Do you want to lose weight but aren’t sure where to start? What are the best weight loss resources to consult for advice?
When it comes to weight loss, the struggle is real, and the contradictory advice floating around doesn’t make it easier. What does make it easier is consulting credible sources who know what they are talking about.
To save you the trouble of finding them, we’ve rounded up a list of the best weight loss resources, including books, blogs, and podcasts.
The Struggle of Weight Loss
Most people who go on diets tend to gain back all of the weight they lost and sometimes more. To a large extent, this is because they’re taking the wrong approach: There’s more to losing weight than cutting calories. Weight loss is complicated, but science is paving the way to ever greater understanding.
If you want to lose weight, ditch trendy diets and get learning: There are plenty of weight loss resources to help you get to grips with how weight loss works.
Best Weight Loss Blogs
There are tons of weight loss blogs out there, but not all of them are worth reading (yeah, we said it!). The weight loss space is rife with information and gimmicks. Not only is much of the weight loss advice a blatant scam, but it also can seriously damage your health.
When it comes to your health, consult only credible sources. Here are Shortform’s picks of the best weight loss blogs that know what they are talking about when it comes to weight loss.
Robin, the creator of The Balanced Life, has long struggled with her body image and relationship with food. When she finally broke free from the vicious cycle of cheating on her diet and beating herself up for it, she made it her mission to help other women do the same by choosing “grace over guilt”—finding a delicate balance between enjoyment and restriction.
Tina created Carrots ‘N’ Cake to help women cultivate a balanced, guilt-free way of eating and achieve their body composition goals. On her blog, she teaches women how to lose weight by balancing their hormonal flora through the macro diet. She also posts recipes, nutrition tips, and transformation stories of women who’ve gone through her coaching program.
Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss
Erika, the blogger behind Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss, has gone from couch potato to NASM-certified trainer and lost 170 pounds in the process. Having undergone this transformation, she decided to embark on the journey of helping women do the same—transform their bodies and relationship with food. She blogs about diet and exercise, emotional eating, body positivity, and more.
Nerd Fitness is an online coaching company offering tailored personal training programs by credentialed experts. In addition to their coaching services and a bi-weekly newsletter, they provide a lot of free information on health and fitness, distilling the science of weight loss and body recomposition, discussing different diets, and breaking down exercises.
Avocadu is a one-person blog run by Cathy, a firm believer that weight loss is a uniquely personal journey: It’s about finding what works for you and listening to your body. Her weight loss program is designed to help women lose weight quickly, safely, and consistently—and it’s clearly working. Hundreds of people have successfully shed pounds on Cathy’s program. On her blog, she shares weight loss tips, toning and yoga workouts, and healthy, low-calorie recipes.
Gina, the blogger behind The Fitnessista, is a certified personal trainer, group fitness instructor, and weight loss specialist. As a busy mom, Gina knows the struggle of juggling motherhood with keeping fit. When it comes to weight loss, Gina is all about what’s effective and efficient. On her blog, she shares quick workouts, no-frills, healthy recipes, and quick happenings from her life.
My Fitness Pal is the world’s leading app for tracking nutrition. On their blog, you’ll find a plethora of articles, covering all things health and fitness with a focus on weight loss.They share healthy and creative recipes, workout routines, and expert-guided diet and exercise plans. You can also sign up for a personalized newsletter to receive content that’s relevant to your specific health and fitness goals.
Best Weight Loss Books
If you want to dive deep into the science of how weight loss works, books are your best bet.The best weight loss books distill the science of how the body works and provide actionable strategies for losing weight and keeping it off. Here is our roundup of the best weight loss books from our library.
The Hacker’s Diet was written by John Walker, founder of software company Autodesk. This is an engineer’s approach to weight loss, described in terms of control systems, feedback loops, measurement noise reduction, and practical problem-solving.
With so many contradictory theories of weight loss out there, this book cuts out the bull—it’s about calories in and calories out, period. If you’re fat, you’re fat because your eating control system is broken. Learn the sane way to track your weight daily, why the first few days of dieting are the hardest that dieting will ever be, and what you have to do to maintain your ideal weight for the rest of your life.
From the low-carb, high-fat keto diet to the whole-foods-based paleo diet, there are countless eating programs promising to help you lose weight and be healthier. The Plant Paradox Program (PPP) is an eating and lifestyle program based on the way foods and products affect your body and immune system; it involves eating lots of the right plants, while avoiding others, in order to reach and maintain a healthy weight and live free of chronic and autoimmune diseases.
The program is based on the premise that small things can cause big problems and the key to your health is less about what you add to your diet and more about what you remove.
Americans might be the heaviest, sickest people in the world. The China Study suggests that we can lose weight and lower disease rates by removing animal foods from our diets.
