Taking Action on Your Weight Loss

I've lost 25 lbs and I can't wait to tell you how! My weight has been creeping up the past 6 years and I was tired of buying new pants every year and just wanted to be able to wear the same pair of shorts for three years in a row. I eventually realized that the reason I hadn’t been able to lose weight is a lack of consistency in meal planning. I have a love hate relationship with meal planning, sometimes I’m into it but then I lack motivation and I will just wing it and engage in overeating. I’ve always had a good relationship with exercise and enjoy it and that is something I consistently do. But I knew I needed to prioritize getting my calorie deficit down and upping my protein count so I can feel full longer and build more muscle. It took me a little over three months to achieve this result.

Why people fail at diets

I think people fail at diets because they go cold turkey on so many of their favorite foods. I don't believe in intuitive eating, low carb, keto, Whole 30 or interment fasting for weight loss. My issue with intuitive eating is that I think its impossible to have intuition around food when you haven't educated yourself on how it works for you. The idea of eating what you want, when you want, doesn’t work for everyone. I need more discipline and can't be left to my own devices for a free for all. I don't like interment fasting because I've been eating breakfast my whole life and strongly believe that it's the most important meal of the day. I want to fuel my body three times a day and keep my metabolism energized. As a vegetarian I can't low carb or do keto. Is the Keto Diet Safe? I think cutting out entire food groups is a red flag (Whole 30). I follow someone on Instagram who does it every January so I'm very familiar with how Whole 30 works.

If you eat some obscure way to lose weight, it's not sustainable and eventually you won't be able to keep it up and will gain all the weight back. That's not progress. Unstainable methods for weight loss, leads to unstainable results, and unstainable results lead to more yo-yo dieting and weight struggles. You get trapped in the cycle and feel like a failure. The first 10 lbs you shred are always the fastest because you made a drastic change to your diet. The next 10 lbs you lose are slower and thus you get frustrated and quit.

Why I wanted to lose weight

It was important for me to lose weight because I wanted to feel confident, I wanted to love my outfits and feel my best in my clothes. But what I was doing day to day wasn't aligning with the person I wanted to become and thus my reality never changed. I wasn't really putting in the work to change even though I always exercised 6x a week. I don't have any dramatic before and after photos to show you because I prefer not to take pictures in my underwear and I'd rather just wait until its a bigger weight loss difference and you can see it in my clothes. I do see my progress when I try on an outfit and don't have to change a million times. I look at getting dressed as a joyful and fun process now. My face is slimmer and I can zip up comfortably all the pants in my closet. That is the biggest win for me! If you're so comfortable with where you're at, you won't progress. You have to want more and not get complacent.

Successful weight loss

You don't need someone to hand you an expensive meal plan, because how long will you stay on that anyway? I heard someone say that losing weight is the easy part but keeping off is the hard part. And that really clicked for me because if you do some radical diet plan to lose weight sure the weight will come off but if you can't keep the weight off it was a failure. And that's why people use that annoying phrase "lifestyle change" because only that is what really makes weight loss stick.

My mindset is that there are foods that are more helpful that should be the foundation of your diet and then there are the fun foods that are more tasty; and you can enjoy everything you like in moderation. At the end of the day nutrition is simple, its not easy, but it’s simple. We all know what we need to do. You know you need to be eating less unhealthy stuff. If there are foods that you are craving, moderately include them into your weight loss diet because you will have so many cravings if you never have the foods you actually love and enjoy. When I order Sweetgreen salads I always add tortilla chips, this way I never have to buy a full bag of tortilla chips, just getting a few crumbled in my salad satisfies my craving. I also eat ice cream every day.

What do I mean by nutrition is simple? You need to do the small stuff consistently like master the basics such as eating more vegetables and protein; eating less processed foods; and not drinking your calories ie. sodas, juice and alcohol. Instead of changing diet plans, you need to actually change your eating habits and not blaming everything else. Weight loss is based on a calorie deficient, we have to eat slightly less to lose weight, nothing radical. Eating healthy is not enough, when you're already a healthy eater, you have to focus more on the numbers. Not changing things means you will always remain the same. Here's what I eat for breakfast most days and its' 40 grams of protein so I'm full until lunch!

Tracking Calories & Eating More Protein

Twelve years ago I tracked my calories on MyFitnessPal and lost 50 lbs and found it so easy! I use the free version of MyFitnessPal. Studies have shown that people who keep a food diary have greater success in losing weight. I think a lot of people are not logging accurately as they are under-recording their food and over-recording their exercise and skipping tracking days.

