The best strategy for weight loss is the one you can stick with
If you hang out on the internet, talk to people or watch TV, then you are probably constantly being bombarded with “the best solution for weight loss.” There’s a lot of noise in the weight loss industry and there’s a lot of conflicting information, but I can tell you that there is only one thing you need to look for in a weight loss strategy: one you can stick with.
I’ve spent eight years as a nutrition coach, and I’ve heard of just about every weight loss rule, gimmick or program out here.
Don’t eat carbs after dark
Only do fasted workouts
Drink shakes to get the nutrients you need
Eat high protein and fat with minimal carbs
Eat six, smaller meals a day
Intermittent fast and only eat for 4-6 hours a day
Take pills to limit your cravings
While there is some merit to these ideas, they don’t need to be hard and fast rules for every single person. For example, the no carbs after dark rule came about to stop people from eating too much at night. Carbs are the body’s first source of energy, so to optimize burning carbs rather than storing them it’s better to eat them earlier in the day; when you need quick burning energy to keep up with life.
But if you eat them later at night when you’re more likely to be sitting or resting, then you don’t get the chance to burn them as quickly, which can lead to storing more energy.
While it sounds like great advice to not eat carbs later in the evening; it doesn’t work for everyone.
What about people who work night shifts, should they stick to that rule? Of course not! They need carbs at night when they’re tired and need energy!
Yes, it might be more optimal to eat carbs earlier int he day, but that doesn’t mean your body is automatically storing it as fat every time you eat late at night. If you’re gaining weight, it’s more likely that you’re overeating in general or you’re just not eating the right balance of food.
The one lesson I’ve learned along my weight loss journey, and in coaching hundreds of women, is that doable is always better than optimal.
I can’t tell you how many women that women have told me that they feel like a failure or like they just aren’t meant to be healthy because they can’t keep up with super restrictive fad diets.
But it’s not their fault! Traditional diets or anything that says it will provide quick results will set you up for failure because it’s not doable long-term!
Yeah, you might lose weight in a few weeks, but once you stop taking the pills, drinking the shakes, or eat a freaking cupcake on your kid’s birthday you gain it all back!
What is doable long-term is eating a balanced diet that doesn’t restrict you. Finding a way of eating that allows you to have your favorite foods and drinks as a part of your healthy habits - not as a cheat day - will not only help you lose weight but you’l be able to maintain that weight too.
Start where you’re at - not where you think you should be
One of the reasons that so many people “fail” at dieting is that they believe that they should be able to do any diet perfectly from the time they start. But I promise you that the healthy people you’re looking up to didn’t start perfect and you don’t need to either.
One of the very first things I have my clients do, when they start my Macros Made Easy program, is to track their food without changing any of their current eating habits.
And this is hard for a lot of people! They think that they’re eating poorly and they don’t want anyone to know about it. They think they’re starting at a bad spot and they want to jump into whatever is healthy rather than where they’re at.
But the truth is that if I started everyone off with the same “healthy” macros it wouldn’t work for anyone!
Because no one’s macros are the same! No one’s nutritional needs are the same. We are individuals who need individual plans. And those individual plans start with where you’re at right now.
Sometimes mamas come to me who are overeating and the first step after seeing where they’re at is to cut their food down a little bit.
Other times, mamas come to me and they’re undereating so the first step after seeing where they’re at is to increase their food a little bit. (Believe it or not, this happens more than overeating!)
We make small adjustments over time until they reach their goals. I don’t ever ask them to go from eating 50 grams of protein a day to 150 grams a day! Because they wouldn’t be able to keep that up! It’s way too big of a jump and they’d want to hunt me down because they were miserable.
Instead we up it by 5-10 grams at a time until we reach whatever a healthy amount of protein is for you.
That’s how you build healthy habits. You start where you’re at and you make small, doable changes until you reach your goals. Those small steps are how you make your results last. You build up to your goals instead of trying to reach them all in one day.
Learn how to be accountable for your food instead of restricting it
Plain and simple, restricting food groups isn’t healthy. Saying you’re never going to eat carbs again for the rest of your life so you can weigh a certain amount isn’t good for you! It’s not good for your body - because your body requires all three macronutrients, protein, fat and carbs. And it’s not good for your mind!
On one of my client calls, I was talking to my client Rebekah about her win for the week, which was that she bought and ate her favorite crackers for the first time in years!
She loves Wheat Thins but somewhere along her health journey, she got the idea that they were bad for her. So she stopped eating them. She never bought them because she knew she couldn’t control herself if they were even in the house.
She even held this belief as she was working with me and learned about food freedom and how to eat a balanced diet that included her other favorite foods like chocolate chip cookies and Dr. Pepper! But Wheat Thins were always off the table.
Then, one day she was planning out her meals for the week and she had a chicken salad on her menu. She was trying to think of something that would go well with it and Wheat Thins popped into her head. She looked up the nutritional information on them and realized they would fit into her plan! Wheat Thins weren’t bad, she just had to budget for them! So she bought a box, and she didn’t binge on them! She didn’t go crazy because it was a forbidden food anymore. She dished out the portion she wanted and got to enjoy something she’d been denying herself for years!
Mama, there are no good and bad foods. Just food accountability.
When you learn to be accountable for your food you don’t have to follow all the “optimal” rules for weight loss. You can eat carbs after dark. You can fuel your body for a workout. You can eat carbs, and fat and all the food you love!
Once you drop all the restrictive rules from your nutrition you’ll find that the weight comes off even faster because you’re no longer attaching guilt, shame and regret to the food you eat!
There’s a massive connection between weight loss and how you think and feel about food and I teach busy mamas on the go how to find the nutritional and mental balance so that they can reach their goals.
If you’re tired of rules that leave you annoyed, frustrated and stuck then let’s ditch them! Schedule a free discovery call today to find food freedom while reaching your health goals!
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