Tips For Starting Your Weight Loss Journey

I get it, it’s intimidating! So much info, so many conflicting studies and crash diets. Should I cut carbs? What about consuming sugar, is that allowed? Should I focus on strength training or cardio (spoilers, its strength training)? It’s overwhelming as HELL and it seems like there’s a new idea every bloody week. It almost seems like the system is set up so you keep buying fitness/diet books (*shocking*).

Here’s the short version of what works:

-Sustainable dietary micro changes

-Consistent full body strength training 2-3 times a week

-Giving yourself enough time to create a habit

Dietary Micro Changes

Most diets give you a list of approved and unapproved items. They expect you to follow the list to lose weight for a set amount of time. You say “Great! I’ll start Monday and do it for the next 30 days.” This is a total 180 diet, your mood will drop, you’ll have insatiable cravings and be totally miserable. This isn’t sustainable, especially when you write it out like this…. It truly sounds impossible and it kinda is.

Here’s the other approach, you take your current diet. You track out what you’re going to eat for the next week. Make it realistic, don’t change anything. After you have your tracked week of eating, look for any micro changes you can implement.

Some quick examples that were in my list:

-Instead of cereal I switched to greek yogurt bowls with fruit/granola/and honey

-Thick sliced Daves bread turned into thin sliced

-Sugar syrup in my coffee turned into raw sugar and frothed milk

-Quick meals for lunch turned into calculated salad variations that I actually prefer to eat!

-Cheese on my taco bowl was removed (you can’t even taste that crap I swear).

This may sound like a lot, but it was done over years, not days. The subtle changes not only changed my eating habits, but altered my behavior completely. That’s the huge difference between a crash diet and subtle alterations, micro changes subtlety translate into a behavior shift. The subtleness of sneaking more nutrient dense food into your diet IMPROVES your mood. You’ll notice you have more energy, improved moods, and it’ll compound from there. This shift is the exact opposite of who you’ll feel on an overly strict diet, where you only feel restricted and irritable.

The Power Of Strength Training

Riding along with your new eating habits should be full body strength workouts. Strength training is proven to increase your metabolism naturally. Every 10lbs of muscle gained means a caloric demand increase of 100 calories. This is massive, an extra 700 calories burned a week?! That’s like getting a free workout in.

Not only are there huge metabolic benefits, but the time commitment is pretty low for strength training. If you have 20 minutes to spare a day you can get in a good workout. No more treadmill grind or bike spinning, strength training builds long lasting results that are easier to maintain and even regain. Research shows that once muscle is established it takes as little as one time a week to maintain that muscle. And even if you end up not maintaining that muscle, research also shows it’s faster to regain strength you’ve already established thanks to muscle memory. This is why you can see an off season athlete miraculously get back into perfect form relatively quickly.

So, what should my strength training look like? There are several different forms of resistance training and ultimately you should stick towards the one that best suits your current lifestyle. HOWEVER, I firmly believe every abled person should work towards the big 3 (sometimes 4, I’m looking at you strict overhead presses) compound lifts. Those lifts are barbell squat, barbell deadlift, and barbell bench press. These 3 compound lifts give you the most bang for your buck and will aid you in putting on the most muscle. I hope one day Doctors will be prescribing weight lifting.

Strength training increases your longevity. As we age our bones will get weaker if we don’t stress them. If you don’t use it, you lose it….at about 1% bone density loss a year after the age of 40. Strength training can not only slow down the bone density loss, but can even reverse signs of it. The difference between an active 70 year old who has incorporated strength training and someone who is more sedentary is truly shocking. I don’t know about you, but my goal is to be able to always wake up in the middle of the night and go pee by myself.

It Takes Time (Probably longer than you’d think)

It took me decades to put on weight, but for some reason I always expected to lose it rather quickly. I’d do 30 day diets and hope to be back in my old jeans comfortably. Truth is a sustainable weight loss program that you can do for life will take years to get where you want. It’s the consistent hard work and micro changes that lead to drastic transformations.

This isn’t what most of us want to hear, but it’s worth it. I feel better now at age 33 than I did in my early 20’s. I now ignore the scale and listen to my energy levels. I don’t count every calorie I eat (who can do this forever?) and I actually plan workouts to fit my lifestyle. Even my hobbies have changed from more sedentary ones to more active ones that I look forward to (anyone want to go climb or play pickleball?). Overall, I’m just so much happier, it took time and effort, but I’d do it over again and again.

Doing It From a Place of Gratitude

I know this is shocking, but it turns out positive reinforcement is actually more effective than negative criticism. So, why are we so mean to ourselves?

All of exercising used to come from a place of guilt and anger. I’d try to burn off that day's food or believe I wasn’t good enough to be in shape. I’d honestly workout pretty damn hard, but working out from a place of negativity made me lack consistency.

You should be working out from a place of gratitude and health. Grateful for how your body allows you to experience life and the joy it can bring. I also realized my cholesterol sucked and was way too high. I focused on my health instead of my aesthetics….which actually led to me being pretty satisfied with the way I look. Turns out consistency, focusing on health, and being grateful for whatever my body can do is the byproduct of good aesthetics.

Remember Your Why

There are going to be days when you don’t feel like exercising or even thinking about eating. Motivation is truly temporary and will eb and flow. It’s these days when it’s important to remember why you’re doing it. Even if that means going for a walk instead of picking up weights. You should be doing it solely for yourself, not for anyone else.

Hope this helps! I know it’s so tough starting, if you need help shoot me a message and can talk. Remember to walk, don’t run…this isn’t a race.