Losing weight isn’t always easy. As we’ve said before, creating a calorie deficit may be as simple as two easy steps, but sometimes in practice things get a little more complicated. To address some of those complexities—and set viewers straight on the fundamentals—fitness YouTuber and physique coach Paul Revalia recently laid out his three honest tips for losing weight.

Revalia begins by taking a question from a man looking to be in shape for his wedding day. As you might expect, he starts by explaining the basics: Calories in versus calories out. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding around this,” he say, “but understand this: you have to burn more calories than you consume.” Boiled down, that’s what it means to run a calorie deficit.

That said, Revalia recommends not getting caught up in trying to quantify how many calories you’re burning through exercise, because that can be difficult to measure. Fitness apps and trackers probably aren’t giving you an accurate number there, and focusing too much on it can lead you astray.

A better approach, Revalia suggests, is to focus on consumption—the familiar advice about focusing on diet. Food, he says, is about macro nutrients; once you begin to think of it that way, you’ll have a much better understanding of how to eat to achieve your goals. It gives you the flexibility to create a diet that works for you. And you’ll be more likely to lose weight and keept it off. “There are no bad foods,” he says, but some will fit your goals better than others.

From there, Revalia goes on to explain how understanding food fits with his other tips, including making movement a bigger part of your lifestyle, even if it’s not “exercise.” His third tip, as you may have guessed, is to plan ahead: Make a routine that you can stick to, and know what you’re going to be doing before you do it.

Overall, these tips probably sound familiar, but it’s always good to remind yourself of the fundamentals.

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