With Christmas just days away and the New Year not far behind, I wanted to provide you all with some incredible tips that will help you kickstart and sustain that weight loss or new healthy regime for the new year.
. If you are tired of starting over and you’re ready to implement and sustain lasting change this year, then you are going to love today’s episode because that is exactly what I’m helping you with. I am laying out seven tips that will help you start on a solid and lasting foundation as well as help you finally implement and sustain a healthier lifestyle. No more fad diets, no more starting and stopping.
I know how overwhelming and frustrating it can be to make changes in your daily routine, especially those related to exercise and nutrition. I also know how hard it can be to sustain these changes long-term. The seven tips I am going to walk you through in today’s episode are:
- Determine why you are embarking on this journey.
- Set clear, specific goals.
- Shift your mindset.
- Detach from timelines and expectations.
- Commit.
- Plan.
- Prepare.
I have battled my weight most of my life, but after four pregnancies, three c-sections, and crossing into my mid-late thirties, I found it almost impossible to lose weight. I tried everything you can name, low-carb, low calorie, extreme exercise programs, etc. As I approached my late thirties, and had three children under the age of 7, I was battling depression, I was overworked, overwhelmed, and exhausted, I was unhappy, and I had completely lost my sense of self – who I was, my identity – between working full-time and raising three children as a single parent. I was probably at my worst and I knew I had to do something to be better for my children. My focus had always been a certain number on the scale and a certain size and I thought if I could just accomplish those goals, everything else would fall in place. However, I learned there is a whole lot more to whole health.
I was always so fixated on my weight – the number on the scale and it dictated so much about the rest of how I felt. Over time I realized even when I got to a certain number on the scale, I still wasn’t happy and that’s when I realized my focus was too narrow. I started looking at my mindset and how I was talking to myself, what I was saying to myself. It was terrible! So, no matter how “skinny” I got it would never matter. I learned you have to accept yourself along the journey and love yourself at every stage. Otherwise, no amount of effort or success will matter. I have done numerous health and fitness programs, coaching programs, I’ve read countless books, and applied and integrated elements from all of these in my own life and my own journey of whole health. I have condensed all of it into these tips I’ve outlined for you here.
Alright, so, let’s get into the tips that are going to help you not just implement but sustain healthy lifestyle changes.
- Determine your why.
Your why is like your compass and your guiding light. Without it you could get lost and lose momentum pretty quickly. This also really helps you to connect on a deeper level with this whole change process. Determining your why is fairly straight forward, it is simply to answer the question: why do you want to lose weight or transform your body? Be honest with yourself about this and go deeper than a certain number on the scale or the physical outcomes you might have in mind. Do you want to FEEL better? Do you want more energy? Do you want to be a better mom, wife, partner? These are just examples.
Another way to approach this is to start with asking yourself how your weight is affecting you and what you are ready to change. I’ll give you some of my examples from when I did this for myself. I was fed up with crying every morning because I hated how everything looked on me. I was tired of being tired. I was sick of trying to hide in clothes and pictures. I was over avoiding social settings and interactions because I had such a negative body image and felt so uncomfortable in my own skin. Most of all, I knew I wasn’t at my best and I wanted to be a better version of myself for my children.
You may have all sorts of other things you’re fed up with or ready to change. The point is it is essential to your long-term success to have strong motivation beyond just a certain weight. This is your carrot through this journey. This is what is what you will come back to over and over and over as you do this. Hint: a spot-on, fire in your belly why will make you emotional thinking about and writing about. You want to find that feeling driving you toward doing this as well as the reciprocal feeling you imagine achieving your goal will bring. - Set clear, specific goals.
Now that you have gotten clear on why you are embarking on this lifestyle change, it is time to set clear, specific goals. If the why is your compass and guiding light, your goals are the destination. Most of the time, people aren’t that great about setting goals. I often hear really vague “goals” like, I want to lose some weight, or I want to get past the first week. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with these, but they lack specificity and long-term vision.
It is important to keep in mind that this is all 100% in the mind – yes, nutrition and exercise are quite important too, but if the mind isn’t on your side, you are setting yourself up for an even steeper climb. One of the best ways to get your mind working for you in all of this is to give it clear goals and then program these into your brain. You do this by setting clear, specific goals and reading them and stating them out loud to yourself daily, as often as possible. This is going to set your subconscious on a mission to make these goals reality.
