Many people today dedicate time and effort to losing weight, but the vast majority (almost 80%) fail to achieve their goals due to poor dietary and exercise practices. They either lose a lot of weight quickly but then regain it (even gaining more than they lost), or they simply fall by the wayside because it takes a huge effort to follow very rigid, strict, and monotonous diets without any culinary incentives.

What should be considered as a starting point when establishing a nutritional and supplementation approach focused on weight loss?

1. The caloric expenditure and energy intake of the person, as well as their micronutrient needs (vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, phospholipids, trace elements, amino acids)

There is little point in giving someone a standard diet (which is what most nutritionists do today) if we do not know what their particular and personal biochemical needs are.

Just as we all have a unique fingerprint, the same is true of our physiological and biochemical needs. If we don't understand them, it will be very difficult to provide the right substrates for a person's body to function properly.

If caloric intake is greater than energy expenditure, it will be more difficult to lose weight.

This doesn't mean following a carbohydrate-free diet, but rather maintaining a macronutrient balance that facilitates fat burning while maintaining muscle mass without harming the body.

Nowadays, almost all diets focused on weight loss are based on the elimination or drastic reduction of carbohydrates, and this is an easy solution that does not help achieve goals from a healthy and balanced perspective. In addition, it negatively impacts health; the person will regain the lost weight, even gaining a few extra pounds as a result of the rebound effect.

To summarize and make this point clear: "We must study the person's daily activity (calorie expenditure) and provide the necessary macro and micronutrients to achieve weight loss without requiring effort or sacrifice."

2. The goal is not to go on a diet forever, but to learn to manage your diet responsibly and intelligently.

It's of little use to go to a nutritionist to make you a diet if when you finish it you will return to your bad eating habits. The most effective thing is to help the person understand what is good for them and what is not, so that in the future they have sufficient tools to self-manage their diet and can eat natural, healthy and balanced foods while achieving their goals and maintaining a full state of physical and mental health.

3. The last meal of the day should be free of carbohydrates because the metabolism slows down and there is little caloric expenditure, which means excess glucose in the blood is transformed into fat, making weight loss difficult.

Has anyone ever stopped to think about why there are more and more obese people, diabetics, and cancer patients?

The common denominator is “excess glucose.”

I still don't understand how the WHO (World Health Organization) can say that these diseases are a global epidemic, yet I see dietitians and nutritionists happily recommending the food pyramid and carbohydrates for the last meal of the day.

The vast majority of people who have come to my office have achieved surprising results simply by reducing carbohydrates in their afternoon snacks and dinners, without having to resort to extraordinary measures such as protein-based or carbohydrate-free diets.

I still meet therapists who explain to me that you should eat carbohydrates at night to recover and replenish lost liver and muscle glycogen.

Do you want to evaluate and see how absurd this idea is?

Look at your abdomen and tell me if your abs are visible. It's the simplest and easiest way to check if you're overdoing your carbohydrate intake.

If you don't see a flat, defined stomach, it means that the excess glucose that the cells don't need to form ATP (energy) is being transformed into fat because glycogen is "ALWAYS" full, so the idea that we need to eat carbohydrates at night is absurd and devoid of any kind of logical thinking.

4. L-carnitine deficiency makes it difficult to burn fat, because it is an amine that intervenes in the transport of fatty acids within the mitochondria so that they can be oxidized and converted into energy, which will make it more difficult for the person to lose weight.

We have two ways to obtain Carnitine, one is through foods of animal origin (plant-based foods contain negligible amounts) and the other is endogenously, through the amino acids methionine and lysine, so vegans or strict vegetarians are the most likely to have a deficiency in this vital amine and should take this into account when planning a specific supplementation.

I recommend that anyone trying to lose weight take this amino acid daily, preferably on an empty stomach, to increase the activity of an enzyme called Carnitine Acyl Transferase (CAT1) and help burn stored fat in the form of triglycerides more efficiently.

5. Specific sports or exercises that include both aerobic and anaerobic work should be performed daily.

It is vitally important to keep in mind that combining different training techniques will be the basis for achieving more satisfactory results.

Often, when a person loses weight, they don't achieve a good tone, and this is because they have only performed aerobic exercises that barely worked their muscles, negatively impacting their established goals.

Taking these aspects into account, I recommend doing exercises to strengthen the musculoskeletal system (weights) and help us build muscle combined with aerobic exercises (running, treadmill, cycling, swimming, directed activities or low or medium intensity martial arts, etc.) and in this way we can lose weight in a way that allows us to achieve a slim and stylized body (it is of little use to lose many kilos if we remain out of shape by not achieving optimal muscle quality).

It's a fact that when we gain more muscle we burn more fat, because muscle tissue is more metabolically active and requires more calories to maintain itself. Therefore, we must always keep in mind muscle and cardio (aerobic) work in any strategy focused on weight loss.