Do you struggle to maintain or lose weight? Do you feel like you are in a constant battle with your body? I’m sharing today with you, five things you need to keep in mind to release the dieting mindset and struggle and become a weight loss success story.
1. Being in a calorie deficit is crucial to weight loss success:
If weight loss is your goal, you need to understand a fundamental law of energy. Taking in more energy (aka calories) than we expand over time, will cause us to gain weight. If we take in fewer calories than we expend in a day, we will lose weight. So, like it or not, if weight loss is a goal of yours, you will have to become aware of how many calories you are taking in and how much energy you are burning in a day and adjust till you start seeing the results you want. This can be a learning curve and I don’t recommend crash diets, so if you’d like guidance on this reach out to me as I provide nutritional coaching too.
2. Know that to lose body fat you will feel hungry some of the time:
We live in a world today where we feed our bodies and our minds constantly. This is not helpful for weight loss. There is always something to take in, whether that’s through phones and social media or having access to high calorie, luscious foods. We have lost the ability to sit with and experience genuine hunger. There is nothing wrong with being hungry (for short periods of time). Our digestive systems are designed to have down time between feedings. Our ancient ancestors definitely didn’t have access to food 24/7 when we were living in caves! Weight loss for them took care of itself.
We also have developed coping mechanisms to deal with emotional and psychological issues. We eat to fill the void we feel inside. This emotional void will never be fully satisfied with food but we keep trying and the thing is, we do feel better…just not for very long.
Is there a better way to fill yourself up? Yes there is and I’m going to dedicate a whole post to that but for now, I always recommend connecting in with you. Checking in with yourself. For example, ask; am I really hungry now? Or am I feeling lonely, sad, happy or just bored? If you are truly physically hungry, a piece of healthy food such as an apple will seem very appealing. If you’re looking to drown yourself in ice cream, this is a craving…an emotional need unfulfilled or a habit you have conditioned yourself into, not true physical hunger.
3. Food is Fuel:
Food is fuel. While I said that you need a calorie deficit for weight loss to occur, you also need to look at the quality of the food you are eating. Not all food is created equal. If you are dieting and you’ve fewer calories available on a daily basis, you need to make sure that you are taking in the majority of your calories through high quality foods.
What do I mean by high quality foods? I mean food that is as unprocessed as possible and so provides lots of micronutrients. These micronutrients are important for the healthy running of our minds and bodies and are essential for living a full and healthy life.
Studies have also shown that if you are dealing with constant cravings while eating a diet of mostly processed foods; you will always feel hungry! Why? Because your body recognises the fact that it is not getting the nutrition that it needs. It will keep sending out the hunger signal in the hope that the next intake will sort you out and you’ll choose something healthy and nourishing.
4. Food will always be there:
We wholeheartedly need to change our relationship to food. When we diet, we place certain foods on a pedestal, like a prize trophy that we can have when we “finish” our diet. This mentality is all wrong! It creates an almost irresistible pull towards that food, making it into something it’s not.
Instead, reframe the situation in your mind. This particular food will always be there. It’s not so special!
Also, when we demonize certain foods, we set up a dynamic of tension. We are drawn to what we can’t have! Instead, I coach coming from a place of balance. Weight loss does not have to be a constant battle. We are not here to live lives constantly dieting and then falling off track, gaining weight and punishing ourselves by dieting even harder until we fall off the wagon again…and repeat, until we are so sick and tired of the whole thing.
That’s not living. I believe we have to training ourselves to create a completely new lifestyle; one of balance, where we can enjoy certain amounts of the foods we like within a healthy diet, get enough quality food in to be healthy and still enjoy our lives, with the foods we like.
There is one caveat to the above situation. I myself have experience periods of binge eating. I’ve been at times completely obsessed with food. I’ve tried every diet under the sun and while I’ve never been very overweight, I’ve struggled with my body image since I was a teenager.
Know this, there are certain foods, which you know if you buy them and bring them into your house, you will eat them. And I’m not talking about eating them over time in certain portions; I’m talking about eating them in a frenzy, probably all in the space of one sitting, the whole bag, tin or whatever. These are trigger foods and for myself I’ve food it helpful to just not buy these foods. I will find something else that I’ll look forward to instead. Something I can enjoy but not harm myself mentally and physically in the process. At this stage of our journey, it’s important to set ourselves up for success. We also want to save our energy for other things rather than trying to resist the bag of Doritos sitting in the cupboard.
So find something you do like but that won’t trigger that binge and include it in your daily meals.
5. Realise that you have to play the long game:
Living our healthiest and fittest life is a journey. We start where we are and we commit to the long game.
Weight loss will be up and down. We will plateau and stall. We will lose our drive but with the right mindset, focus and direction (from a coach, friend or loved one) we WILL get there.
Remember, it’s not about weight! It is all about our mindset and how we see ourselves. Our outer reality will always reflect our inner world of thoughts and feelings. YOU CREATE YOU and every moment you have a choice of what’s going to happen.
I hope this was helpful to you guys. If you are on a journey, I’d love to hear from you, on your struggles and how you are dealing with them.
xoxo