10 Steps to get to your goal weight.
July 30, 2024
This feels slightly gimmicky, which I slightly cringe at but the reality is when life happens we start to make this process far more complicated. In no way am I trying to downplay the real issues of why weight loss isn’t sustainable. The mindset, negative thoughts, all or nothing thinking, sabotaging behaviors, and honestly things you don’t even realize you do or believe, that make this process far more challenging. I titled it this way to remind you that it really is this simple, NOT EASY, but simple.
Don’t complicate it, when “it’s not working” it’s likely because of one of the deeper issues mentioned above. This is typically how this goes down, we start off strong but then something derails us. It’s like going on a road trip from your starting weight to your goal weight and you get a flat tire along the way. What we need to do is pull over, pause there, fix the tire, then keep going. Instead, most of us either slash all the other tires (ie: well I already ate over my calories today I might as well eat everything else in sight) OR we go ahead and tow our car all the way back to the start of the trip (ie: all or nothing, anyone?). I want to reminder you to not make this complicated, pull this list back up (save it to your notes section on your phone) as many times as you need to remind yourself to just pull over, eat maintenance calories, fix what needs fixing, keep your progress, then when you are ready just pick up where you left off to preserve all the hard work you’ve put in to get to that point. Make progress from there, not starting all over or worse off then when you were derailed.
START HERE:
- Download MyFitnessPal or LoseIt app on your phone. Pick the option to MAINTAIN your current weight. It will give you a calorie target. *You can always go old school here if you prefer with a good old paper and pencil. Google Diet Fix Calculator and figure out your maintenance calories there. That’s your goal calorie target each day, deduct calories as you eat, like you would a bank account register.
- Track all your food for at least one FULL week, figure out your average daily intake for that week. ONLY SPEAK IN AVERAGES, day to day doesn’t matter, it’s what you do over time that does. Do not move on to the next step until you can track ALL YOUR FOOD. If you can’t track your food at maintenance calories, you will not be successful moving forward. Figure this out first, it might take a couple weeks to find all the foods you typically eat, get your favorite recipes loaded. Once you do they will be easily accessible for you. Take your time here, your future self will greatly appreciate the detailed setup, that is your Goal at this stage, NOT a deficit and NOT weight loss. All of this takes time and energy don’t put that expectation on yourself when you aren’t even in a good place to execute the plan, goal is solid foundation of skills (aka: track your food consistently).
- Weigh yourself daily, average your weight and only make adjustments to what you do based off your AVERAGE weekly weight (remember from #2, day to day doesn’t matter, it’s what happens over time). Compare your AVERAGE weekly weight from one week to the next. If you are losing you’re already in a deficit. If you’re gaining you are too high, bring your calories down slightly and try again.
- Expect obstacles. Expect issues. Expect perceived failures. When they happen, go back to #2. Work through them then keep going.
- Set your Target Calories for 10% less. If you can not hit this and are able to troubleshoot that and have a solid game plan then stay here and try again. If you can’t and don’t have a game plan, stop beating yourself up with unmet expectations, go back to #2 so you don’t let the negative spiral continue, regroup and get help with a solid game plan before you proceed.
- Support your body. Work on optimizing your nutrition, stress reduction and sleep. Dieting is a stress on the body, our bodies are very resilient but in order to optimize your efforts decrease the stress load on your body to allow it to be more efficient. Most people need to work on fueling their body appropriately, start with increasing your protein intake to 0.7g/#of goal weight and then 25-30g of fiber. Identify stress factors and work on boundaries and ways to mitigate/manage/cope with stress. Sleep is vital, get the best quality and optimal quantity to repair/restore/recharge your body and mind.
- Realize there is a deeper reason why this isn’t sustainable. When problems arise you need to be a detective and dig deep. Find support partners, accountability buddies, read/listen to books, find supportive podcasts, get a support group and/or get a coach. There is nothing wrong with you, something about the approach isn’t sustainable for you. A coach is like a detective, I’ve seen likely all of those sabotaging things you do, that I promise some you don’t even realize that you are doing, it’s my job to help you find them and fix them. All you have to know is that what you are doing isn’t working or what you did in the past didn’t work something has to change this time, my job is to help you find it. Get help!
- You will keep lowering your Target Calories by 10% until you get to an average weight loss of 0.5-1#/week. If you can not get to that rate of loss then you will go as low as you can to create ANY loss while still being able to maintain your habit of tracking consistently. THIS PROCESS IS SLOW, get your head wrapped around that.