So, in addition to clarity and specificity you want to start your goals as follows: I am so happy and thankful now that…Again, this sets the subconscious on a mission and it reframes that goal as something that has already happened as opposed to something off in a distant future, far, far away. Create two goals, one that is your long-term or sort of end point in terms of weight or physique, such as losing 50 pounds or achieving 20% body fat. Next create a short term goal and modify these as you hit each one. So, if your long-term is 50 pounds then a good short term is to lose 10 pounds in the first month or 20 in the first 3 months, or something along these lines. - Shift your mindset.
A couple things here, this is really about reframing what you are doing. Too often, people are looking for a quick fix or a short-sighted solution or result. This is partly due to the many fads out there promising miraculous weight loss in 30 days or 6 weeks or whatever. If you want to succeed, you have to throw this line of thinking out; it is not serving you. You have to recognize that this is a lifestyle; it is a marathon, not a race. Even when you reach the target of x pounds lost, it won’t last long if you stop there. You have to sustain the effort in order to maintain the results. - Detach from timelines and expectations.
This is very much tied to the previous tip and is another sort of paradigm that isn’t doing you any favors. There are no quick fixes and everyone will arrive at their goal in different timeframes, because every body is different. The fitness industry will do anything to sell you a program, including promising practically impossible results in even more impossible timeframes. There are way too many factors to take into account, and way too many variations from person to person to be able to make any type of declaration or guarantee of specific results in specific timeframes.
I imagine many of you have heard such claims over and over. I have learned these kinds of one-size fits all approaches, fit and work for almost nobody. Let go of the crazy goal and the short timeframe. Do not expect to lose 35 pounds in 21 days. Shift your focus to looking better, feeling better, fitting your clothes better, and changing your body composition instead of losing a set number of pounds. Now, reflect back on your why and I’ll bet this shift is much more aligned with that, than losing 35 pounds in 21 days. The goal here is to make a lasting lifestyle change that you maintain for life. Moreover, the goal is HEALTH – whole health, and yes, part of that is weight loss or fitness, but it is so much more than that. I’m telling you, when I realized this, it changed the game for me. - Commit.
You must commit to seeing this through for yourself. This is where your why – your reason for doing this will become essential. You’re “why” is ultimately the driving force that got you to start and you cannot fulfill this if you give up or quit. You are ultimately the only person who can do this for you. There is no magic pill and there are no quick fixes, but, there are sustainable, sane ways of creating a healthy lifestyle. Nobody can do this for you; they can give you the tools and guide you, but you have to show up for you and do the work.
You are capable and worthy of achieving better health for yourself. You can fulfil all the other roles in your life much better, when you prioritize your own wellbeing. The only person who can see this through for you is you. The only person you can truly depend on is YOU. So, do this for yourself. Make a commitment to yourself to follow through and do what you say you’re going to do. I promise you, you will feel better, it will boost your confidence, and you will prove to yourself that you can follow through and accomplish goals you set for yourself. But you must commit. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You might have off days, you might have setbacks, and that is totally OK; but no matter what keep moving forward. - Plan.
I am not going to go in-depth on the various options out there for nutrition and exercise. I have covered a lot of this in previous posts if you want to check those out for more details. The key here is to find the approach that you believe you can stick to long-term. If it sounds miserable, it probably won’t be sustainable and you can only will yourself for so long with something you hate. So, explore the options and find the type of workouts that sound appealing to you and the types of eating plans that sound appealing and feasible for you. Once you’ve landed on what that is, make a plan for yourself. What time are you going to work out each day? How are you going to integrate the eating approach into your current routine, etc. - Prepare.
Last, but not least is prepare ahead of time. Set a date to start and do what you need to do to be ready to start on that date. Buy the groceries you need. Get your gym membership or home workout space set up. Get some new workout clothes and equipment to help motivate you and get you in the mindset. Set yourself up for success by preparing yourself ahead of time, so when the start day arrives, you’re ready to go and you have everything you need.
I hope this has given you some tools to help you get started and keep going. If you want to kick start your journey, there’s still time to get in on my FREE 30-day training program. I am offering this through December. It is a value of over $1,000 and it is totally FREE right now. Follow this link, apply, schedule your FREE transformation session, set up your trainer account, and get started now. Thanks so much for stopping by and I wish you all a very, very Merry Christmas!