20 ways to keep going while losing weight

oving more, and when you have exercised you feel more motivated to eat good nourishing food. You don’t have to go from nothing to 7 days at the gym each week, but try daily walks and try to incorporate some form of resistance training into your life.

Something that almost all our successful clients have in common is that they all agree they used to be full of excuses. Too much work, demanding family, lots of social engagements… all our success stories have all of these in their busy lives and yet they have all made the time to make the changes they needed in order to change their lives for the better. It isn’t about finding more time, it’s about prioritising the things in your life and perhaps swapping half an hour of Facebook for a brisk walk.

Mindful eating (eating with no distractions like the TV in the background) can significantly improve your relationship with food. Focus on the food itself and how it can nourish your body, and try a trip to the cinema without a box of popcorn (that most of us eat without even realising). If you’re eating with friends or at home, put your phone away, and talk instead about the food itself,

We are used to making a budget for our money and most of us know what we can and can’t afford. But we don’t usually think of our daily calories in the same way. With calories, there is no such thing as a credit card, so we must learn to live within our calorie means, budgeting as necessary. The easiest way to do this is to keep a food diary and track our food and drinks, so we know how many calories we are eating. We can also keep track of how much protein, carbohydrate and fat we consume, and adjust those levels as needed inorder to achieve the levels we want. When you have reached a body composition you are happy with, you get a slightly larger calorie budget in order to maintain your new weight, and the more muscle mass you have the bigger this is (another reason to resistance train!)

It can sometimes be really hard to see how far we’ve come. Think of weight loss like sheets on a toilet roll. Each day, a few sheets will be used and the roll looks no different. But for someone who has been away for a few days, they will see the roll as suddenly much smaller than they remember! It’s the same with fat loss, even though it is hard for us to see our own progress on a daily basis, the people who see us less often will notice because, whether we see it or not, the progress is there. This is why it’s a good idea to record our progress. Weigh daily*, measure weekly, photograph every 2 weeks!

*We recommend weighing daily in order to be able to calculate a weekly average weight. Everyone’s weight fluctuates on a daily basis as well as being affected by other factors such as the female menstrual cycle, stress, sodium, water etc. Weighing daily simply gives us more data, meaning that we can get a much more accurate idea of what’s happening.

If you live with someone, it can be difficult to get up and exercise, make yourself a healthy snack and limit your alcohol intake if they are living a completely different kind of lifestyle. If your flatmate or significant other is on board with getting and staying healthy, then it makes things much easier and more fun!

What worked for your colleague/ best friend/ partner might not work for you. We all require a different number of calories each day just as we all enjoy different ways of getting fitter. It might take you some time to figure out what is the best and most sustainable approach for you, but this isn’t a race so give each approach plenty of time to see which one is the best fit.

Eating a high protein breakfast is one of the best things you can do every morning – it will help to maintain good blood sugar levels and reduce the risk of overeating for the rest of the day. If you can eat at home then consider eggs, meat, nuts, yoghurt etc – if you’re on the go you can prepare mini frittatas or if you forget completely then make a protein shake at work (keep a pack of protein powder in your desk drawer or individual sachets in your bag)

The only way you can really know what is in your food is to prepare it yourself. Getting involved with creating your own food also means that you are taking responsibility for your diet, and you can experiment with using different ingredients you may not have tried before. If you already love to cook then take up the challenge of cooking for friends – you can prepare a healthy meal that ticks all your personal boxes without them even realising that you’re sticking to your diet! In many cases, people think that dieting means salad 3 times a day. You can learn (and show others) that, in fact, that is not the case at all!

In order to lose fat, then your body must be in a calorie deficit. This means that you burn more calories than you take in. You can eat more protein and more fibre and drink more water in order to feel full but, especially if you have been dieting for a long time, you are likely to feel hungry sometimes. Recognising that it is simply part of the process can help, and you can always make tweaks to your diet to ensure you are getting the most nutrition and volume for your calories as you can.

Probably the most important thing of all to remember is that nobody is making you diet. You chose to do it for reasons that are important to you, and of course you can choose to stop dieting at any time if you want to. Realising and remembering that you are in complete and total control over your food choices can make a huge difference in your mindset, and can also make us think twice before complaining about how hungry we think we are!