Tired of fad diets and the all-or-nothing mindset? The Kaizen method offers a refreshing and sustainable approach to weight loss, focusing on incremental improvements for long-term success. This article explores the principles of Kaizen and provides a step-by-step guide to applying it to your weight loss journey.
Understanding the Kaizen Philosophy
Kaizen, a Japanese term meaning "good change" or "continuous improvement," emphasizes making small, conscious, and consistent steps towards a goal. Masaaki Imai, an organizational theorist, founded the Kaizen theory, which focuses on "continuous improvement." His philosophy has since become known for helping people overcome obstacles and pursue continued growth in all areas of life. It's a philosophy that can be applied to any aspect of life, big or small.
This philosophy recognizes that lasting change results from a series of small, incremental, and sustainable adjustments, rather than dramatic overhauls. By focusing on manageable steps, Kaizen minimizes the anxiety often associated with weight loss, making the process feel achievable and less daunting. This gradual approach prevents the feeling of overwhelm that often leads to giving up. Think of it as a marathon, not a sprint.
The Psychology Behind Small Steps
The psychology of the Kaizen method uses small, incremental steps is purposely done to make changes feel insignificant.
For example, the traditional method for weight loss is to overhaul your diet, exercise routine, and lifestyle. This often entails reducing processed foods, cutting sugar, entering a calorie deficit, eating 30 grams of protein with each meal, resistance training three times per week, and walking 10,000. It’s a lot, right?
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Of course, these are all excellent, healthy ways to lose weight, however, when they all come at once we feel that noticeable impact. Meal times take additional consideration, we have to get to the gym straight after work and monitor our calories constantly.
Meanwhile, the Kaizen method for weight loss takes a slower and smaller approach. By this, we mean much, much slower.
In place of a complete nutrition overhaul, it will focus on one aspect such as 20 grams of protein with each meal. You will continue this for two weeks and then decide to reduce your processed food intake by 50% for the following two weeks while continuing to consume 20 grams of protein with each meal.
This will be your goals for the first month. That’s it.
Over time, you will incrementally add small components of a healthy diet and lifestyle. However, it will be so slow and feel so insignificant that you will barely notice them.
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After 6 months, you may have just added 25 grams to each meal, reduced your processed food by 60%, started taking the stairs instead of the lift, and began exercising twice per week. And because it has been so slow and incremental you will barely notice the change in routine and the major positive impact it has on your health. This done over months and years can help you achieve a healthy lifestyle, that feels permanent,
How Incremental Change Overrides Fear of Failure
When we make overhauls to our diet and exercise routine it is typically done in a big way. They come with larger-than-life weight loss goals and a proclamation to ourselves, friends, and family that we are going to drop the weight once and for all.
And despite all of our past failures, we wholeheartedly believe it will happen.
However, when the all-or-nothing shift to healthy eating fails yet again, it can chip away at our confidence, instilling in us that maybe I’m just not meant for a healthy lifestyle.
The Kaizen method for weight loss can help override these feelings of dramatic loss and failure. Big changes and the all-or-nothing mindset place, mean big expectations, and when we fail, it leaves us feeling gutted.
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The Kaizen method’s approach of small, incremental changes makes adjustments feel insignificant by comparison, almost removing expectations entirely. This means that when we fail, it’s not a blow to our self-confidence and derailing of our lifestyle changes, but rather an insignificant misstep that can be rectified by continuing our new regular habits.
Your Step-by-Step Kaizen Weight Loss Plan
This plan provides a structured approach to implementing the Kaizen method for weight loss. Remember that consistency is key, not perfection. Small changes accumulate over time to bring about significant results.
1. Setting Achievable Goals
Like all diets, we want to set achievable goals. Fortunately, your new goals will hopefully be so small that they all should be achievable. This can be done using the SMART method which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relatable, and Time-bound.
This method is often used in traditional goal settings, however, it can be modified slightly to suit the principles of the Kaizen method. Below is an example of how it can be used in conjunction with the Kaizen method for weight loss. We preface this by saying that because changes are smaller, progress will be slower. This will need to be taken into account when setting our time frames.
- Specific: Lose 10 kilograms in 6 months for our summer vacation.
- Measurable: Weight is measurable using scales, measurements, photos, and clothing sizes
- Achievable: Healthy weight loss of 0.4 kg per week.
- Relevant: Summer Vacation
- Time-bound: Incremental changes happen every 2 weeks, larger goal is 6 months.
As you can see, the Kaizen method makes subtle changes. Health weight loss is approximately 0.5-1 kg per week. However, due to the slow process, it drops to 0.4kg per week.
Similarly, time-bound goals have a small change. Their overarching time frame is 6 months, but small changes to habits will happen every two weeks.
2. Choose One Tiny Habit
Select a single, easily achievable change. This could be drinking an extra glass of water daily, reducing portion sizes slightly, or adding a five-minute walk to your routine. Start so small that success seems guaranteed.
3. Track Your Progress
Use a journal, app, or calendar to monitor your progress. Observing your achievements, even minor ones, provides powerful motivation. Visualizing your consistency reinforces positive habits.
4. Celebrate Your Wins
Acknowledge and reward yourself for every accomplishment, no matter how small. Positive reinforcement strengthens your commitment to healthy habits. Rewards should be unrelated to food; consider a relaxing bath or listening to your favorite music.
5. Gradually Add New Habits
Once a new habit becomes ingrained (typically after about 21 days), introduce another tiny change. Build upon your successes, progressively accumulating a collection of healthy behaviors. Don't rush this process.
6. Listen to Your Body
Pay attention to hunger and fullness cues. Avoid restrictive dieting. Kaizen promotes mindful eating, focusing on nourishing your body rather than restricting it. This fosters a positive relationship with food.
