11 Wealth-Building Tips That’ll Help You Lose Weight With Ease

The most popular wealth-building tips are surprisingly helpful for weight loss goals.

The same goes for these skills and habits:

• Tracking and assessing data
• Being flexible and moderate
• Delaying gratification
• Knowing how to adjust your plan
• Understanding psychology

Here are 11 powerful examples that’ll help you lose weight with ease:

Tip #1: Track your spending

If you want to build your wealth, the obvious place to start is with your spending. If you’re not spending less than you make, you won’t reach your goals — no matter how “price-conscious” you claim to be.

Losing weight is similar, in that it’s largely a numbers game — even if you’re “conscious of your portions.” This is vague, non-numerical, and leaves success to chance. The same goes for:

• “Being mindful”
• “Eating healthy”
• “Listening to your body”

Which is why tracking your calories for at least a few months is a no-brainer. It gets you in touch with the primary dictator of progress: your daily intake. You will NOT lose weight if you’re not burning more calories than you take in.

The good news is, you don’t need to meticulously track every last dollar or calorie forever. But you do need to “put in your time” and see some progress before taking your foot off the gas.

Tip #2: Keep a budget

You can’t be surprised you’re not moving closer to your financial goals if you’re not keeping some sort of budget. There’s no way around the importance of knowing:

• Your income
• Your fixed costs (ex. rent and utilities)
• Your discretionary spending (ex. take-out and shopping)

But believe it or not: getting intimately familiar with these numbers is freeing. You’ll no longer wonder if you’re overspending, and can enjoy yourself without feeling guilty.

The same goes for your nutrition. It’s crucial to know:

1. How many calories you burn on a daily basis (your “income”)
2. What your staple meals are (your “fixed costs”)
3. Which small splurges you want to enjoy (your “discretionary spending”)

Once you do, you can plan to splurge on a near-daily basis (without blowing your progress). Which makes your results far more sustainable.

Tip #3: Don’t totally deprive yourself

On more than one occasion, in an effort to save money, my wife and I have completely eliminated meals out — something we really enjoy — from our budget. Unsurprisingly, we quickly saved a lot of money afterward.

But it never lasted. Eventually, we grew tired of feeling restricted, and cracked. A single meal out turned into two, then three — all in a short period of time. It was clear we were trying to get in all our fun before returning to our restaurant-free budget.

Is this starting to sound familiar?

If you eliminate splurges from your diet every time you want to lose weight, you’re a ticking time bomb. At first, you may see progress (like my wife and I did) — but it’s only a matter of time before you “snap.” One splurge turns into two, then three — then a complete downward spiral.

But the solution here isn’t to be more “disciplined” or “stricter.” It’s to address the restrictive plan that made you miserable in the first place. Your success won’t last if you’re not more moderate.

Tip #4: Be honest about what you can afford

If you weren’t sure whether you could afford a new watch, you wouldn’t buy it anyway and check the receipt at home. Especially if the store had a no refund policy.

Then why are you looking up your meal’s calories — something you can’t “return” — after you’re done eating it?

(The same goes for while you’re eating it: a common tracking mistake.)

If you’re not sure whether you have enough calories for a splurge, you need to check before making your decision. If you don’t end up having enough, you have two options:

1. Splurge on it anyway — knowing you’re forfeiting the right to complain about slower progress (this is 100% okay and wise from time to time)
2. Make a different decision (like a smaller or lower calorie splurge)

Neither option is inherently “best” if you’re conscious about it. That’s what being mindful is all about.

Tip #5: Spend on what you value the most

Best-selling author and financial expert Ramit Sethi encourages his readers to “…spend extravagantly on the things they love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things they don’t.”

This doubles as excellent nutritional advice. I encourage all my VIP Coaching clients to stop wasting calories on forgettable splurges:

• Leftover candy
• Free bagels at work
• Lukewarm fries off your kid’s plate
• Convenience store snacks
• The last few bites of your partner’s dinner

They eat into your calorie budget, and sure as hell aren’t worth it. A much better strategy is to plan ahead and splurge on the foods and drinks you truly love. In my case, this means Latin food, donuts, and diner breakfasts.

Tip #6: Stop avoiding your credit card statements

Avoiding your credit card statement because you overspent doesn’t change the fact that those dollars were spent. Not to mention: avoidance generally compounds the problem and leads to more overspending.

