5 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Losing Weight

I lost the same 10 kilos about four times before it finally stayed off. Each time I learned something, usually by doing the opposite first. So here's the list I wish someone had handed me at the start, from a guy who got most of this wrong before he got it right.

1. Going slow is the fast way

My first instinct was always to go extreme. Eat almost nothing, train every day, lose weight by Friday. It worked for about a week, then I'd crash and undo it all.

The people who keep the weight off move at a pace that feels almost too easy. A moderate deficit you can live with beats a crash diet you'll quit. I know that's not the answer anyone wants, but it's the one that worked once I finally listened.

2. Know your numbers before you start

For years I dieted on vibes. I had no idea how much I burned or how much I should eat, so I was either starving myself or eating too much without knowing which.

The day I worked out my actual maintenance calories, everything got clearer. Suddenly a deficit was just a number I could aim at instead of a guess. The TDEE Calculator gives you that number, and it's the first thing I'd tell my younger self to go and do.

3. The flat weeks are normal

This one nearly made me quit every single time. I'd lose for two weeks, then nothing, and I'd assume it was broken and give up.

The scale doesn't go down in a straight line. It drops, sits there to wind you up, then drops again. Once I expected the flat stretches instead of panicking at them, I stopped quitting during them. If you want to understand why it happens, I wrote about weight loss stalls too.

4. You don't have to give up the food you love

Every time I banned chocolate or bread or whatever, I'd hold out for a fortnight and then eat all of it in one night. Restriction always cost me more than it saved.

When I learned to fit the foods I actually like into my day, the whole thing stopped feeling like punishment. No single food made me gain weight. Eating too much, overall, did. That shift in thinking is half the battle.

5. The scale is not your progress

I let the morning number decide my entire mood for years. Up half a kilo from yesterday and I'd feel like a failure, even though it was just water and salt.

Now I trust the weekly average, my photos, and how my clothes fit. Those don't lie the way a single weigh-in does. Your body changes slower than your weight fluctuates, and the day I understood that, I stopped sabotaging myself over noise.

The mindset shift behind all five

If I'm honest, these five lessons are really one lesson wearing different clothes: stop treating weight loss like an event and start treating it like a way of living. Every mistake I made came from the event mindset, the crash, the deadline, the "I'll be strict until I hit the number." Here's roughly how my thinking flipped:

The left column is why I lost the same 10 kilos four times. The right column is why the fifth time stuck. Nothing on the right is exciting, and that's exactly the point.

The one that took me longest: it's not about willpower

For years I thought I was just weak. Everyone online seemed to have iron discipline and I clearly didn't. What I eventually realised is that the people succeeding weren't grinding through willpower every day, they'd built setups that didn't need much. Enough protein so they weren't starving. Easy default meals so there were no hard decisions when tired. Sleep so they weren't a mess by evening.

When I copied the setup instead of trying to copy the willpower, the "discipline" sort of appeared on its own. That reframe, it's the system not the strength, is probably the single most useful thing I learned.

The short version

Go slower than feels exciting. Know your numbers. Expect the flat weeks. Keep the foods you love. And don't let one weigh-in tell you who you are. I learned all five the hard way so that hopefully you don't have to. Start with your real maintenance number on the TDEE Calculator, and go from there.