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Diet & Nutrition, Health

How I Lose Weight, Get to 9% Body Fat and Build Muscles with Vegan Diet

Written by Florian Wüest
Qualified and experienced vegan fitness trainer and online coach.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could finally lose weight or build muscle in a sustainable way? If this sounds far reaching to you, hear me out.

As a manager of a fitness center with over thousand members, hundreds of coaching hours delivered and with a well-built physique myself – I feel qualified to write about such topic.

I’ve came up with a unique approach to build muscle and lose weight in a sustainable way — a vegan diet for weight loss.

How I lost weight fast with the 50-Fiber Formula

Losing fat never came easy to me. On my quest to get a sixpack, I’ve tried out countless of methods. But there are two diets that were the most remarkable on my journeys:

Before I used the 50-Fiber Formula

I remember doing a diet with no previous experience nor knowledge about weight loss. It was my first dieting attempt, a no-carb diet (carbohydrates were less than 10grams!).

During the first weeks of the diet, I had absolutely no energy. I remember training in the gym and feeling gassed-out after the warm-up. People asked me if I was being sick.

Although I was losing weight – which turned out to be mostly water – I felt horrible. Dieting was not fun, exercising was not fun and I had to search for a reason to wake up in the morning. I stopped the diet after 2 weeks.

Yet, what I liked about this diet, was the focus on one metric — keeping my carbohydrates under 10 grams a day and tracking that rigorously made it (next to the side effects talked previously) rewarding to follow a diet.

Some time later, I tried another diet and it turned out to be more successful.

My goal was to get to a one-digit body fat percentage. While working in the fitness industry for about a year at that time and training for more than 3 years, I got the necessary knowledge to at least do a successful diet.

This time I wanted to be completely sure and learn from my mistakes: I tracked my entire calorie intake, every single thing that I ate and I planned at least 2 months to fully do the diet.

I indeed reached a one-digit body fat percentage, yet the effort I put into this diet was not worth the results. I dealt with a lot of cravings and one time ate a huge cheat meal of nearly 2,000 calories where I nearly puked afterwards.

How I created the 50-Fiber Formula

I concluded: This worked but was not the best approach. Yet I liked that I was seeing results in the gym. People noticed and told me that I was a ‘shredded beast’.

The experience of those 2 diets, plus me working with hundreds of clients led me to conclude that there had to be a different way. I realized that the combination of those two diet attempts would be the most sustainable and effective approach to weight loss.

The rewarding and simple method of the first diet focusing on one metric and the tangible results of the second diet inspired me to create a system that would make weight loss as simple and as effective as possible. Born was the 50-Fiber Formula.

Perks of the 50-Fiber Formula

With the 50-Fiber Formula diet, you will experience plenty of benefits that no other diets can give:

A simpler focus

You simply focus on eating 50 grams of high-quality fiber every single day. I realized that it was much easier to lose weight when you focus on what you can eat instead of what you can’t. This creates a mindset of abundance instead of scarcity. This makes dieting sustainable.

A healthier diet

Not only that, but this diet can actually be healthy. The two components that mostly differentiate healthy foods and unhealthy ones, are: Micronutrients (especially antioxidants) and Fiber.

Micronutrients are harder to quantify (as they usually work synergistically) and are more often than not synthetically added to a product. This makes it especially hard to track.

Your fiber intake, on the other hand, is easier to track and nonetheless very important in weight loss and a healthy diet.[1] The average American eats about 15g of fiber a day.[2] This is only about the half of the recommended intake.[3]

Fiber is the component in a food that plays a key role in satiety and is thought to play a factor in weight regulation.[4]

Help you save money

Eating fiber is so important that we could save 12.7+ billion dollars a year by reducing the medical costs of treating constipation alone.[5] So following the 50-Fiber Formula daily can therefore also save you money.

Get you to eat more healthy foods

Fiber has been shown to change your microbiome.[6] Your microbiome heavily influences your cravings.

The microbiome, meaning the good or bad bacteria in your body, lives off fiber. For a long time, people thought fiber was a waste product of our nutrition but just recently we realized that it serves as the building block for our helpful gut bacteria.

The more fiber you eat, the more healthy foods you will crave. Eating more fiber will leave you in a positive spiral to a healthier and fitter you. Who thought that getting fit can be so easy as to eat 50 grams of fiber every single day?

3 Immutable rules to consider in the diet

To make your attempt to lose weight as effective and easy as possible, we also have to know what not to do. Or as Steve Jobs said:

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.  — Steve Jobs

#1 Your meals shall be solid

Don’t eat blended meals unless you have to. This means avoid smoothies or meal replacement shakes.

A key aspect of how fiber works its wonder is by increasing your chewing time. Chewing is correlated with your perceived satiety.

Fun fact: Enforced chewing can decrease the enjoyment of your meal![7]

#2 No soft drinks

This is similar to rule #1. Calories should always come in solid form.

You can drink 5 apple juices and feel little to no satiety. But you cannot eat 10 apples (same caloric intake) and feel absolutely full.

Focusing on wholesome foods will leave you satiated and makes your diet sustainable.

#3 Keep it unprocessed

Your dietary fiber intake should come from natural and unprocessed sources.

Eating fiber-fortified foods is cheating, swallowing fiber pills too. The beneficial effects of fiber are mainly shown in the intake of natural foods.[8] Do yourself and your diet success a favor and focus on unprocessed foods.

50-Fiber Formula — The step-by-step guide

You will learn in this phase how you can implement the 50-Fiber Formula in a step-by-step process. All the steps are as simple as possible. Remember: If you need help, hire a professional coach.

1. Search for foods that are high in fiber

The first step that you can do to a slimmer waistline and a healthier lifestyle is to simply 1. Open a new tab. 2. Go on Google and 3. Search for foods that are high in fiber.

These foods should follow the 5 to 1 fiber rule. For every 5 grams of carbohydrates they should contain 1 gram of fiber.

Add the ones to your diet that you like the most and buy them in bulk. If you don’t like any of these foods, try each of them out and see which resonates with you the most. But also know that your taste buds can change.

2. Analyze your current fiber intake

The RDA for fiber is 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day. Studies from the fossils of feces of our hunter and gatherer ancestors show that they have sometimes consumed more than 100 grams of fiber in a single day.[9]

In this step, which is still preparation, you write down what you eat in a single day and then search how much fiber you approximately eat during that period. This way you know how long your journey will be in the first place.

3. Increase your fiber intake by 5g every second day

A key aspect in a successful diet is sustainability. The only way your diet can be sustainable is by focusing on slow, long-lasting change.

Instead of eating 50 grams of fiber starting from today, focus on making a habit of eating healthy. Starting slowly makes your body able to adapt to the changed, healthier nutrition.

4. Get to 50 grams of fiber a day

The ultimate goal of the 50-Fiber Formula is to eat 50 grams of fiber every single day.

This makes sure that 1. you’re on the right path and 2. you get a small win every single day. Often people get caught up trying to lose a huge amount of fat. They see the destination but can’t grasp the journey. This formula allows you to simply focus on the next step in front of you.

The sustainable choice — vegan diet for weight loss

The 50-Fiber Formula allows you to lose weight in a sustainable way.

In comparison to other diet trends, it emphasizes subjective well-being, consistency and health – all important pillars regarding your diet success.

Make sure you follow the 3 immutable rules to achieve your tangible success. Consume your meals in solid forms, avoid soft drinks and keep it unprocessed.

Don’t get caught up in the big picture. Focus on the next step ahead of you.

Featured photo credit: QualityGains.com via qualitygains.com

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