My daily goal is to eat 1700 calories per day and my protein macro goals are 25g/20g/20g for breakfast/lunch/dinner. You have to understand your calories needs if you want to lose weight and it also allows you to eat more. Beyond eating less calories, it’s important to focus on eating plenty of protein if you are trying to lose body fat so you can boost your metabolic rate, get full at meals and also keep as much muscle as possible as you're shedding weight. You are failing dieting because you are starving yourself, trying to mindlessly eat low calorie, and aren’t eating enough protein. Exercise isn't punishment, you deserve to have better health. As a vegetarian I always thought it's so hard for me to lose weight when I'm always hungry between meals so I have to snack, thus I focused on upping the protein in my meals. My protein sources are tofu, tempeh, legumes, nuts, and seeds. I occasionally drink a protein shake and the one I like is Truvani. It's plant based and only has 5 ingredients and actually tastes good. You can order a sample pack of all the flavors. I also make sure to eat fruit everyday and that half my plate is vegetables as fiber fills you up.

Broccoli is my favorite vegetable so I make one of these recipes all the time: Roasted or Garlicy. If the store has cut up butternut squash I buy it and it forces me to find some delicious curry recipe to make it with. I frequently buy mushrooms as they are quick and easy to add to any dish. I keep frozen peas in my freezer to easily add to pasta. I always add red bell pepper to my salads. I make this fennel recipe every fall. I keep my pantry stocked with lentils, here are a couple favorite recipes I make every winter: golden curry and Pomegranate Walnut Stew

I have this high protein breakfast 5x a week and I eat dessert almost every day. You can't build muscle without protein, you can lift all the weights you want, but you won't build muscle that you want. Cardio is useless in improving body composition. It just increases your hunger signals for the calories burned. When you lift weights you burn less calories during the session but you keep a higher calorie burn afterwards. Your metabolism stays elevated and you burn more calories at rest.

I work from home so in the spring and fall my routine has been to do a one hour lunch walk and in the summer and winter I take a 30 minute peloton ride before work. On the weekends I walk an hour to the grocery store or do outdoor zumba classes. I lift heavy weights 5x a week.

There’s no shame in tracking your food as it helps to improve your relationship to food by understanding your body’s nutritional needs. It shows me when I need to make swaps, like when a recipe has too much olive oil in it or I need to split it into smaller serving sizes. It shows me when I can add treats to my day. Discipline is a beautiful thing to understand if something is worth it or not. What keeps people from losing weight is a lack of consistency - seven days a week. Eating healthy foods does not guarantee weight loss. Weight loss comes down to being in a calorie deficient consistency.

Exercise

The way MyFitnessPal works is when you log your exercise calories, it allows you to eat more. However I have to warn you, the apple watch and the fitness trackers of today all overinflate calorie burn. I still have my Polar watch from 12 years ago and bought a new one and was shocked at the difference in readings. I contacted the company and they said they "changed" their metrics. I've noticed when I go to zumba classes and women will say their watch said they burned 600-800 calories and I tell them no they didn't. Unfortunately this feature in MyFitnessPal can only work for you if you know your accurate burn. A way to check this is to enter your weight on a treadmill, walk on the treadmill and see what your calorie burn is on the machine and compare it to your fitness tracker; they should be about the same. If there is a huge difference in numbers, then you know your fitness tracker is over exaggerating your calorie burn.

I walk slow, so for me, a one hour walk outside, stopping at every block for a red light burns about 230 calories. When I ran at a moderate pace on the treadmill for 45 minutes that burned 450 calories. My new fitness tracker with my weight entered told me my slow walk burned 400+ calories, there's no way you can tell me that my one hour walk burned the same amount as calories as when I got off the treadmill dripping in sweat completely spent. I see people on myfitnesspal logging that they burned 300 calories at yoga class. I've been going to yoga for over a decade and can't say I burned more than 100 calories a class. The algorithm won't work for you if you log incorrectly.

I use this book to log my daily workouts. I work out before work or at lunchtime. I have always lifted heavy because it tones your arms so that when you wave at people your triceps don't wave back. Strength training strengthens the heart and lungs, increase bone density, stabilizes and protects joints, and increases your metabolism. Weight training gives your body a nice shape at any size.

My weights stack

The Weekend

A great tip I learned is that Monday is the worst day of the week to weigh yourself after a relaxed weekend. Weigh yourself on Friday mornings so you know how to carry yourself into the weekend. It's not good to be super disciplined Monday-Friday but then have no structure on the weekend. You need a strategy for the weekend because if you don't, it will always keep you back. Start your day with a high protein breakfast for satiety. I quit my Saturday treat of cream cheese bagel breakfasts at the bagel shop. Have some movement on the weekend and get adequate sleep. I do hot girl walks on the weekend or outdoor zumba.

