1) Start with a reasonable goal – 5 to 10% of your starting weight.
Choosing a weight goal is usually not too scientific. It might be a weight from our past or just a number that a chart says it right for us based on age, gender, and height.
Although these number may be achievable, they’re not always sustainable. On the other hand choosing a goal weight that’s 5 -10% less than your starting weight is both achievable and with care and attention, sustainable.
Depending on how much you need or want to lose, after stabilizing at the lower weight for 6-12 months, you may decide you want to lose the next 5 or 10%.
Don’t be a hurry to get to your “ideal goal weight.” You have your whole life to get there and the statistics for getting there and staying there are measurably better when you “go slow.”
2) Learn to cope without food.
Getting to goal is no guarantee your life will stay on an even keel! Having non food ways to cope with emotions won’t protect you from life’s ups and downs but it can help you keep the scale from going ups and ups!
S**t happens! Into every life a little or a lot of s**t must fall. Coping with the s**t with food, isn’t really coping at all. It’s stuffing it down. To make weight loss last you need to find better ways, non food ways, to deal with emotions.
Developing non food coping skills is a kind of insurance that the little and great big emotional upheavals in your life (and don’t think you can avoid them – you can’t, we all have them) won’t snap you back into old, default, weight gaining behaviors.
3) Be moderate in your eating habits.
There’s room for some of this in a healthful diet! Don’t make food choices a moral issue. What you eat makes you neither “good” nor “bad.”
There is such a thing as “moderation in all things, including moderation.” Moderation in your eating habits is eating good-for-you-food most of the time, in good-for-you serving sizes. Sometimes you will eat not-so-good-for-you food. That’s okay. Sometimes you’ll eat not-so-good-for-you servings. That’s okay too.
Moderate eating habits means “pretty good most of the time,” and when you have those occasional “not so good times,” that is the very definition of “in balance and moderation.”
There is no need to live like a monk or give up any of your favorite foods.
4) Move your body
I love paddling and Chico loves to come along for the ride. Our favorite destination is a sandbar that’s only revealed at low tide. We have a good time running and playing because it’s one safe place to let Chico off his leash.
Moving your body can be fun. Find the ways that are fun to you and make time for fun everyday. A body in motion is a toned and fit body. A toned and fit body feels good, looks good and inspires you to keep up what you’re doing.
5) Exercise your most important body part daily – YOUR MIND!
Gaining back lost weight doesn’t just happen. It’s a conscious decision whether you want to acknowledge it or not. You make choices; what happens is a result of your choices. Using your brain everyday is a kind of “thought exercise” that does for your mind what physical exercise does for your body. It makes it stronger.
Cultivate your positive thinking skills. Learn to see problems and challenges as “puzzles,” not “roadblocks.” Every puzzle has a solution.
