I decided to change things up a bit! If you follow these 10 simple steps I can guarantee that you will NEVER reach your weight loss goals.
WARNING: this article contains a lot of tough love. If you’re not ready to hear it maybe you should go spend some more time on Facebook while you crack open another can of Diet Coke.
1. Have a pity party.
You are what you think. If you think you can’t do something, you won’t. If you think you can do something, you will. It really is that simple. We all have struggles. We all have stories. We all are capable of things beyond our imagination. The people who reach their goals are those who stop making excuses for themselves and start getting to work. Take the advice of John Maxwell and, “Get over yourself. Everyone else has.”
2. Keep doing the same workouts.
Sure we all like cardio. You can zone out on the treadmill or the elliptical machine while watching television. Yay. Doing a lot of cardio can certainly melt the pounds off you pretty fast. That’s awesome and you’ll certainly feel better. But you will reach a point where you body starts to crave more than cardio. It wants strength training. It wants you to pick up some heavy weights and move them around. If you don’t follow a program that combines cardio with strength training your body will stay the same forever. But if you’re OK with that…so be it.
3. Be a chronic dieter.
There’s a difference between being on a diet and having a diet. You go on a diet to go off a diet. When you have a diet you’ve created a habit that doesn’t need to be turned on or off. Dieters are always second-guessing themselves and constantly looking for the secret plan or blueprint that will finally tell them what to do. Dieters go through life thinking that certain foods are good or bad and think that anyone who can eat the “bad” foods and maintain their weight are genetically gifted. As a result they never develop a healthy relationship with food and are always trying to figure out what to try next.
4. Drink your calories.
If you’re drinking your calories in the form of soda, alcohol, and sweetened beverages you’re adding a lot of calories to your body and not a lot of nutrients. Even when you drink juice you’re often getting more added sugar than anything else.
On the other hand, high quality shakes like Shakeology fill you up and provide you with A LOT of nutrients and not very many calories. Besides that, try to stick with water and tea or coffee with no sugar.
5. Don’t drink enough water.
There are times you may feel hungry but what your body really craves is water. Studies show that when you drink water before eating you eat less. Plus drinking the right amount of water promotes overall health, and keeps everything functioning the way it should from your skin all the way to your bones, joints, and digestive system. Learn to love the simplicity of water. If you need a little flavor every once a while try something like Vitamin Water Zero but try not to make it a habit.
6. Eat empty calories.
Be sure to shop in all the center aisles when you go grocery shopping as that’s where you’ll find the over-processed foods. If it comes in a box, can, or bag be sure to stock up. That way as soon as you eat something you’ll be sure to be hungry again a short time later.
7. Don’t eat breakfast.
Get this: 80% of those who have been able to maintain a weight loss of at least 30 pounds for at least a year report that they always eat breakfast. Study after study shows that the people who lose weight and keep it off are those that wake up and eat! Your body needs to get energy from somewhere, so if it doesn’t have food it will use muscle. That’s a major bummer. So continue to kill your metabolism and your muscle growth and skip breakfast. Not only that, by the time lunch and dinner rolls around you’ll be starving and sure to overeat. Bonus!
8. Skimp on sleep.
Who needs rest when you can stay up and eat? Not only that, sleep deprivation causes an imbalance in the body’s hormone levels which causes you to feel hungrier when you’re awake. And when you’re short on sleep, who has the energy to wake up early and workout?
9. Obsess over the scale.
Be sure to use the scale as your only tool to track your progress. Forget about body fat percentage, how your clothes feel, and taking measurements. That way when your body weight doesn’t change or increases because of changes in water weight and muscle mass, you will be sure to feel discouraged.
10. Don’t track anything.
When something doesn’t seem to be working how do you know what to change if you haven’t been tracking it. It’s like Tony Horton says, “How do you know what to do if you don’t know what you did?” From your calories and macronutrients to your workouts, reps, weights, calories burned, etc. There’s no need to get obsessive over numbers but
11. Quit.
When something doesn’t turn out the way we expect it to we often call that a failure. But what we don’t realize is that every “failure” is really an asset for our benefit. What does that mean? Well, if one thing doesn’t work that simply means it’s time to try something different. Some people give up way too soon. What they don’t realize is that they were on the verge of having a major breakthrough. You need to be willing to lose a battle or two in order to win the war. Everyone makes mistakes and has setbacks. It’s how you react to those setbacks that will determine your long-term success. Failure is an event, not a person. Learn from it, continue to move forward, and don’t give up.
Need some extra support and accountability? Make me your official coach and I’ll add you to my private group on Facebook. Each month I give away cool prizes too! 🙂
Amanda is a wife, toddler mom, PMAD survivor, certified nutrition and running coach, recovering perfectionist, and minimalist-in-training. Her mission in life is to help others get off the pity potty, embrace their own brand of weirdness, and get after their dreams. Proverbs 3:5-6