A fat loss expert recommends swapping strict diets for these five simple habits to see long-term results

Fat loss expert Ben Carpenter explains why sustainable, health-promoting habits trump temporary diets and shares his five favourites

Author, trainer and fat loss expert Ben Carpenter says focussing on eating nutritious foods can displace 'high-calorie ultra processed foods' in your diet (iStock)

“Diets don’t work” is a strong claim; one that might raise a few eyebrows. But the more I talk to author and fat loss expert Ben Carpenter, the more I understand where he’s coming from.

“I’m not arguing that diets don’t work while you’re on them,” he explains. “But people are not on them for a long period of time, so diets don’t work for the thing most people want i.e. managing weight and improving health in the long run.”

A systematic review published in the Obesity Reviews journal reports that “excess weight can be lost but is likely regained over time”.

To combat this, Carpenter recommends replacing restrictive diets with sustainable health-promoting behaviours – hence the name for his new book, Fat Loss Habits (£9, Amazon.co.uk). This approach is designed to deliver lasting benefits, rather than a stopgap drop in weight.

“People are embarking on temporary behaviours and hoping they will address long-term problems,” he says. “But if what you’re doing is healthy, you’re not supposed to stop. If you want to improve your health and manage your weight, it makes sense to pick things that you can do for the rest of your life.”

But what sort of things exactly? Rather than overhauling your life and diet, Carpenter suggests developing a few simple habits that can help you stay in shape for decades to come. You can find his top five below.

Exercise snacking

The more you move, the more energy you use, and this can contribute to a negative energy balance – AKA, a calorie deficit. This is the foundational principle behind weight loss, and simply means burning more calories than you consume.

“If I could get everyone who reads my book and follows me on social media just to do some aerobic exercise and some resistance training, I know I could significantly improve the health of the population, even if they did nothing else,” Carpenter says.

But there are a couple of common misconceptions you need to understand before you lace up your gym trainers.

One: the benefits of exercise extend far beyond boosting your fat loss efforts. Both building muscle and improving heart and lung health are linked to living longer, as well as lowering your risk of many chronic diseases.

Two: exercise doesn’t have to mean a 60-minute trip to the gym or lengthy run. This is why, if you’re looking to introduce more movement into your routine, Carpenter prescribes something called “exercise snacking”.

“You can improve your health with very small bursts of exercise. Doing an exercise for one to five minutes, two or three times per day, can help people who struggle for time,” he explains. “It’s like trying to get people to dip their toes into a metaphorical swimming pool of exercise, rather than thinking they need to jump in the deep end or it’s not worth it.”

“Exercise snacking is also very good for behaviour change – building a habit,” Carpenter adds. “You enjoy exercise more because you do it in small enough doses that you can complete it, rather than doing an hour-long workout and thinking, ‘That was hard, I won’t be doing that again’.”

Read more: Everything you need to know about exercise snacking, and five-minute ideas you can try

‘Appetite is finite’, so focus on eating nutritious foods

A lot of diets tell you what you can’t eat. Carpenter says he would rather see people focus on what they can eat, and prioritise consuming nutritious foods – building a new habit rather than breaking an old one.

“I like focusing on adding in nutritious foods because they have a habit of displacing other foods out of your diet,” he explains. “For example, there is research showing that if you tell children to eat more fruit, weirdly, they often lose a little bit of body weight.

“A nutritious food like fruit is usually added at the expense of something else because appetite is finite. So if you tell people to eat more fruit, they will often slightly reduce their calorie intake without even trying because it tends to displace other things in their diet.”

Carpenter argues that most people have a good idea what nutritious foods are, but provides a whistle-stop tour below for anyone in need of some extra guidance.

“When I say focus on more nutritious foods, these are often foods which tend to be slightly less processed,” he says. “For example, fruits and vegetables, lean proteins [white fish, white meat, soy, tofu], beans, lentils and wholegrains. Even things like rice and oats as opposed to donuts, pancakes and waffles.”

Read more: You don’t need a restrictive diet for good gut health – just follow this 80:20 rule

Don’t go from zero to 100 – lay solid foundations instead

Following the average diet requires major changes to your eating habits; having to adjust what you eat, when you eat, how you shop and more. This disruptive approach is unlikely to last.

“Being consistently good for 12 months will be a lot better for your health than being perfect for one month, then stopping because you can’t maintain that level of perfection,” says Carpenter.

“Rather than going from zero to 100, I’m trying to find ways to help people go from zero to 10, then 10 to 20. It’s often a gradual process.”

Instead of counting calories or sticking to hard and fast rules, he recommends picking one or two “solid nutritional foundations” to focus on.

“Rather than saying, ‘here is your diet plan’, can you find ways to eat more fruits and vegetables, protein or fibre? Can you find ways to bring in more nutritious foods into your diet so they displace things that are very high in added sugar or fat, like deep fried foods?

“If people are aware of those fundamentals, hopefully they can come up with ways to implement them sustainably over a long period of time.”

Read more: This is how much protein you need each day, according to a nutritionist

Make tweaks to improve your sleep

A good night’s sleep is rarer than a blue moon for most of us. But a quality kip does more for your health than elevating energy levels.

“I like recommending sleep because it’s a health-promoting habit; people know that sleep is good for your health,” Carpenter says. “It’s also something that can help with weight management. For example, just a single night of sleep deprivation can skew appetite hormones to the point that people will eat more the next day.”

“Sleep can significantly impact your hunger hormones, and your desire to eat food. It can also impede the amount of body fat you lose in response to dieting,” he adds.

“Say if two identical twins go on a diet, and they both eat the same number of calories but one of them sleeps better than the other, the twin who sleeps better will lose more body fat and hold onto more muscle tissue.”

This is backed up by the results of a randomised control trial published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

At this point, Carpenter could dole out the age-old eight hours per night prescription. But he doesn’t think that’s particularly helpful. Instead, he prefers to share science-backed tips that have been shown to improve slumber.

“Things like avoiding caffeine six hours before bedtime, or not watching TV, looking at bright lights or playing on your phone within a couple of hours of bedtime; people might see these tips and think, ‘I do that, but I should think about changing it’.

“I like giving tips more than just saying, ‘get better sleep’, which is obviously a bit vague,” Carpenter says.

Read more: The best sleep supplements to help you get a full night’s rest

Move more outside of exercise

You might be familiar with the acronym NEAT, short for non-exercise activity thermogenesis. This clunky term encompasses any activity you do outside of formal exercise, whether that’s cleaning the house or popping to the shops.

Upping your NEAT levels is particularly useful for weight loss because, when you drill into the figures, even ardent gym-goers don’t spent all that much time exercising – five hourly gym sessions still only represents less than three per cent of your week.

“Someone who has an active lifestyle but doesn’t go to the gym is likely to burn more energy than someone who has a sedentary lifestyle but does go to the gym,” says Carpenter.

“Lifestyle activity is also often easier to implement because you’re looking for small changes that can accumulate rather than trying to find an hour to go to the gym.”

These small changes come in the form of conscious decisions that increase your activity levels. For example, taking breaks from your desk at work, opting for the stairs rather than a lift or escalator, or picking a parking spot slightly further away from the supermarket. In isolation, these changes might seem negligible, but it all adds up.

“These are incremental ways that you can increase your physical activity without having to try and find an elusive hour to go to the gym,” Carpenter says.

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