Here are some helpful tips and tricks to help you reach your goals.
Step 1: You need to reach way down into your heart and soul and truly admit you have a weight problem. Don't deny it any longer and make the decision to lose weight. This will help you set your mind to your goals and really focus on the road ahead.
Step 2: Stop making excuses! Don't say I will workout tomorrow and I will eat better tomorrow. It's time to start eating healthy and living healthy today regardless of if it's convenient for you or not!
Step 3: Build a team. If you are part of my Skinny Mom Challenge you have reached this goal. Use your team as a way to support you and push you. This team is here to help you learn and everyone is struggling with the same issues you are. Also your family, friends, coworkers, trainers, exercise partner, and husbands can all be a part of your team. Having support will keep you on track and help you reach your goal.
Step 4: Clean out your pantry, office, car and wherever you stash food. If it's bad for you and you know it get rid of it! Don't leave foods that will tempt you and sabotage you from reaching your goals. These items will cause you to overeat. Replace bad foods with healthy choices like, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats and low-fat dairy foods.
Step 5: Set goals and realistic ones at that. Break your goals down into smaller goals. Here is what I did and this is what I encourage all of my Skinny Moms to do. My weight loss goal was to lose 43 pounds so I took 43 pounds and divided it by 2. The 2 is for 2 pounds of weight loss each week. This is a healthy and realistic goal to achieve. This told me it would take me 21.5 weeks to achieve my goal as long as I was 100% committed to reaching my goal. Then I divided my BIG goal into 4 little goals. I broke the numbers down and decided my fist 8 weeks I wanted to lose about 15 pounds. This way I wasn't focusing on the big number. If you focus on the total weight loss you will be more likely to give up because it seems so hard to reach.
Step 6: Make daily changes to reach your long term goals. You can do this by making little steps for example eat extra fruits and vegetables a day, try a different exercise routine, work out an extra 30 minutes a day, play a game with your kids that is active like kickball or ride bikes. Focus on the day to day tasks not the big picture!
Step 7: Set up you calories. The best way to learn what calories you should be consuming based on what you are trying to achieve is visit www.webmd.com. On this sight there is a BMI calculator and you can enter in your age, height, weight, gender, pant size, goal weight loss and what type of activity level you are working at currently. This site will tell you what your BMI is, your calories you should be eating and what it will take for you to lose up to 2 pounds per week. Once you have your calories stick to them! Don't eat less than what you are supposed to eat. Why? Because when you eat less your body believes you are starving yourself and it will go into an emergency mode and store all of your fat just so it can survive. Think of your calories as a checking account balance. Do you want to spend your money on foods that will not fill you up and that are unhealthy or would you rather feel satisfied. Don't waste your calories on drinks! Yes, there are calories in drinks and if you didn't know this then I suggest you start reading labels.
Step 8: Plan to be active at least 35-60 minutes a day. If you are going to only work out for 30-35 minutes then make sure it is a very intense workout so that you are effectively burning calories. You cannot lose weight just by eating healthy sorry, it's time to get off of the couch and start taking control of your life.
Step 9: Don't worry about setbacks! When I first began my weight loss journey my first couple of weeks I didn't see the scale move at all. I was discouraged at first because I didn't understand how I could be working out 6 days a week and the scale wasn't moving. Well what I wasn't paying attention to was my clothes were getting loser and I was losing inches! Just remember it's not always going to be an easy journey. You will cry and want to stop but you need to make sure you remember YOU CAN do this and YOU WILL! Never give up and remember you have friends and other challengers here to push you.
Step 10: JOURNAL! This is a big one and if you're like me I tend to hold a lot in. Don't! Let everything out in a journal because this will help eliminate stress and stress causes weight gain. Trust me I know three years of stress and depression and I packed on 43 pounds to show for it. I want to write in your journal as much as you can and I encourage you at least once a month to go back and read some of your past journal entries and see how far you have come. You won't believe it when you do. You will become so much stronger mentally just by releasing all that you have in your head and you'll notice things won't be seem so difficult.
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