You Don’t Have to UpEnd your life to lose weight

You don’t have to upend your life to lose weight. Real change comes from small, consistent change.

Getting help to lose weight is the primary reason clients reach out to me. There are always other goals, yes. But for the most part, it’s about losing weight and feeling more confident about their body. It doesn’t matter if you are a working mother, a young professional, or an empty-nester, looking good and feeling good is important.

There’s no shortage of advice on how to lose weight. In fact, there’s far too much advice than could ever be useful to one person. Eat paleo, carb cycle, only do HIIT cardio, do 100 sit ups every morning…and on it goes.

There is no one right path to losing weight and/or getting healthy. You have to find the path that is right for you. Just because your best friend had success eating paleo, doesn’t mean that’s going to work for you. Just because you used to do HIIT, and it worked when you were 20, doesn’t mean you want to do HIIT now.

 The truth is, there is only one truth about losing weight and getting healthy:

The only workout/diet/lifestyle that will work for you is the one that you work at.

Here are three elements about losing weight that you rarely hear, but are critical to reaching your goals.

You don’t have to make massive changes in your lifestyle to see changes in your body.

Massive decision about change, the kind that stems from New Year’s Resolutions and other such events, is motivating. It’s easy to think that a colossal overhaul of your habits is the trick to reaching your goals. It feels great to set big goals! This is it, you think! This is the year! If I do all of these things I KNOW I’ll see change.

Here’s the first problem: making massive, overnight changes to the way you live your life is hard to maintain. It’s hard to remember all of the new rules, it’s hard to find time for all of your new habits, and it’s hard to drop all of your old habits at once.

Here’s the second problem: change takes time. When you expect change immediately (all that hard work should add up to an immediate, obvious response in your body, right?), and don’t see it, your motivation to lose weight and get healthy plummets.

Eventually, as motivation wanes, you drop some of the habits you promised yourself you’d keep (reminder: you don’t drop them because you are weak, you drop them because LIFE). If you don’t see a change that feels/looks big enough to warrant your effort, you become disheartened. Gradually, you drop a few more of the goals you set and eventually, you forget you made that life-changing resolution to begin with.

What works then?

Small changes to the life you already live have the potential to massively change your life.

Instead of making a massive change all at once and flipping your world upside down, make small alterations to the life you live now. These changes might seem minor (great, they should!), but added up over time, small habits that stick are far more transformative than large changes that don’t stick. If you want to lose weight and/or get healthy, you want a transformation that sticks.

Make 1-2 small habits/changes at a time. Focus on them for 2-4 weeks, until they feel natural and comfortable. Make them actions that you can take (or not take) at least once daily. Once they fit seamlessly into your life, make another change.

If you are a big snacker, don’t stop snacking altogether…pack healthier snacks.

If you never workout, don’t commit to 5 workouts a week…commit to moving more throughout the day (park further away, take the stairs).

If you want to try the paleo diet, don’t throw every grain in the house out the window…start with one meal a day.

None of these alterations sound like a huge change. That’s the point.

These changes are small enough that you don’t feel put out about having to do them. You don’t feel like life will never be the same. But, done over time, added up one on top of the other on top of the other, they have huge, life-changing power.

If you start substituting fresh fruit and hummus for vending machine cookies and mini-candies a few times a day, you reduce your caloric intake AND give your body much needed nutrients.

Related article: Healthy Eating Habits for Busy Women

If you then also start moving more during the work day, you start burning more calories AND you stretch and move muscles that desperately want to be stretched and moved.

If you eat a paleo dinner instead of your regular dinner, you give your body natural, clean nutrients that it thrives on instead of processed ingredients that do more internal harm than good.

These are things you can do forever. You can see where change starts to happen.

Consistency is more important than how much weight you lift or how fast you sprint.

If you were to ask me what the most important element of training and progress are, I’d tell you consistency. The one thing that pro-athletes, life-long runners and successfully-fit average folk have in common is that, above all else, they stay consistent.

The most beautifully designed workout program will do absolutely nothing for you if you don’t stick to it consistently. Hitting the gym once a week for a workout that leaves you unable to sit for two days is far less impactful on your physique, your goal to lose weight, your health and your long-term goals than hitting the gym 3-5 times a week for a 30 minute workout that challenges you but doesn’t leave you unable to move the next day.

The problem with inconsistent workouts: you’re apt to push it too hard (to make up for time off), which leads to a greater risk of injury. Furthermore, muscle growth, metabolic rate and fat loss happen gradually with time and effort. If you don’t stay consistent, your body doesn’t know that it needs to change the way it functions (aka burns energy and fat, and builds muscle), to keep up. Finally, it’s far easier to keep going than it is to lose momentum and have to start again.

On the same wavelength, consistency in nutrition is far more important than the slice of cake you eat on your birthday or the three days of fasting you suffered through before vacation. Your body is very (very) good at maintaining homeostasis (your body’s status quo). If you are eating a mostly healthy diet most of the time that slice of cake will not do a thing to derail your progress.

Consistency is king.