- If you ever stumble or have any issue ALWAYS go back to #2. Keep going, it doesn’t matter how slow you go, JUST. KEEP. GOING
- Once you get to your goal weight range, then continue tracking for one year. If that felt relatively easy to maintain your weight for one year then start slowly stepping away from tracking as far as you can while monitoring that your weight remains in range. If ever it goes out of range go back to #2.
If you need a coach email me at coachamylewis@gmail.com to get more information.
To put it simply, I’ve struggled with my weight my whole life. I grew up in a household that commercialized weight loss programs were part of the norm. I was a teenager in the 90’s when “Fat-free” everything started to become the diet trend, then quick-fix rapid fat loss programs were all the rage, diet pills like Hydroxycut, and shakes like Slim Fast would fix our weight issues. I toggled between a pattern of strict control over my eating to zero control. I’d follow all the rules and if some restriction was best then more must be better right? That pattern continued up until I was 40! Decades of yo-yo dieting cycled me up to my highest weight (pregnancies included) of 217 pounds. This last time I remember vividly, I got to the point that I knew I needed to go on another diet and I truly didn’t even know which one, I felt like I had tried them all and it felt like nothing worked for me. It’s like there was something I wasn’t getting, was I just destined to be overweight? Truly it didn’t make sense to me, all the things I had tried and the many times I had tried them it never seemed to stick. I understood the concept of making it a lifestyle change and a mindset but in practical terms I really didn’t know what that meant because I clearly wasn’t able to make that happen. I wanted it desperately but it just wasn’t sticking for me. It’s like this giant puzzle of life, I had a lot of the other parts figured out or were only missing a few small pieces but the health and nutrition part that I felt so many other people had figured out but mine was missing this big section, I felt like I had a big question mark on it. Regardless I needed to do something, the trajectory I was on left me terrified and even though I didn’t know how I was going to do, I truly didn’t know what else to do. I jumped back to my old toxic friend “calorie counting”, and met up with her just as terrible friend, “hours at the gym”. I would spend at least 2 hours, 4x/week doing moderate-high intensity cardio and eating 1200 calories/day. I obviously saw weight loss, but I also found it challenging to sustain, this was honestly the only thing I knew to do. I just went right back to my old toxic relationships because I didn’t know better. I didn’t even realize the disordered eating patterns I was in. Restrict and binge cycling, emotional eating, I looked at the scale to judge my efforts, not realizing eating out didn’t have to equal and indulgent experience every time, no carbs, no sugar, no….. so many things that I didn’t even think to question. It was about this time, shortly after I started that I was introduced to coaching and slowly the pieces of the puzzle started to appear, at times I still didn’t know how to put them into place but I at least had something to work with. One of the biggest pieces I learned in the process is that there is so much more to weight management than on or off a diet. Weight management is on a spectrum and my old version of dieting was to go from one extreme end of the spectrum to the other. Not realizing all the levels of managing weight that reside in the middle of the spectrum. Had I recognized these different levels and started to learn the skills of each level, it would have saved me from years of yo-yo dieting and disordered eating behaviors.
