Wednesday, January 14, 2015

6 Must Dos for New Years Weight Loss Success


1. First and foremost: for heavens sake, SLEEP!!
Get a bedtime, a wake time and stick to it. Like every new routine, it's going to be hard at first but this is your foundation. If you are staying up until 1am playing the candy crush saga, you are going to be tired the next day and your will power to stay on plan will suffer. You won't likely want to get out of bed early to exercise and after work you'll be more prone to skip the gym because your body needs the rest.

2. Failing to plan, is planning to fail.
Guess what? In the morning you are going to need to eat breakfast, and then around the middle of the day you'll be hungry for lunch, and then later in the day you'll be scrounging your fridge for dinner. These events should not come as a surprise! Plan your meals each day. Be intentional about every single piece of food you plan to stick in your mouth. My suggestion would be to look at your schedule on the weekend for the week ahead. Shop for the food, prepare the food and place the food in the fridge for convenience throughout the week.

3. Eat what you like!
It's great if you like to eat raw kale. I don't. I tried. It's just not for me. I can, however, trick myself into eating it (because I can't taste it) when I layer a single slice on an egg sandwich with cheese and Boston lettuce in between some Ezekiel bread.  But I repeat, don't eat foods you don't like. Maybe you can get creative like I did with the egg sandwich but don't bend over backwards about it. Just let it go and eat what you do like.

4. The Mind is a Beautiful Thing.
I feel as though this might be the most important item in attaining a goal. Stop with the thinking that other women can do it, that it's easy for them but it's just too hard for you.  Stop thinking that your genetics are holding you back, or it's your thyroid. Granted, those two things can come into play but they aren't going to hold you back. YOU are going to hold you back with that type of thinking. Stop blaming your kids, your husband, your job, or your mother-in-law. Those things are not holding you back, they are obstacles that you have to work around but with strategic planning, anything is possible. Weight loss is hard and it's hard for a reason. Your body wasn't designed to lean down to the next Victoria's Secret model frame. It's just not natural. Your body is designed to move, work and be productive but most important of all, survive! So you will be hungry at times. You will want to eat a cupcake. You will want to have some pizza. You will want to eat off plan on a Wednesday afternoon. Knowing ahead of time that this will be hard, that you will be hungry and that you will want to veer is empowering for when the time comes to make the hard choice to stay on plan or not to stay on plan.  The truth is that it's just hard and you will have to choose to do something that doesn't "feel" comfortable in the short term to get the long term results you are after. Know this, cry about it a little in your mind and then move on. Make the small, hard choices that count.

5. Deprivation.
Just don't do it. I mentioned above pizza, cupcakes and veering off the plan. What if those things were part of your plan? What if you ate on plan all week and Friday night you had pizza. Then Saturday you got back on plan but had a cupcake that afternoon? Then maybe Sunday you went to brunch after church. I'm talking about 3 meals out of a possible 21-35 (depending on how many meals you eat per day). Don't deprive yourself. Plan foods that you love in your weekly plan. Plan to eat those things. You have to because I don't care who you are, eventually the food wins. Going too long without those foods will lead to a binge. Deprivation that leads to binging is so 1990, we are about balanced eating here in 2015.

6. Do what you do best and hire the rest.
I love this quote but I have to be honest, it took me too long to grasp this concept because....well,  I am cheap. I wanted to save my dollars and do it myself. Little did I know, paying for what I don't do best was the best money ever spent! Hire a trainer, a coach, a mentor (but make sure you do your homework-there's tons of these people out there and the good ones are worth every penny and then some). I'm a firm believer of everyone who wants more than they currently have need someone like this in their life. If you want to evolve  there's got to be someone in place to challenge, motivate (when you feel like giving up), to have accountability to and to pour into you things that you couldn't pour into yourself. I personally have had a trainer for over 3 years. I have mentors and I have a life coach. These people have given me invaluable gifts that I'll keep with me forever. Whatever you invest your time and resources into, that is what you will get back. If you aren't sure about what you should be eating, how much you should be exercising or how to reach that 2015 goal you set for yourself, look to an expert. One interesting fact I found after hiring these people to help me is they all have the same group of people pouring into them. My trainer has a trainer, my coaches have coaches and my mentors have mentors. We all need it!