Getting a little slimmer every single day!
I was doing a coaching session for someone who attended a conference I spoke at. She complained of carrying excess weight and therefore, having back pain and hating the exercise programs she kept on trying to start. She found herself stopping before she had made almost any progress. She needed help. Where to start? How to get her own buy in and consistency? How to make some genuine and real progress in the domain of changing her state of wellbeing and with it her future. What did I tell her?
Weight is lost on the fork….. meaning, we need to eat less if we want to shed weight. First things first, eat 5 mouthfuls less at every meal.
Second, we can't thrive if we put stodge and sugar into our petrol tank. Everything you eat needs to have food value, which bread and scones and muffins don’t have. What should we eat?
Eggs, fruit and veggies, lentils, chickpeas, split peas, beans, lean meat, fish and chicken. Peanut butter is far better than jam and butter!
A little bread is ok, but bread and butter is not doing anything for your body at all except make it heavy. If you have budget constraints, it doesn’t mean you should live on pap and bread!
Samp, sweet potatoes and the foods I’ve already mentioned aren’t expensive foods, but they are nutritionally valuable. Go for quality not quantity.
Third, many people seek a full tummy to make them feel satiated and secure, but the stomach wasn’t designed to be overfilled. By eating slower and chewing your food longer and serving slightly smaller plates of food, you will train your stomach to be satisfied with less. Slow down your eating and really taste the food.
Fourth, exercise, but don’t start by making it too hard, make it fun and make it only a bit challenging, so you can enjoy it and do it again tomorrow. Don’t do too much and crash and burn. Consistency is king. It's more important to build a new habit of regular exercise than to push yourself so hard you don’t have any desire to keep going. When you take small, consistent steps, you will get small wins and those will encourage you to keep on going. It's doing it daily that counts and it's that which gets the results.
Start slowly and eat less and move more. You will see results that make your heart sing. Do it with kindness and compassion for yourself, not with a big whip. Have fun and feel better day by day!