It’s that time of year! It’s a great time to reflect on the past year, assess where we are and where we want to go and then come up with goals to help get us there. Many people like to use the S.M.A.R.T. acronym for creating their health and nutrition goals, I personally didn’t find success using this process. But let’s break it down, S=Specific, M=Measurable, A=Achievable, R=Relevant, T=Time-bound. If this works for you…. great! For me it feels very rigid, with qualifiers and rules to follow. Honestly, I already felt not good enough in this area of my life, and truly in a few others as well, whether by others or myself I felt “not enough”, which cuts deep into one of our core needs in life. To my mental and emotional health, this approach to goal setting felt like a “set-up” to cut that wound a little deeper. I needed a different approach, one that honored a healthier version of the whole me, because I’m much more than just a number on a scale. Another example, I had a client tell me that she was proud of her 40# weight loss this year BUT it wasn’t the 60# she had hoped to lose. I asked her if the previous version of herself, who made that original goal, would have been happy weighing 40# less when she said that? Of course she would! If I looked at the trajectory I was on prior to this last attempt at weight loss even if I maintained my weight it would have been an improvement. I really needed to let go of the “Specific” part of the goal. I had time-bound, just by nature of it being a New Years, but I needed my goals to be measurable, achievable and relevant. With that I offered her my New Year’s Resolutions/Goals, to end the year healthier than I started it, creating a Healthier Version of You. You have the freedom to choose how you want to measure it and honestly I’d cast a wide net, compare it to recent bloodwork you had done maybe lower your cholesterol, take pictures of yourself, take measurements, and obviously the scale. Get creative about different ways to measure health because it is far more than the number on the scale. Maybe you do a mental health journal? Whatever it looks like for you. Noting your water intake, how many fruits and veggies you eat in a day. Anything goes because ALL of it goes towards your health. I honestly think that especially in the beginning of your health journey it is best to have a wide definition, encompassing many different data points and values. You need to create a different cycle for yourself, you need some wins. You need a year that you can look back and see objective proof that you achieved that goal for yourself because there are so many markers of health. We have the rest of our lives to continue to improve and continue to get better it all doesn’t have to happen in one year. NEXT… Take that larger goal and break it down. I like to break my goals down into seasons. January- June, I am dialed in to a specific health goal with 1-2 maintenance breaks. In the summer, with kids home from school and summer vacations I find it’s best to stick to a gentler version of my habits that keep me in maintenance. It’s a great break for my mind and my body. Then come Fall, I’m back to being dialed in on a specific health goal and then during the Holidays I go back to maintenance. I’m never on or off, I make slight adjustments in my nutrition and workouts to support my current health goal. You should not push hard on any one goal for an entire year, but you also want to spend enough time pursing it to see progress. I find seasonal adjustments are great for my life and schedule. And once you decide on seasonal goals then you break them down further into the actions that will help you achieve those goals. What are the daily and weekly actions that realistically fit into your already busy life that will support your goal. Visual from Precision Nutrition (below graphic)
Why is protein so important?
Short answer is no, but let’s look at why we track our food, the benefits and limitations, different ways to track and what your ultimate goal for living your life.
Let’s start with some great resources and I’ll end with what has worked for me to increase my water intake.
Low-fat, Carnivore, Vegetarian, Keto, Paleo, shakes, supplements, Intermittent Fasting….. the list goes on. What is the best diet for weight loss? Answer: The one that you can be consistent with. Definition of success is not just losing the weight but keeping it off. THAT’s the bar we need to reach for. You need to define an eating plan that works for you, taking into consideration your likes and dislikes to find a way of eating that is sustainable for you. Here’s where we are going to start:
Having a clearly defined reason for why you want to lose weight can be a powerful driving force. As humans, we are far more motivated if we intrinsically have a desire for something versus someone else telling us to do something. It’s one thing to have a healthcare provider tell you to lose weight but you are far more likely to be successful if your desire comes from a place deep within you that truly wants something different. If you possess that deep desire for change it can be even more powerful to define that for yourself. Here’s a great exercise to get you started. #1 Start with measurable goal. (Example: Lose weight.) #2 Why do you want that? (Ex: to be healthier and feel better) #3 What does that mean to you? (Ex: be in a healthy weight range, not feel tired all the time, to be able to move without pain, not have stomach issues, feel more confident,….) #4 Why is that important to you? (I saw a family member when I was growing up who was morbidly obese, struggled to get around was on a ton of medications, their quality of life was not one what I would want) #5 Reword it for yourself. “I want to do what I can to preserve my health, mobility and quality of life as I age.” These are the things that increase the likelihood of you being successful. By themselves they don’t make it happen, it’s maybe 2% of the reason people are successful. Think about it this way though, you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be good enough to make it work. C- students still graduate, you don’t need A’s. We want A’s, but you don’t need them. The most successful people value the small wins, they take the 2% improvement here, the 5% improvement there and keep layering them on, building upon them. Remember this isn’t an area in life that we excel in, we have to purposefully keep doing all the reasonable things to keep building and growing until eventually we get a good enough grade to pass the class. Find your why, write it down, memorize it. When you hit a roadblock on your journey and you are frustrated and for that split second wonder if it’s all worth it. Say your why to yourself, then tell yourself you have a 2 options, you can quit, no one is forcing you to do anything. If you quit, you know what will happen. OR, you give yourself some grace and be kind to yourself for all the work you are putting in, and you keep going. I said this to myself countless times, but my why and deep intrinsic desire kept me always choosing to keep going. I’m never going to tell you this is easy, LIFE isn’t easy, but you get to choose your version of hard. Keep improving, keep working but most of all be kind to yourself.