What sets the whole foods, plant-based diet apart from the fads is the extensive research behind it, detailed and distilled in this book. The evidence is compelling and the message is clear: Animal foods lead to disease; plant foods prevent and treat it.
Learn how a plant-based diet can give you more energy, reverse your heart disease, decrease your cancer risk, outsmart your genes, and make your life longer and healthier.
Author Tim Ferriss has spent years studying how to improve the human body—he interviewed and trained with experts, studied scientific literature, and tried out what he learned on his own.
In The 4-Hour Body, he distills the most effective 2.5% of what he discovered into programs you can use to improve six aspects of your body: losing fat and gaining muscle, enhancing sex, improving sleep, managing injuries, improving sports performance, and living longer.
American society is inundated with food. There are thousands of options of what to eat and a myriad of ways to eat it. So why does food need defending? In his book In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan distinguishes between real food and processed food and how the reliance on the latter leads to a society plagued by Western diseases.
From our reliance on industry and science to dictate what we should and shouldn’t eat to the loss of traditional food cultures, the Western diet has wreaked havoc on Americans and created one of the unhealthiest societies in the world. But we can reverse the damage if we repair our relationship with food and support the health of the food chain.
Do you have a behavior that you rationally know is better for you, but find it too hard to maintain? Do you want to lose weight; stop using social media; exercise more; work harder and longer? Do you feel your self-destructive indulgent self feels so powerful you can’t stop it?
Never Binge Again presents a wonderful mental framework to help solve these problems. It’s directed toward binge-eating and weight loss, but the concepts are easily analogized to any other impulse or addiction you want to control.
Best Weight Loss Podcasts
The beauty of podcasts is that you can entertain yourself on the go or while you are doing activities that don’t require much brainpower. And you can get things done while learning something useful. Here are Shortform’s picks of the best weight loss podcasts to follow in 2022.
As the name suggests, 20 Minute Podcast aims to deliver you expert health and fitness advice as well as industry news in less than twenty minutes. Always concise and to the point, host Lilla Laczo sits down with industry experts to discuss a gamut of topics, from weight loss tips and nutrition to the latest fitness trends.
The host of Half Size Me believes that the secret to successful weight loss lies not in following a certain diet or exercising yourself to death. It lies in redefining yourself and your relationship with food. Her approach to weight loss is unlike any other in the industry in that she doesn’t prescribe formulaic weight loss advice to follow. Instead, she teaches people how to gain a deeper understanding of their relationship with food and find what works best for them.
Abel James, the host of Fat-Burning Man, grew disillusioned with the mainstream health advice that was preventing him from losing weight and fixing his hypertension. He buried himself in research to learn the truth and it turned out to be the exact opposite of what his doctors recommended. On his podcast, he shares his discoveries to help his readers lose weight, optimize their health, and normalize their relationship with food.
The Best You is hosted by Clair MacKenzie, a Life, Health, and Weight Coach. Having grown tired and frustrated of losing and regaining weight on multiple diets, she embarked on a journey of self-discovery to redefine her relationship with food and with herself, which helped her to finally shed the excess pounds and keep them off. On her podcast, she discusses sustainable weight loss strategies, teaching readers how to lose weight once and for all.
Brenda Lomeli, the host of The Last 10 Pounds, struggled with being overweight for over 18 years. Through trial and error, she discovered that the solution wasn’t so much about food and exercise. Rather, it was about cultivating mental flexibility and unlearning the emotional eating patterns. On her show, she helps people approach weight loss from a well-rounded perspective, taking into account both physical and psychological aspects.
Do you struggle to lose weight because you can’t help yourself around delicious food? Then, Weight Loss for Foodies with Shari Broder would be just right up your alley! Shari believes that it’s possible to lose weight without depriving your taste buds of the mouth-watering deliciousness that food has to offer.
The Slimming World Podcast with consultant Anna Mangan and confessed yo-yo dieter Clare Freeman is a lighthearted show about all things weight loss. They discuss a gamut of topics from boredom eating to body image. New episodes are released weekly and organized into handy categories according to themes. Listen up for information, inspiration, and a bit of a giggle!
On the Carrots ‘N’ Cake podcast, certified nutrition coach and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner Tina talks about macro nutrition, functional testing, hormone education, mom life, fitness, autoimmune life (ulcerative colitis), and so much more! She believes that you can have both the carrots and the cake and still maintain a healthy weight!
Final Words
When it comes to weight loss, it’s “better safe than sorry,” as they say. If you are looking for credible weight loss advice, we’ve got you covered with our collection of the best weight loss resources, including blogs, books, and podcasts to inform and inspire you on this journey.
Did we miss your favorite weight loss blog, book, or podcast? Let us know in the comments!