7. Embrace Imperfection
Setbacks are inevitable. Don’t let occasional slips derail your progress. Simply acknowledge them, learn from them, and immediately resume your chosen course of action. Consistency outperforms perfection.
8. Build Your Support System
Enlist the help of friends, family, or consider a health professional. Shared experiences and accountability greatly enhance success rates. Joining a support group can also prove highly effective.
Starting Small with Nutrition and Exercise
Now the goals are set, it is time to identify the changes you can make. Below are some examples of small nutrition and exercise changes.
1. Swapping One Calorie-Dense Drink Daily
Unhealthy drinks can be a killer for maintaining a healthy weight. Sodas, juices, and full-cream coffees can accumulate over time leading to weight gain. Here are the calories for different beverages:
- Coca-Cola (330ml) contains 139 calories (7% of the total calories of average adults)
- Caffe Latte (Large) 155 calories
- Fruit Juice (250ml) 136 calories
- Chocolate Milk (250ml) 209 calories
While these seem reasonable, consuming more than one calorie-dense drink per day can use a large portion of your calories, making it difficult to maintain a calorie deficit.
2. Adding Five Minutes of Walking
Adding five minutes of walking to your day is about as small as it gets when changing your fitness routine. This sounds insignificant (which makes it perfect for the Kaizen method), however, think about its application. You can add this short five-minute walk to your day by walking the longer way to work, adding it to the end of your workout, or getting out for a quick stroll on your lunch break.
These small bursts of walking help boost your daily step count, forming the base for longer durations which can the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cognitive impairment, while improving aerobic fitness, mental health, and sleep.
3. Taking The Stairs
Using the stairs is another small way to engage your lower body incidentally. Stair climbing is an excellent form of cardiovascular exercise that can overload lower body muscles and improve aerobic fitness. While our bouts of climbing the steps at the mall or in the office won’t be nearly as long, it can help engage the lower body, heart, and lungs in short bursts in small increments.
In fact, exercise snacks, which refer to bouts of vigorous exercise performed for one minute or less have been shown to improve cardiorespiratory fitness and reduce the negative impact of sedentary behavior.
A good rule is to choose the stairs when they are available, like when they are close to an escalator or lift. This will ensure you aren’t battling searching for one each time you don’t want to take the lift, which can lead to a major inconvenience.
4. Adding 20 Grams of Protein to Each Meal
Protein intake is essential for weight loss as it can increase fullness and metabolic rate, and help preserve muscle mass.Adding protein 20 grams of protein to your meals a small is easily achievable. Below is a list of protein-rich food sources that can help you hit your targets.
- Chicken Breast (100g): 31g
- Salmon (100g): 20 g
- Canned Tuna (100g): 24g
- Protein Powder (1 Scoop): 25-30g
- Beans (100g): 21g
5. Cut Out Sugar
Reducing sugar intake is an example of a minuscule action that can have a big impact. While a couple of teaspoons of sugar is only 32 calories, it's the chain reaction that follows that can do the damage with links toWhen we consume sugar, our body releases the reward hormone dopamine. This can reinforce the behavior, and increase impulsive eating. This can lead to excessive sugar consumption which is associated with obesity, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disease, cancer, depression, and impaired mental processing.
While a couple of teaspoons with your tea or coffee isn’t going to kill you or even blow out your daily calorie intake, it will stop you from reaching for subsequent sugary drinks and food options which can wreak havoc on your health.
We recommend taking your tea or coffee without sugar or choosing sugar-free versions of foods. These small changes will feel minor but can have a big impact.
6. Perform Two 15 Minute Workouts Per Week
When we think about working out our mind automatically believes it has to be between 45-60 minutes. However, this is far from the truth. A short workout of 15 minutes is enough time to perform a full-body circuit.
Here is an example of a full-body circuit. Perform each exercise back-to-back with no rest, for three rounds. Once the round is complete have a quick 60-second rest.
Forming Habits for Long-Term Success
One of the best things about the Kaizen method is that many of the small changes we are making are great for establishing healthy habits. While bigger health and fitness interventions take up more time, these smaller changes can be placed between many of our daily lives without disrupting the flow of our day.
For example, reducing sugar in your tea or coffee placing it out of reach from where you make hot drinks. Taking the stairs to the office is just walking toward the staircase to the left instead of jumping into the lift.
These small habits in just a couple of weeks will become second nature, which can snowball into long-term success.
Benefits of the Kaizen Method for Weight Loss
Below we discuss the benefits and reasons you should try the Kaizen method for weight loss.
1. Reduces Overwhelm and Increases Consistency
Small incremental changes can be less overwhelming and improve consistency. Traditionally, weight loss is a major change to our lifestyle. We drop our calorie intake, cut the sugar, and fat, process foods, and begin exercising three to four times each week. These massive changes can be an inconvenience, overhauling our routine, which let’s be honest can be unsettling and jarring.
The Kaizen method’s addition of small and incremental changes provides a more gentle and seamless approach, eliminating that overwhelming feeling and increasing consistency.
2. Promotes Sustainable Lifestyle Changes
The Kaizen method is excellent for making sustainable changes. Bigger changes and adjustments can take more time, energy, and concentration, which disrupt our schedule.
However, when we implement barely noticeable small changes, it can be easier to perform them without even realizing it. This reduces resistance and eliminates barriers that make them easier to perform, improving sustainability.
3. Overcome the All-or-Nothing Mindset
The Kaizen method is phenomenal for overcoming the all-or-nothing mindset. Big changes and big goals are amazing things. They can give us a rush of motivation that has us bursting out of the gates to achieve our goals. However, when things don’t go to plan, weight loss slows, and fitness goals plateau, those big changes and big goals can lead to feelings of big failures, which lead us to exit our plan.