Get up, drink an entire glass of water. Eat complex carbohydrates during the day and when you get home, eat only proteins and vegetables. Tell your pantry to shut up.

Sound like an extreme weight loss regime? That’s because it is. Bob Harper from the famed TV show, Biggest Loser, stopped by the Verizon campus in Ashburn for the Employee Health and Fitness Day May 18.

Donning a black, long-sleeved shirt and black exercise pants and sneakers, Harper sipped on water as he told a crowd of more than 100 Verizon employees the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle … and diet soda drinks.

Sipping on diet soda, while it does not increase your caloric intake, it does increases the body’s desire for more sugar therefore facilitating sugar consumption. It goes without saying that he frowns upon regular soda.

Harper reiterated his mantra that diet is 80 percent of every weight loss regimen. Although he’s a fitness instructor, he said it all starts with what you put in your mouth. No one controls what you consume except for you.

Start small and work your way up – avoid fried foods or mindless eating in front of the TV. It’s nothing no one has never heard before. But, coming from a Biggest Loser celebrity trainer, it somehow seems more credible.

He also imparted bits of wisdom that listeners devoured.

A six-pack isn’t obtained solely through a thousand sit-ups like Britney Spears did in her heyday. It starts with your diet, then cardio and then doing a thousand sit-ups. Harper also maintained that morning workouts are no better than evening workouts because its all about maintaining your metabolism. If you drink a full glass of water immediately after waking and then eat breakfast within 30 to 45 minutes, your metabolism will already be jump-started. Therefore, as your metabolism slows throughout the day, an afternoon workout will restart your tumbling metabolism.

A weight loss plateau is non-existent to him. There’s no such thing. A plateau only means that you are not being honest with yourself about the changes you need to make, he said. Are you grabbing the chocolates that are sitting around at work? Keep track of mindless eating such as this through a food journal, which will point out the holes to you. It’s harder to lose weight the smaller you are, he said, so don’t let it demotivate you.

Weight loss is about a lifestyle change, he said. But you have to believe in yourself and trust the process.

“You’re gonna mess up. We all do,” he said. “But you get to start over.”

Contact the writer at hhager@timespapers.com

This article was first published by Hannah Hager on LoudounTimes.com.