Few people would argue with this.

But we all love to “avoid the statement” and leave MyFitnessPal in our pockets when we splurge… as if those calories don’t count. Unfortunately, calories always count — even if you’re not counting them. With this in mind, you might as well own your decisions, and adjust your approach if necessary.

Tip #7: Stop beating yourself up for bad decisions

If you overspent, you overspent. There’s no upside to hanging your head or beating yourself up about it. It’s much better to look at your decisions as “data points” (without judging them).

This allows you to digest the information, not make rash decisions, and plan for future success.

A poor food decision is no different: it’s a learning opportunity. Did poor sleep lead to your slip-up? What about alcohol? A lack of planning? Identify this and adjust your plan if you need to. But stop twisting the knife when you do. This doesn’t serve you in any way.

Tip #8: Be honest with your financial advisor

If you’re not honest with your financial advisor, they can’t do their job well. A limited amount of context and information essentially ties their hands.

The same goes for working with a nutrition coach. You need to tell them:

• When you go off track (overspend)
• How you’re feeling mentally (ex. burnt out or discouraged)
• If you expect specific obstacles (like big expenses)

In fact, it’s generally more important to check in with your advisor or coach when you’re struggling. That’s when accountability, support, and collaboration are paramount.

Tip #9: Buckle up for the long haul

Barring a unique circumstance, wealth isn’t built in one, five, or even 10-15 years. It typically takes tremendous amounts of time, effort, and patience to be truly well-off.

If you expect anything else, you’ll be frustrated, discouraged, and even fall for ridiculous schemes.

Nutritionally speaking, you need to prepare for a similar trajectory. When clients come to me eager to lose 40 pounds in 10-12 weeks, I tell them to triple their timeline (at least). If we don’t, perfectly reasonable progress is seen as “slow,” and they risk falling for marketing gimmicks and scams.

Tip #10: Don’t react to normal ebbs and flows

Successful investors don’t sell their shares every time the market dips. They expect this to happen, and control what they can when it does. By not reacting to these fluctuations, they build massive wealth over time.

See for yourself here:

Weight loss isn’t linear, either (even if you follow your plan to a T). The scale will jump, stay the same, and generally do whatever you don’t want it to almost every day.

But you can’t throw in the towel every time this happens. These ebbs and flows are 100% normal and nothing to react to. The best thing to do when you’re feeling frustrated is:

1. Focus on what’s within your control (ex. tracking your food more accurately and boosting your metabolism)
2. Remain patient

That’s it. Do these, and success is inevitable. Continue reacting, and success is not.

Take it from Jon, whose progress came in waves (like market growth) — but remained patient and saw massive success:

Tip #11: Keep your long-term goals top of mind

Most people say they want to be wealthy, retire young, and support their loved ones. But they spend $100-$150 on take-out and alcohol every week, buy new gadgets, and have expensive cars sitting in their driveway.

There’s obviously nothing wrong with valuing these. But there’s often a misalignment between what people say they want… and the decisions they’re actually making on a weekly basis. More specifically, prioritizing what they want now over what they want the most.

People do this with food, too. They say they want to lose weight, feel their best, and live a long, healthy life. But the second they’re a little hungry, or “not in the mood to cook,” their long-term goals are nowhere to be found.

The problem with this is, your eventual success boils down to how often you put “future you” over fleeting desires. Which is why my most successful clients ask themselves these 13 questions on an extremely regular basis:

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The results are pretty amazing when you keep your long-term goals top of mind.

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Here’s a recap of the nutritional equivalents of these popular wealth-building tips:

1. Track your calories
2. Plan your meals in advance
3. Avoid restrictive diets
4. Avoid looking up a meal’s calories after eating it
5. Splurge on what you enjoy the most
6. Stop avoiding MyFitnessPal when you splurge
7. Stop beating yourself up for bad decisions
8. Be honest with your nutrition coach about what’s going on
9. Triple your weight loss timeline
10. Don’t react to “plateaus” and scale fluctuations
11. Choose what you want the MOST over what you want now more often

If you want help with these, the VIP Coaching program may be a good fit for you. I help my clients plan more effectively, take the guesswork out of success, and most importantly: maintain it for a lifetime.