I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about people starting their day 1 recently, and that’s inspired me to start a thread sharing my advice and the tips I’ve learned along the way. I’m by no means perfect (I posted in here a week or so ago because I was deeply upset with my progress, honestly), but I have lost around 150lbs in these two-ish years and I want to give back to the community that has helped me get this far, and who continues to help me move forward. Passing the baton, so to speak.
Also, mobile so formatting may be weird.
Also also, this is super long so I apologize for that also lol.
• Day 1: Remember something very important, this is not a diet. It isn’t a quick fix. It isn’t going to be something you do for two weeks and then go back to your regularly scheduled programming. It has to be a lifestyle shift, a learning process. You have to basically enter your cocoon and begin the learning process of learning proper nutrition, why you need calories, how your body interacts with those calories, and what your specific body needs. It sounds overwhelming, I know, but take it one day at a time. One hour, one minute, whatever it takes for you to actually succeed and stick to it.
This body that you’re in now will still be your body two weeks, two months, two decades from now. There is no time limit on this, but if you start now and begin making slow progress, you’ll be in a better place tomorrow than you were today.
• Above all else, literally everything else, is sustainability. What is sustainable for you in this moment, at this point in your life? There is literally nothing else that matters more than this. Stop reading all the intense health advice from tight-bodied gurus who tell you to do a billion different things, and listen to your own body.
If you’re someone who is very, very sedentary and who eats food for comfort rather than nutrition then trying to suddenly work in a two hour workout, a 10k run, a super nutrition-based whole food will lead to burnout more often than not.
Make small changes. Weight loss is a bit of a snowball effect, as is a healthy lifestyle. Little changes add up and before you know it, you’ve turned your life around.
I can’t tell you what those small changes will be for you. Everyone is different. For me, it was learning the calories of my favorite snacks and trying to find alternatives that were lower calories. Instead of double stuffed Oreos dipped in milk, it became golden thin Oreos split in half and dipped in oat milk. Instead of pizza and cheese sticks from Pizza Hut, it became just cheese sticks. Little, incremental changes will be the changes that you are able to hold on to and keep with you forever.
• Dont restrict yourself. Carbs aren’t bad. They’re empty and tend to leave you feeling hunger sooner, which tends to lead to a higher calorie intake throughout the day, but they do not inherently make you fat. If you eat 1,5k calories of bread or 1,5k of vegetables in a day, you will have consumed the same amount of calories and it will impact your body (ignoring nutrients) in the same way. You will just be much, much hungrier at the end of the day on bread than on vegetables. I’ve had days where I’ve ate my 1,5k in donuts and crackers, and I’ve still lost the weight. Candy, sugar, cake, sweets, ice cream are not your enemy. Moderate them, don’t give yourself easy access to them if you feel the need to binge on them.
• Buy a food scale. Make it your best friend. Weigh everything.
• On that same note, if that’s too much for you in the beginning, then make accommodations to make it easier on yourself. The first six months of my weight loss I ate nothing but frozen meals. Healthy Choice Power Bowls, Luvo, basically anything from the “healthy” section of the frozen meal isle became my best friend. These meals are high in salt usually, but they were prepackaged and had whole, real ingredients that I could easily track in my app without too much thought. The barcode scanner was the reason for my success. Also, those ritz cracker stacks that come prepackaged as individual servings.
If you don’t want to invest in frozen meals, I’d suggest meal prepping or at least making your food more accessible. If you buy fruit and veggies, wash and prepare them for easy grabbing. If you buy chips and cakes, separate them out into calorie-marked bags.
• If the most you can change about your eating habits is searching for low-calorie substitutes, then that is perfectly fine. Progress is progress. I drank Coke Zero like my life depended on it for the first year of my journey. There is no shame.
• You don’t have to work out. You just don’t. Will your weight loss be faster and will your body be healthier and will your “end” result look much nicer? Yes, sure. But if staying on track and monitoring your calorie intake means not working out, then dont. I lost my first 100lbs without working out at all. The next 25 came from IF, this last 25 have came from finally starting to introduce sporadic workouts. Only the last 2 have been the result of daily workouts, lol.
• Understand that your weight loss will slow down and you will go days, weeks even, without seeing progress. Trust the process. Look into the infamous “whoosh” people talk about on here.
When you first start, depending on the amount of weight you have to lose and how dramatic your lifestyle changes are, you can easily see 20lbs of weight loss in a month. My first three months I lost 30lbs. That does not last forever. Average weight loss is about .5/1lb a week. Max is usually 2lbs.
As your BMI/Body fat percentage decreases, it will become more “difficult” to lose weight. This just means it will come of more slowly, because it is a larger percentage of your total weight. Don’t let this discourage you. Progress is progress. Loss is loss.
• Don’t try to crash diet. Don’t punish yourself. You ate 3,5k calories yesterday? Cool. It’s over. Keep going. Eat your goal today, don’t try to restrict yourself or you will begin a vicious cycle of binging and restricting. Anything less than 1,2k is going to lead to binging cycles, more often than not.
3.5k on Monday, 1.5k on Tuesday, 1.5k on Wednesday, 2k on Thursday, 1.8k on Friday is still better than 3.5k on Monday, 900 on Tuesday, 300 on Wednesday, 9k on Thursday, 5k on Friday.
• Above all else, be kind to your body and mind. Work on your mental state. Understand why you reach for comfort foods and also why you started this journey. Sure, we all want to be thin and strong and lean, but why else are you doing this? To live to see your grandkids? To run without pain? To go up the stairs without feeling like you’re suffocating? To be able to sit with your knees up in your computer chair (this was one of my personal goals lol)?
Beauty cannot be the only motivator. Beauty is fleeting. Prioritize yourself.
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