Don’t make the common weight loss mistakes that most people do. If you fall into the same trap… you will fall off the bandwagon. Here’s the most effective way to lose weight.
After a weekend of overeating, it’s easy to say; “That’s it. I’m getting back on track!”
Keen to have your own body transformation (in just 12-weeks), you commit to big changes like no more junk food, no more alcohol, way more salad and exercising way more.
Before and after photos are often misleading and unhelpful – setting you up to want to adopt extreme measures for fast results. They also motivate you to lose weight to ‘look good’ instead of ‘feel good’.
Whilst these are all healthy habits, it is nearly impossible to adopt them all at the same time and expect them to stick…
The most common health mistake you may be making is trying to adopt lots of new healthy habits all at once.
When you do so, you set yourself up for failure.
You convince yourself that it’s not extreme. You call it a ‘healthy eating lifestyle plan’ instead of a diet but starting Monday you will commit to a complete lifestyle overhaul:
- Stop drinking alcohol
- Commit to exercising every day (or way more than usual)
- Stop eating all refined sugar
- Stop drinking coffee
- Meditate every day
- Stop having second helpings
- Take healthy snacks to work
- Get more sleep
- Reduce portion sizes
- Don’t go back for seconds
- Walk more
- etc.
You will maintain these healthy habits for a few days, but very soon the habits start to feel too hard/complicated and life too busy/stressful. Come the following Monday – you’re right back to where you started and feel guilty for falling off the bandwagon (yet again!)
You blame yourself for having poor willpower instead of realising you were simply using the wrong approach.
Does this sound familiar?
The most common health mistake is thinking that you can go from zero to hero – and succeed.
You can’t adopt 10 x habits over night and expect them to stick. That is a diet and that is extreme.
Here is secret to weight loss and health.
You have to be patient. It takes time for your brain to rewire and your habits to shift. If you want to be successful, you need to invest in yourself one easy step at a time.
What should you do instead?
Don’t let compelling before and after photos lead you astray. Instead of making massive changes to your diet or exercise routine, work on adopting a simple healthy habit, one at a time. Here’s how…
Step 1. Choose ONE habit
When you’re ready, pick ONE new habit to adopt (not 5 or 20).
For example, this week I am adding “drink at least 1.5L of water daily” as a habit.
The habit before was: Reduce eating out each by 50% (from 4x to 2x a week)
Before that, the habit was: Eat 1 extra serve of vegetables for lunch each day.
(If you want some ideas to find a health habit for yourself, read this blog post: 33 Surprisingly Simple Health Habits – that are way more effective than diets.
Step 2. Work out how and make it easy…
Ask yourself: how am I going to make it easy to achieve in everyday, busy life?
Some Examples:
- I bought myself a new water bottle that will sit on my desk. I will fill it up with cold water from the fridge (because I prefer it that way and it will make it easier to maintain).
- To eat out less, I swapped lunch dates with friends for walks. This way, I could still see my friends, get active and even save $$ all at the same time. #soeasy!
- To increase my veg, I bought a new seasonal veg each time I went grocery shopping. More veg in my fridge made it easy to eat more veg at lunch.
Step 3. Repeat process
Once the habit feels normal, easy and effortless – adopt the next one. Repeat.
Each habit takes a different amount of time to feel like it’s normal. Some take a few days whilst others can take weeks. If a habit is too hard, either ask yourself how to make it easier, or save it for later and pick a new habit instead.
Yes. This method does take longer to the get the results but in a year from now, you’re going to be so glad that you made the commitment.
Why? Because you will never fall off the bandwagon again and always know how to manage your weight.
Investing in healthy habits, instead of diets and extreme plans (that I couldn’t maintain in the real world), helped me lose 20kg and keep it off forever. I’m the healthiest and happiest I’ve ever been.
Want to learn how to forget extreme eating and adopt healthy habits instead?
Need guidance? It’s all in the Binge Free Academy, designed to help you heal your relationship with food and stop binge and emotional eating.
