So it's day one of a brand new year, and you've woken up telling yourself, "this is it! This is where I begin the rest of my life, gonna make some major dietary changes, gonna workout everyday this week, gonna lose some weight!" But are you actually serious about this?
January is as good as a time as ever to begin a weight loss journey, but it's also the time about which so many people claim that they are ready for a change, clog up the gyms for a month, and then quit and restart the cycle next January 1st. If however, you intend not to be a statistic, here are some ways you can get serious about your weight loss goals.
1. Don't give up everything day one!
This is one of the fastest ways to burn out quickly. You try to go cold turkey on literally everything. This approach rarely works because soon enough, you will most likely feel totally deprived, binge, and then give up out of shame or frustration. If you have a bad 4 day a week junk food habit, commit for the next week (or month), to making it 3 days only. Then the next week, 2 days only, then the next week 1 day only. Try a step down approach to slowly wean yourself off of your bad habits. If you eat a pint of high cal ice cream every week, instead of ditching all ice cream, step down to a similar low cal variety, then to a sorbet, then to say just eating fruit for dessert.
2. Don't go crazy on the exercise month 1
If you haven't seen the inside of gym since high school, suddenly going 7 days a week and going as hard as you can to try and lose weight faster, is going to lead to exhaustion, frustration, and injury. Pace yourself. You don't need to go from zero to 100, week one or even month one. Work on getting your basic fitness up by walking everywhere, and doing things you already like, like biking, or basketball, or even gardening, anything where you are exerting energy and moving your body out of a desk or office chair on the daily. Then start ramping it up by getting a trainer, or incorporating heavier weights, or doing more strenuous exercise.
3. Set realistic goals
Yes, your goal weight loss may indeed be 50 or 100 pounds, but just hearing that number can make a lot of people feel defeated and give up when they aren't ferociously losing 10 lbs a month "on schedule." Tuck that long term goal away for now, and bring the focus to short term realistic goals. Ten pounds in 2 months, being able to walk 5 miles, drinking enough water everyday this month. You want them to be challenging, but not so challenging that they are literally impossible for any human being or for you, to actually complete.
4. Do things you love
Exercise in particular can seem like a chore if you make it one. If you hate the idea of working on in a gym and staring at walls for an hour, then don't. Take your exercise outdoors into a park, ocean, mountain top, you name it. Take dance classes, or circus exercise, or learn to box. Do things you actually want to do that may not seem like exercise to you the way going to a gym does. You are going to be less likely to quit if you love your Salsa class then you will if you hate having a trainer and going to a gym 5 days a week.
5. Exercise first thing in the morning
It's way too easy to give up after a long hard day of work/school on your exercise. If you knock it out bright and early, no matter what you do, at least your workout is done and you don't have to think about it.
6. Have a plan of attack
If you know you snack at work, you know you always gorge at restaurants, you know you come home and binge on Saturdays when you're bored, you know you can't go to a movie without a bucket full of buttery popcorn...you need to counter these habits with a plan of attack. Have healthy options for food available to you at all times. Look at a restaurants menu before hand and pick out a healthy option so you know going in what you can eat. Actually eat breakfast and lunch so you won't be starving by the time you get home, counter your bored binging with activities like hanging out with your friends or taking your kids to the park to run around, bring your own healthy snacks to the movies. It's easy to "fail" when you aren't prepared.
7. Kill the negativity
Weight loss is a hard long process and you can have many lows along the way. What you don't need is negative toxic people who are enablers or who seek to tear you down for trying to change your life. Surround yourself with people who care about you and want you to do well and lean on them when you're struggling (especially if you have to live with the toxic people). If you're struggling with something deeper and perhaps, psychological in nature, seek help to help you rid yourself of the negativity and hurt in your life that may be keeping you unfit.
8. Ditch your scale, seriously!
Seeing that you didn't lose 2 lbs can send some people over the edge especially if they know that the reality is they have been killing it at the gym and with their diet and doing everything they are supposed to. Stop weighing yourself every second and use the scale sporadically or not at all. The way your clothing fits, or doesn't, is much more an indication of how you're doing then on a scale because muscle weighs more than fat and things like medications and bloating and even drinking a glass of water, can affect the numbers on the scale. Someone's scale numbers may not really reflect how well they are doing if that is the only measurement one is basing success on. Get your health stats from your doctor, measure your hip/bust/waist/arms/thighs to see how many inches are being lost, and look in the mirror, before popping on a scale if you must.
9. Compare yourself...to yourself
Your body and your genetics and what you are physically capable has to do with you and you alone. Frustration comes when you read somewhere that someone lost 20lbs in a month, and you only lost 5 or your friend can run 5 miles without breaking a sweat and you are dying after only a few laps. Focus on you. You are the only one who can get fit and lose weight for yourself. Comparing yourself to others is a futile exercise that won't get you any closer to what should be your own goals and ways to reach them healthfully.
10. Understand failure
You see those 5 minute YouTube videos about how so and so lost weight filled with before and afters and you think, oh, how wonderful and nice that is to see, it all looked so easy, but what you don't see is how many days that person had to fight with themselves to not eat the cake, to actually workout, to get up and go and do what needed to be done or how many days they just felt like or did give up because that's not pretty or cute. Losing weight is NOT about perfection and doing everything right. You're trying to change a lot of sometimes life long bad habits when it comes to food/exercise and that is NOT easy. You will fail along the way. You will feel like giving up. You will give up and throw in the towel, but do NOT make this permanent. Part of success is fighting through these feelings and knowing that you want the end result 100 times more than you want to be here January 1, 2019, still talking about the changes you should have made this year.
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