You’re Not Ready for Swimsuit Season? Part 2
In Part 1 we discussed the most important key to successful fat loss is Discipline. When your motivation fizzles, being disciplined is what will carry you across the finish line. In this section, we will discuss 6 ways to re-train your brain to bring you lasting fat loss and get you back to better health.
Why do 65 percent of dieters gain back all or more of their weight within 3 years? One reason I see a lot is, we achieve a weight loss goal and over time slip back into old habits. We’ve all done it, lost weight for our wedding, that beach vacation, and even contests to make certain weight classes. Then what? Old habits don’t die. They are forever embedded in our memory. Even when we make new habits to replace our old habits, if we don’t stay disciplined, we’ll fall victim to the triggers that cause us to return to our old ways. Another reason is, we don’t realize until our weight has creeped back up, how it happened. Sometimes it happens right under our nose when we’re not being mindful. Life and weight maintenance is a roller coaster ride, not a linear progression. There will always be unexpected variables that take us in and out of our maintenance phase. A maintenance phase is just the part of a fat loss plan that helps stabilize your weight and allows you to readjust to your new way of eating. It’s the sweet spot where everything comes together.
Often, fat loss makes us feel like we are walking through the wilderness, like a punishment for every donut we have ever had, every margarita ever drank, every lobster slathered in butter sauce eaten and everything we have ever done to our bodies, just to regain our health. That is exactly what it can be, a painful process just to get the reward we deserve for all the unbelievable effort it takes. Let’s look at a few things to get you to the promised land of health and wellness and make it all worthwhile.
1. Know who you have on your side!
“For the LORD your God has blessed you in all that you have done; He has known your wanderings through this great wilderness. These forty years the LORD your God has been with you; you have not lacked a thing.”
2. Throw the scale away!
Instead, give yourself healthier ways of measuring success. The scale can be so deceiving. There are many factors that make up and impact the number on the scale from fat gain/loss, muscle gain/loss, and water gain/loss which are all impacted on different levels everyday depending on what we have going on in our lives. Did you drink enough water? Did you eat an especially salty meal? Did you cut your carbs too low? Did you eat a high carb meal? Is it that time of the month? Did you sleep well the night before? Did you exercise hard the day before? Way too many variables for the scale to be consistently accurate.
Instead, ask yourself how your clothes are fitting. How do you feel? Do you have more energy, feel lighter, and more able to do certain activities you couldn’t before? Have you noticed more compliments lately? If you must have a measurement, either take weekly pictures or use a measuring tape to measure biceps, bust, waist, hips, and thighs to track progress. Throw that scale away! If you just can’t, you might need to do some soul searching.
3. Reassess your why
The most popular reason for wanting to achieve a healthy weight is for aesthetics. We want to look good. We want to like what we see in the mirror. Deep down inside we also know we’re not at our healthiest and need to improve our health. However, often we go to such extreme unhealthy means to lose weight, damaging our bodies at a cellular level, just to achieve a certain look.
Visit your why and see if it’s something that is healthy for your body, mind, and spirit. Do it to decrease your risk for diabetes and heart disease. Do it to be an example for your children. Do it to honor the one body God gave you so that you can stay here on this earth longer to do good works, not to look like a hot supermodel.
Proverbs 31:30
“Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,
But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.”
4. Eat Real Food
Real food doesn’t have ingredients or come from a box. There’s a lot of stipulation on the importance of choosing all organic foods but even non-organic is far better than eating food out of a box that have been highly processed, with high amounts preservatives and chemical additives, created in a lab. I say, “Real Ingredients = Single Ingredients.” Eat food that spoils and are best kept and eaten fresh. Your body will thank you for it!
5. Eat mostly Plant Based
Coming from a fitness perspective, most people are focused on enormous amounts of protein intake to increase muscle mass and cutting back on carbs to get lean. Our bodies weren’t designed to have an extreme imbalance of macro sources. The focus should be on an appropriate supply of healthy, lean protein from a variety of sources, appropriate supply of carbs from mostly vegetables and fruits with some complex carbohydrate sources, and healthy fats from natural sources, not oil from a bottle. Most of your daily intake should be from plant based sources. If you balance out your meal plate you’d have half a plate of veggies and fruits, one quarter protein, and one eighth whole grains and one eighth fat. Don’t be afraid of sugar either, if it’s from a natural source like raw honey and unprocessed maple syrup to name a couple and used in moderation. Fruits are best due to their fiber content.
6. Eat at the same time every day
After knowing what to eat, how much to eat, and why you eat it, schedule your time on when to eat. Eating at the same time daily is very beneficial for the body. According to the journal Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, people who eat at regular times of the day and are mindful of what they consume have better blood pressure and BMI levels than those that eat at random times. This aides in digestion and helps our body assimilate nutrients better, as well as decrease stress by adding structure to our day. But you say every day is random with work schedules, school schedules, kid’s extracurricular activities, family events? Try scheduling your time to eat just like you would any other appointment you would make for yourself like church time, gym time, kids soccer practice. If your day is so random that you live in a constant state of stress because of it, you may want to do some soul searching.
If you’re mindful of these 6 simple ways to re-train your brain to think about food and fat loss, you’ll achieve lasting results and get you back to health. Your roller coaster of life will have fewer ups and downs and be more stable and manageable. After practicing these for a while, you’ll re-train your old habits and be mindful about having more discipline when old habits try to surface. Print this, affix it to wherever you can see it every day until you retrain your brain to think about food as your friend.
Happy and healthy eating!
And as always, if you need extra guidance, schedule your Free Consultation Here and let’s decide together which plan fits your life.
Amber — Fatfightingmom.com
