Healthy Bite 011 - How to Lose Weight and Keep It Off!

Super Simple Healthy Podcast

Have you ever been on a diet where once you’ve met your goal weight, you find that within a few months or a year after your “diet” ends, it all comes back and then some? Today, I will share with you my top 3 tips on how to make your weight loss STICK. I will be addressing FOOD during this episode, but also recognize that sustainable weight loss also means incorporating mental, physical and spiritual fitness into your life. Lose Weight, Keep it Off! So what is the secret to losing weight and keeping it off? First, recognize that there is no weight loss program you can follow forever. Everyone has a “diet”. Like Glenda the good witch would say: It’s either a “good diet” or a “bad diet”. Many people actually don’t eat ENOUGH food. They’re just eating the WRONG type of foods and cutting back on those foods or switching to salads all day will only serve a temporary fix. If you want different results, you need to do things differently. This means learning new things about food and which ones work or don’t work specifically for you. It takes some experimentation, but after a while, you won’t have to think about it anymore. Wouldn’t that be nice?? I work with my clients on an individual basis to help them understand which foods work for them. The next step is to start by just taking small, SIMPLE steps. BABY steps. Have you ever been around a baby trying to learn to walk? I never counted the number of times my boys had to try to learn how to walk, but it could be over a hundred. And that’s just to get to the first step. Then they bobbled about, falling down regularly for a couple of years. Now they don’t have to think about it. Yet somehow as people become adults, they expect to be able to decide to make a change in their lives within a few weeks! They “fall off the wagon” after a bad day or at a party. Maybe they get back on only to fall off again later then BOOM, in comes the negative self-talk: “What am I doing? I’ll never be able to do this. This is my third diet this year and I still can’t get it right. I’ll just be back to where I am as soon as I stop.” CHANGE TAKES TIME. It’s a process. Imagine if a baby had this same thought process: “Geez. This is harder than it looks. I’ve gotten up 5 times today already and I still can’t get it. This is hopeless. I guess it’s just not meant to be.” If we’d all let that happen, we’d still be crawling on the ground, pooping our pants and getting dressed by our parents! Baby steps in your diet can be simple things like: 1) Drinking more water 2) Cutting down on sugar 3) Learning to read food labels 4) Adding more greens and vegetables into your diet 5) Experimenting with one new recipe a week 6) Going for a 20 minute walk 7) Try a yoga, boxing or Zumba class Don’t do ALL of these things at once. Choose 1-2 MAX and commit for two weeks. Then add on, every other week but don’t stop the other habits. And lastly, and most importantly people have to start associating more pleasure with the outcome of losing the weight than the PAIN of acquiring it. Now you may be saying – well of course losing weight will give me more pleasure! That’s what I REALLY want! But most people place their focus of a diet on the deprivation, starvation and the pain of exercise. No wonder it doesn’t work! Think of the baby’s motivation: “Oh my gosh, look at those kids running around, that looks like so much fun – how did mom get to the other side of the room so fast? Dad can reach ALL the toys! Oh I can’t WAIT! NOTHING’s going to stop me!” What is DRIVING YOU? What will it FEEL like when you really get what you want? How BAD does it feel to be where you are now? What things will you be able to do that you can’t do now? How will that FEEL? Changing your FOCUS, will change your OUTCOME. I go into more detail on these and other points in my workshops so remember to check my website calendar for upcoming dates. Until next time: Keep it Simple. Be Healthy.