food], not too much, mostly plants.”

These basics are echoed by so many different diets plans. While they all have slightly different approaches and different on some finer points, the foundations have a lot in common: look at Tim Ferris’s book The 4-Hour Body, companies like Precision Nutrition, Charles Poliquin, and the list goes on.

I used to recommend the Paleo Diet to many clients. In fact, I still think it’s a terrific way to eat and although I favour other approaches more often, this is still one of many tools in my nutrition coaching tool box. After tracking results for years, people who followed this approach lost an average of 5-6% bodyfat over 3-months. They also reported feeling more energetic and many saw improvements with skin rashes, joint pain and other long-standing issues.

There’s no shortcut to effective eating.

Your best bet is to consistently follow some variation of the key points mentioned above. While other approaches, like counting calories or macros can work, I don’t think they work as well most of the time.

WHAT’S NEXT

Unfortunately most diets have three messages:

1. Eat this

2. Don’t eat that

3. Good luck
   
   

The trouble is that overhauling how you eat isn’t always easy. It means changing a greater number of well ingrained habits than you might realise. For example, you might need to:

• Re-imagine what a healthy plate looks like

• Change your grocery shopping routine

• Get used to new foods

• Get rid of some of your absolute to-go staples that you love/eat when you’re tired and rushed

That’s the reason why I don’t recommend something like the Paleo Diet very often anymore. Although I think it encapsulates a tremendously effective approach for most people, it’s also more restrictive than most people need. At the end of the day, all those rules make it more difficult to stay consistent long-term.  

If you simply aren’t super educated about eating and need a great starting point, try what I’ve talked about in this article. Take a few months and commit to trying something like the Paleo Diet (or one of the other diets listed above) and see what you think. You’re going to experience some exciting changes!

If, on the other hand, you’ve tried multiple diets before but never stayed consistent, hire a coach who can customise an approach and help you navigate this tricky balancing act.