Why am I not losing weight?

imageSeriously though.

Since college I’ve “worked out” pretty regularly and ate “okay”.

I was by no means obese, but I was never a small girl. I knew this and always wanted to change it, but for the life of me, could not figure out why the scale was staying the same…or worse…going up!

Maybe first, real quick, I should talk about MY why.

As we have previously discussed, I am a physical therapist. I can’t stand when people are hypocritical. If I am going to sit there and tell my patients to work out and lose weight, I feel I need to be healthy and in shape too!
My bigger why, however, is that I didn’t love myself. If you don’t love yourself, then you need to make a change. I finally commited to making changes that would make me happy, healthy, and confident.

I made two super common mistakes.

  1. I lied to myself about my eating habits.
  2. I did exactly the same thing over and over and over again at the gym.

From college, until about two years ago, all I ever did at the gym was the elliptical. Almost daily, elliptical for 30-60 minutes, and that was it. Your body cannot continue to change if you don’t change too!! Changing your workouts is key to seeing continued results so that your body can break through the inevitable plateaus.

ABS ARE MADE IN THE KITCHEN, NOT THE GYM!

I am sure you have all heard this before. I would keep a tally in my head of what I ate that day and literally lie to myself. What? No, I didn’t eat 6 cookies. If I say it didn’t happen, then it doesn’t count. I’m not even kidding about this. When I racked my brain to why I wasn’t losing weight, I could convince myself, every time, that I wasn’t eating “bad”.  Let’s not even talk about the frequent bowls of pasta I ate for dinner and the fries I ate for lunch.

So how did I lose my weight? I have such a crazy formula for losing weight, it’s going to blow your mind!

Wait for it…

Exercise and eat better!!

I know, I know, your mind IS blown.

I don’t really want to say “diet” because that implies you do something for a bit, lose the weight, and return to your “normal”. Rather, I adapted to better eating habits and changed my way of life. At first, it seemed like a daunting and frankly miserable task. Of course, all my favorite things were huge “no-no”…soda, cheese, bread, pasta.

In the beginning, I was super strict because, well, you almost have to be. I had to take everything away from myself so I could figure out what moderation really is and how I could achieve a happy balance without being miserable. I didn’t have a set time limit “for x amount of weeks I will do y”. One day, about two years ago, I started eating right and the rest is history.

Do I still have soda sometimes? Yes!
But do I have one everyday? No and you know what…I don’t even want one every day anymore.

Do I ever eat pizza, pasta, and bread? TOTALLY! Again, not every day.

I am not perfect, I am human. I have weekends of total and utter binging. The important thing is that I am able to do that and then continue back to my new “normal” life. If your new “normal” is overall healthy, indulging every so often is not going to derail all the work you have done.

Anyhow, I know a lot of people, myself included, want some new fad diet to magically lose weight. But at the end of the day… good ‘ol diet and exercise is what really, and truly, works.

How well did it work? I lost 30 plus pounds and have kept off for almost two years.

For me, the key was to find food that I still got excited about, but didn’t need to feel guilty about.

More on that later.

 

I will post another blog with more specifics about what I actually ate and what workouts I did at the gym.

 

 

 

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