Two Things to Do, at the Very Least, When You're Cutting

I had a meal with my mom today, and she said my younger brother announced a couple of days ago that he's going to start losing weight.

I said, what does a middle schooler need to lose weight for? My brother said he already weighs 90 kg, so it really is time to get it under control.

So I told him: if you really want to lose weight, don't overthink it. First, you need to do two things.

Whether you exercise or not, if you do these two things consistently and regularly, your weight will change the way you want it to.

First: stop drinking all drinks.

By drinks I mean anything with calories. The most common ones are juice, cola, milk tea, sports drinks and so on. Without exception, they're full of added sugar, and once that sugar gets into your body, it's absorbed very quickly.

They bring a huge load of calories but barely make you feel full. If you don't keep an eye on them, you can quietly drink several hundred kcal a day, and it doesn't make you eat any less at meals.

On top of that, the sugar from drinks builds up over time and can seriously hurt your health. It can lead to visceral fat buildup and possibly high blood sugar.

So during a cut, please stop drinking sugary drinks.

Swap all of them for water, black coffee, unsweetened tea and the like.

Second: make every main meal regular.

The point of regular meals is to control the total calories from your three meals. A lot of people eat snacks on top of their three meals, like cake, chips and nuts. These are also high in calories and not very filling, and they make you take in a lot of extra calories without noticing.

Regular meals also help keep your blood sugar and insulin steady. Blood sugar and insulin shift constantly as we eat and digest food. Eating too often or at irregular times makes those shifts too frequent or too extreme.

Of course, regular meals don't mean you can only eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. For some people, smaller, more frequent meals help control hunger better, and that's perfectly fine. What matters is that every meal is planned and nutritious, not a bag of calorie-bomb chips you grab on a whim.

So healthy snacks between healthy main meals still count as regular meals.

And even for people who aren't trying to lose weight, eating properly should be one of the most basic things we do in life.

So during a cut, please stop eating junk snacks.

Get every main meal in order. No matter how busy work gets or how badly life is going, remember to eat well and sleep well.