Shakti

I’ve been there - over-weight, exhausted, overwhelmed, not sure where to start. But start I did and I think I’m pretty fit compared to most people my age ( let’s just say I’m in my 40s).

Here are some tips from my experience.

1 - Focus on changing your eating habits and ignore exercise in the beginning. Trying to do it all is overwhelming and you’re more likely to give up when you’re overwhelmed. Studies have proven time and again that exercise does little for weight loss. Don’t get me wrong - it’s still important for the health of your lungs, heart, muscles, your whole body. But let’s tackle one thing at a time. Focus on eating better and once you’ve got that nailed then start to incorporate exercise. Doesn’t matter if that takes 6 months, it’s important to focus your energy where you’ll get the biggest payoff and most noticeable results, and that’s nutrition.

2 - Focus on the goal of the day, not the big picture. Thinking things like “If I lose 2 lbs every week for the next 10 weeks I’ll be 140 lbs by May, then another 20 lbs by July” - again, gets overwhelming. The path is so long and arduous it’s easy to get discouraged. Focus on meeting your goals today. Then do the same tomorrow. Then again the day after that. Keep your head down and only every once in a while look up to see how far you’ve come.

3 - Don’t make weight loss your goal. Make meeting your calorie or macro target your goal. This is called action-oriented goal setting, not result-oriented goal setting. If you do the actions right the result will happen as a happy side effect.

4 - Come to terms with the fact that this is forever. If you make temporary changes, your results will be temporary. You need to accept that you will need to eat healthy and exercise for the rest of your life if you want to maintain the weight loss. What changes is once you’ve reached your weight loss goal you can have indulgent moments, and recover from them much faster because you’ll only have 2 or 3 lbs to lose to get back to goal, not 20.