The Dos & Don’ts of how to lose weight healthily
I’ve been helping people to lose weight healthily for over a decade now. Although I know that most people don’t like being told what to do & if you work with me I always help you decide what you’re going to do. In my experience there are a few key things I would recommend you avoid like the plague if you want to lose weight healthily. Likewise there are a few key things I think are essential that you do.
Check them out in my ‘Dos & Don’ts of how to lose weight healthily’. See if there’s anything that you could tweak about what you’re doing…
Don’t:
Skip meals – it’s the best way to guarantee that you’ll want to pick & snack more later on!
Do:
Eat regularly throughout the day to give yourself a nice steady, stream of energy. This will help reduce cravings, snacking & binges. You could try having four or five smaller meals, if you struggle to stick to the traditional ‘three square meals a day’.
Don’t:
Start a meal plan that you couldn’t stick to forever. When you stop what you’re doing & go back to your old habits, you’ll only pile back on any weight that you’ve lost. Then you’re more likely to feel shitty & beat yourself up for ‘failing’!
Do:
Start your day with breakfast – it really is the most important meal of the day – even something small like a piece of fruit or yoghurt is better than nothing.
Don’t:
Waste time & money looking for a quick-fix solution. All those weight-loss products like pills, potions, body-wraps, tea/coffee or other ‘miracle cures’ are unlikely to work. Just check out that small print; ‘May help aid weight-loss as part of a Calorie-controlled diet’ – says it all!
Do:
Try to be more mindful of your eating, without any self-judgement of course! You could try to keep a record of your eating habits so you can figure out where you could improve things. Nobody’s diet is perfect; there will always be something you can tweak.
Don’t:
Change everything at once or do something too drastic. You may lose weight faster, but you’re also more likely to get to the ‘weight-loss plateau’ more quickly. Then if you’ve got nothing more you can change you’ll feel frustrated and give up on it all (cue piling all the pounds back on again).
Do:
Tweak it! Pick one or two small, but significant changes to focus on to start with. Changes you could keep up forever to turn into habits for life. Give yourself time and persevere to turn them into habits. Then give yourself credit for your achievements no matter how small.
Don’t:
Weigh yourself too often – once a week is plenty to give you an idea of whether those tweaks are making a difference. Remember it’s all about the long-term habits & not everyone loses weight consistently. Some people may see the weight-loss showing up on the scales on alternate weeks rather than every week. You might even consider ditching the scales altogether depending on how the whole thing makes you feel.
Do:
Focus on the changes you make, rather than the number on the scales. The results will follow eventually. It takes time, practice, patience & perseverance to build new habits.
This is Lake Bled in case you were wondering.
Don’t:
Get sucked into the dieting mentality of thinking you have to do it all perfectly or you’ve failed. Forget this idea of ‘going on a diet’ and instead focus on building healthy habits to be healthy & have fun. Remember it’s about what you do most of the time.
Do:
Enjoy your food! Make meals that are tasty & colourful. Savour the flavours & take your time over eating. Give yourself permission to eat all foods without telling yourself you’re being naughty. Remember there’s no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods, healthy eating is about the overall balance of everything you eat, not the individual foods.
I could probably go on & on, but that’s a few things to get you started…. let me know what you think!
Need help to ditch dieting forever? Want to eat normally again AND lose weight healthily ..? While still enjoying the cake & chocolate? Hell yes!
I can help you ditch dieting forever, either with my 1-2-1 support. Or if you prefer to work independently, you can learn all the skills I teach my 1-2-1 clients, on my ‘No More Diets’ online course.
My Weekly Round-up! AKA; what I’ve been up to recently…
- Tea of the week has been Lady Grey, with occasional English Breakfast.
- Wow the 2nd & 3rd sessions of Aerial Hoop felt sooooo much easier than the first week. Plus I’m not aching as much the next day and I wasn’t in agony all weekend. So I hope that means I’ve got stronger!
- We attempted our 4th hill in our little family challenge; 22 hills in 2022. It didn’t go well! We went up Cardingmill Valley, hoping to see wild ponies up on the Long Mynd. The weather was very windy and rainy, which didn’t impress Genevieve at all. So we only ended up scrambling part of the way. Thinking of trying again this weekend, as long as the storm has calmed down!
- Over the past few days I’ve been reading ‘Dear NHS’ which is a collection of 100 stories from celebrities thanking the NHS. The book’s edited by Adam Kay and is well worth a read, but make sure you have the tissues ready!
- At the weekend we watched the film ‘Inside Out’ together, which is lovely if a bit weepy. We found it was useful to get a conversation going about feelings with Genevieve. Like how we need to feel all our feelings rather than try to block them out or only try to stay happy all the time.
- Bird Nerd Report: been wandering along the brook every day again and seen soooo many long-tailed tits. This morning I saw the fluffiest one ever; it must’ve been a baby one! The woodpeckers have been hammering away too, at one point there were a couple that were taking it in turns. One morning this week, I saw a bird I didn’t recognise, but turns out it could’ve been a dipper… Then I saw a buzzard who leant forward in the tree as if they were about to fly off; nope, squirted a massive shit out instead – charming!