Once I started meal prepping every week, all of I sudden I always had a fridge full of food. When it comes to eating healthy if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I use this weekly meal planning pad. Being healthy is not a punishment, you’re investing in your health in the long term. Make sure you get your grocery hauls in every weekend with your lists. I had someone compliment me the other day on all the healthy foods she saw me loading up on the checkout conveyor belt at Whole Foods. If you let your momentum sizzle out, then you're not showing up for yourself and it takes a toll at your happiness and your ability to believe in yourself and is frustrating.

If you binge your favorite foods on the weekend because you feel you deserve it, you're never going to progress forward. You have to find a way to have your favorite foods as part of your regular eating.

Supplements

The five basic supplements everyone should take are: Vitamin D (you can get tested every year at your annual exam), magnesium, fish oil (I take a vegan version), probiotics, and a multivitamin. Don't buy your vitamins from amazon, you don't know what you're getting or what temperature they're being stored at, here's one example. I also take Zinc which is important for carb metabolism as it helps your thyroid in processing carbohydrates. Pumpkin seeds are a natural source of zinc so I sprinkle them on my salads. Magnesium helps you to sleep, stay regular, and aids in weight loss.

I've followed Dr. Amen for the last decade and read his books which I've talked about on this post and this post which detail why these supplements are important. I've had my brain scanned at his clinic. You can also follow him on Instagram for bite sized information.

Your metabolism is in your gut; thus a healthy gut means you have a stronger immune system, an improved metabolism and a healthy brain and heart. As a result, improving your gut health means improving your overall health. Eat fermented foods like yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut and kombucha because they strengthen your gut microbiome. With that in mind, I drink kombucha daily and buy fermented beets. I also drink a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar everyday but I buy this passion fruit flavored one and mix with sparkling water.

my vitamins

Conclusion

I lost weight by eating in a calorie deficient, tracking macros and focusing on protein; while also lifting weights and either getting 6000 steps a day or taking a 30-min peloton ride 5x a week. I ate a 40g protein breakfast and aimed for 20g of protein at lunch and dinner. I focused on creating meal plans every week which is the easiest marker for a sustainable progress that most people overlook. If you want to lose weight you have to understand that losing weight means you have to change your lifestyle and habits. Small changes are how you transform, you won't be able to keep the weight off permanently if you don't change your habits. You have to plan your meals in advance so they're balanced with protein and fiber. You have to move your body everyday and get enough sleep. This is what leads to permanent weight loss.

I did count my calories which I know gets a bad rep because it gets put into a box of extreme restrictions. But counting calories really empowered me because losing weight comes down to a science - calories in vs calories out and you have to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight. It's hard to be in a deficient if you don't know what you're putting into your body. Counting calories makes it be not a guessing game.

The best way to jump start your weight loss is to plan out your meals and to eat most of them at home. If you can't meal plan for the whole week, think about which meals are the ones where you don't make the best decisions and start by just meal prepping for that meal. So many people want to buy an expensive meal plan from a trainer instead of just taking the time to create a meal plan of meals you actually like to eat. When you cook your own meals, instead of ordering take out all the time, you are in control of portion sizes, oils and sodium. Use your Sundays to make all your lunches for the week, or my mother used to bake a salmon on Sundays so she could eat it all week. When I make a big salad, I always make 4 at a time and put the rest in the fridge. Then I have 3 Sweetgreen quality salads already chopped ready to eat in the fridge in this container.

I increased the amount of veggies on my plate so that my plates had more fiber and volume so that I would get full easier. Your plates should always have a pop of color on them so be sure to make veggies the star of your meals. I also focused on upping my protein macros as this would help ensure that I had satiety for hours and getting muscle gains from my workouts.

I didn't change my workout routine as I already strength trained 5x a week and took hot girl walks or rode my peloton. To lose weight I had to make sure I was eating in a deficit consistently. My weight loss wasn't linear, I had a plateau at the 20 lb mark for a few weeks.

New research says that our metabolism doesn't slow down until our 60s. The most common reason people gain weight as they age is because they are moving less. People in their 20s naturally have a lot more steps in their day + gym time vs a 40 year old mom because of their different lifestyles. So before you say you can't lose weight because of hormones or metabolism, it might just really be that your eating patterns are the real problem getting in the way of achieving results.

You have to prioritize yourself by putting in the work. Your goals won't come with the lightest amount of work. Imagine how you're going to show up in your life when you feel more confident and feel better about yourself. If you're frustrated with your progress, reframe your mindset to see what you can do better. I hope these things I shared will be helpful in your weight loss journey.

As a reward for reaching my achievement, I bought some new workout clothes. Since 2020 I've worked from home and exercised at home so I haven't been buying new workout clothes like I used to. I only exercise in Lululemon aligns and I'm shocked at how many years they last! These are my new pair: