These past few months I’ve had one conversation a lot of times. That conversation has been how is it even possible that I’ve lost as much weight as I have this year, and what is my secret? Well, the truth is that I don’t have a secret. There is no magical tablet I’ve been taking. There is no magical formula to my diet. I’ve not been following one particular diet plan. In fact, I’ve completely made up my own diet, and it’s been insanely easy to follow. But, before I did that, I went through a two-month period after finding out what I weighed where I decided I would BEGIN to make changes in preparation for a diet. That’s what I want to talk about today.
I’ve known a lot of people who’ve gone on diets over the course of my life. I’ve known some people who’ve succeeded, and then gained weight again as soon as their “diet” was over. I’ve also known a LOT of people who’ve said that “on Monday I’m starting a diet” and have given up within weeks, sometimes even days. I think the reason for that is that they want to lose weight, but they make these insane decisions to do that which I think are doomed to fail from the start. Why? Because they went “cold turkey” on a number of things, or they made such dramatic changes to their diets that there was no way they could stick to them long term. And losing weight is not something you can do over a few weeks. It’s a serious commitment, and when you want to lose large amounts of weight that takes a lot of planning before you actually begin the diet.
Common Mistakes
There are common mistakes I hear of people making regularly. My favourite one is this one:
I’m going to start my diet tomorrow, so I’ll binge tonight
No. No, no, no, no, no! Do you even realise how insane an idea this is? First off, why are you deciding to start a diet on a particular day? Why are you putting that amount of pressure on yourself? Why are you dramatically changing your whole diet on one day? Do you really think you can stick to that? Even if you have the most will-power in the world, can you honestly tell me that you have so much will-power that you can go from binging on a Sunday night to not eating unhealthily again for days, weeks or even months? If you can, good for you. I can’t. There’s no way I could binge one night and then just stop. Instead, I’d recommend a phased approach. That’s one of the keys to my diet. I took two months where I slowly cut out a number of things, and so when I did “start” my diet I’d already done so much that it didn’t really feel like I WAS giving up anything.
One great example of that is sugar in my hot drinks. I’m a girl with a sweet tooth. I LOVE sweet things. Give me an option of dessert and I’ll hate you for making me say no, or I’ll hate you for making me say yes when I realise what I’ve just done. And there is NOTHING that I like more than sugar in my hot drinks. Whether it’s tea or coffee, I’m always getting the little packs of sugar in restaurants and pouring that lovely, lovely stuff in there. However, I knew that this wasn’t a good thing for me. I also knew I couldn’t just go cold turkey on sugar. I wouldn’t enjoy my hot drinks anymore. So, instead of going cold turkey, the first thing I did was lessen the amount of sugar I had. Rather than scooping a spoon and a half into my coffee I cut that back to a spoon, then half a spoon, and yes I enjoyed the taste of my coffee a little less but I forced myself through it because I knew, long term, that I’d be doing the right thing.
Then, ultimately, I decided I would need to cut the sugar out entirely. So, after a few weeks of progressively having less and less, I stopped sugar all together by substituting it for something else. That something else was HONEY. Yes, honey isn’t the healthiest thing. The healthiest thing is just no sweetening at all. But sweeteners normally leave a horrible aftertaste in my mouth, so when given the choice I always went for sugar. When I was looking at cutting out the sugar I “auditioned” a few sweeteners, and then a colleague of mine recommended honey instead. It was one of the smartest things I’ve ever done. I don’t have a LOT of honey in my drinks, but I do have some. I take a teaspoon and I pour a little bit of honey onto it. Sometimes a whole spoonful, sometimes only half, and then stir it into the hot drink. It adds some lovely sweetness and flavour to the drink, while also providing all the benefits of the natural antibiotic properties of honey. Or at least that’s what I’m told. I just know it makes my tea and coffee taste a LOT better than missing out on sweetening entirely, and it’s definitely better than those foul-tasting sweeteners.
Another of those things I cut back on was “soda”. I love Coca Cola. It’s my favourite soft drink by quite a mile. I could drink 10 cans of it a day without even trying. However, that’s incredibly bad for you. The sugar content is just insane. But, when you’re drinking litres of Coca Cola a day, do you really think it’s the smartest move to just stop? You’ll crave it. You’ll be dying for just a taste of it. And sooner or later you’ll cheat on your diet and you’ll buy some, and when you do you’ll want it more and more. So, I didn’t go cold turkey. Instead, I started buying alternative drinks alongside my Coca Cola addiction. The best one I found was Fanta Zero. Yes, it’s still soda, but the aftertaste of the Zero drinks is minimal, and the Fanta in particular is very enjoyable. Then I started drinking a little Fanta Zero instead of Coca Cola. I didn’t switch from one to the other, but every time I went for a drink and I had a can of Fanta Zero instead of Coca Cola I considered it a little win. Eventually I got to the point that I was going for the Fanta Zero automatically, and then I had Coca Cola cans in my fridge and still felt no desperate urge to drink them. That’s when I knew I was doing well.
The question is, what’s YOUR poison? What incredibly bad thing can you just not live without? What do you reach for whenever you feel you need it? Don’t stop that. Don’t just go cold turkey on it, because you’ll still want it and those habits will be really, really hard to break. But let’s say you’re “addicted” to crisps (chips for our American friends). Why not find something to eat instead? Buy some carrot sticks and occasionally go for them instead of the crisps. Each time you do you should be proud of yourself. And each time you feel like the crisps then that’s ok, but even if you cut down just one or two bags per week in the beginning then that’s what matters. The goal is you’re CUTTING DOWN on these, you’re not STOPPING them. If your poison of choice is takeaway, then don’t just STOP takeaways, but try and eat in a few more times per week. Try and find meals you enjoy, meals you don’t mind spending the preparation time on, and then slowly build that up over the weeks. I allowed myself two full months to get into this mode before I even THOUGHT about the “healthy eating” side of things, because if I’d “begun my diet tomorrow” I’d have gone insane not being able to eat and drink all the things I wanted to.
Get Some Exercise
A friend recently made me laugh when she asked me this.
What’s your secret? I need to know, as long as it doesn’t involve healthy eating or exercise
Well, it does. Those ARE my secrets. However, much like my idea to cut back on the negative things, I didn’t just get up on a Monday morning and declare “I’m going to start exercising”. Also, I’ve lost over a third of my bodyweight in the last 9 months and I’ve done that without an exercise class, without a gym membership and without spending a penny on home gym equipment. I haven’t needed it, because my secret is so simple: WALKING. I go for walks. And while NOW I could go for a walk for an hour and be completely happy when I come home, I didn’t start out that way. There’s a hill by my work that I couldn’t walk up before. There’s a hill leading up to my friend’s flat that I’d have to stop at least once on and catch my breath and recover, and by the time I got there I’d want to collapse in exhaustion. Do you think I COULD have just gotten up and starting “exercise”? Hell no!
Just like my diet tips to begin slow by cutting stuff out, my exercise tips are exactly the same. My biggest advice ever came not from friends, not from family, not from online advice but from my Apple Watch. It suggests I spend one minute an hour, twelve hours a day “standing”. That seems insane, right? One minute an hour, twelve hours a day? What good would that do? Well, you’d be surprised! And it’s SO EASY to do. Are you watching your favourite show? Why not stand up during the advert break? Even just walk to the kitchen and back. You don’t need to pick anything up. You don’t need to do anything productive. Just get up and walk around for a few moments during the commercials. And then at lunch, why not go for a stroll? There’s been government advice recently to walk for 10 minutes a day. Well, I was doing that before the government decided to tell us to. I started that during my lunchbreaks, simply by getting up and getting out of the office and walking five minutes down the road, turning around and coming back again. It was that simple, but within weeks of doing that I found I could walk further, and further, and further, and further, and soon I was walking up that hill that used to almost kill me with relative ease. The first time I walked all the way up it without taking a break I did a little dance of victory. Now I barely even break a sweat going up it. This simple advice has changed my life, and it started by going for really short walks and standing up for a minute an hour, twelve hours a day.
If you’re going to try it, don’t put pressure on yourself. The biggest advice I can give you for exercise is to start it off on your own. Tell your work colleagues that you’re “popping out for some air” and just walk around your building, or walk up to the shop and back (without buying anything). Better yet, if you’ve got something you need to pick up after work, why not spend your lunchtime strolling to the local shop and picking it up there, rather than popping to the supermarket on the way home? As I said before, you’ll be shocked how much you improve so quickly, and how much further you can walk after just a few weeks that would have killed you previously. You don’t need gym memberships or expensive equipment to lose weight, you just need to give yourself a few minutes every day when you’ve got nothing better to do and go out and walk somewhere. If you’ve got a dog, the dog will LOVE you if you take it out with you during these little walks. If your dog is also overweight, think how much you’ll both benefit from it. And what harm does it do to your day?
Let me ask you a very serious question: how many times do you flick through the channels at home looking for something to watch? And how many times that you do that do you settle on something that you don’t REALLY want to watch, or that you’ve seen before and you just watch it for the sake of it, or watch it because the next thing you want to watch isn’t on for half an hour and you’ve got that time to kill? THESE are the times that you can make use of. There’s nothing on TV right now? Then go out for a quick walk. You don’t need to buy fancy exercise clothes. Just throw on a t-shirt and get out there. You don’t need to buy any equipment, just use your own body. The more you walk, the better you’ll feel, and better yet the more weight you’ll lose. This is because the more calories you eat, the more you need to burn off. And these short, simple walks do that. If you have the spare money, invest in something like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch and then just check what difference that makes for you, because these devices count your steps and estimate the number of calories you’ve burned. And honestly, you’ll be stunned how quickly those calories add up just by doing really simple bits of “exercise”.
Set Yourself Realistic Goals & Don’t Be Afraid To Cheat
My final bit of advice for this blog entry is that no matter how much you want to lose, set yourself REALISTIC goals. The longer you give yourself to lose weight, the easier it’ll be and the less you’ll need to try. So, if you think you want to lose 20 pounds, give yourself 20 weeks to do that. Then that’s ONLY one pound a week you’ve got to lose, and if you’re cutting back on the rubbish stuff and you’re getting out there just for really short walks every day that’ll quickly add up. When I started out I was 155kgs (341lbs, or 24st 6lbs). I was a big ol’ fatty. As of this morning I am 91kgs (200lbs, or 14st 5lbs). Originally, I set myself the goal of getting down to 95kgs, and I wanted to do that by Christmas. I thought 12 months was a realistic goal. I’m so happy I chose that.
I thought if I could lose 5kgs a month then I’d be on track. That, therefore, was 12 months to lose 60kgs. I’ve well exceeded that but there were weeks where I didn’t lose even 1kg. There were weeks when I stood on the scales and was mad at myself for having only lost 0.5kgs. Ultimately, I shook myself down, I promised myself I’d do better, and the next week I worked a little harder to improve on that. Inevitably it worked. But when that weight didn’t want to come off that week I promised myself that I wouldn’t give up, because I had my goal, I knew it was realistic and something I could achieve, and I was determined to keep going. 1kg a week (which is roughly what I wanted) is only 2lbs a week. But if you go even less than that, if you set yourself a target of just 1lb a week, then anything you achieve ABOVE that will make you feel even better. It’s a wonderful feeling to exceed your targets after all. It’s a wonderful feeling to see the weight coming off faster than you hoped. And if you set yourself an unrealistic goal, if you think you can lose weight too fast, then you’re not going to see those numbers coming down and you’re going to be discouraged, and nobody wants that.
In combination with the realistic goals, I have to say one thing that really helped me was weighing myself only once a week. I chose Saturday morning for my weigh-ins. They were the ONLY day of the week that I would stand on the scale and acknowledge my weight. If you’re doing it every day then you’re putting way too much pressure on yourself, after all if you had a big glass of water or you’ve eaten and it hasn’t completely gotten through your system yet, or even if you ate later than normal, then all of these things can affect your weight on a daily basis. Don’t do that to yourself. Only weigh-in once a week. When that happens, congratulate yourself for whatever you’ve lost, and this is the biggest, most important part: CELEBRATE IT!
You can celebrate it with a fist pump. You can celebrate it with a hug with your loved ones. You can celebrate it by tweeting about it. Or, you can celebrate it by rewarding yourself with a cheat day. And cheat days are the single best thing you can have on a diet. After all, it’s only athletes who can keep themselves on a restricted diet every single day of the year, and those people are INSANE! They train every day for hours, they make their money by being insanely fit and able to push themselves far beyond the limits of normal people, and we’re just normal people. We’re not built for pushing ourselves that much. So, don’t be afraid to cheat. On that day of your weigh in, celebrate with a bit of a cheat. Have something that you’ve banned yourself from having. Have a few bits of chocolate, if chocolate is your thing. Have a can of soda if soda is your thing. Whatever you do though, and you can do whatever you want since it’s your cheat day, then don’t forget that the next day you’re back on the wagon. So get it out of your system. Have your fun. And then the next day get back to work on your diet and exercise plan. And trust me, no matter how big you are you CAN lose weight… you just need to have a sensible start by preparing yourself properly and avoiding the common mistakes.
If you ever want help or advice with your diet, just ask me. I’ll do whatever I can to help. Contact me on Twitter (@AlexisEbdon) or on Facebook (Facebook.com/ajebdon) and feel free to ask me anything, and I’ll answer as honestly as I can. But just remember, there is no magical wand you can wave to change your weight, but when you get there you’ll feel like everything you had to go through will be worth it. Trust me on that. I never thought I’d get to where I am, and today I’m writing this to tell you how you can help yourself.
Best of luck!
xxx