Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor and this is not intended as any sort of advice for anyone in any situation. These are just my own personal reflections after having gone from an obese person to a fit person. Do whatever you will, I waive all responsibility for your decisions.
Lesson 1: Everyone around you is a self-proclaimed expert on weight loss and loves nothing more than to share their expert opinion on diet/exercise/lifestyle choices. This has been the #1 hardest challenge for me, trying to block out the noise of uncalled opinions, such as "you have to cut out all carbs and do keto!", or "you need to exercise more!" or "you're losing too much weight, you have an eating disorder!", or "that food is bad for you", or "that doesn't work!".. whatever it is, you need to learn to ignore advice from people who are unhelpfully trying to be helpful. No one knows you and your life better than you, there are a thousand ways to reach Rome but only you know the best path for you to get there.
Lesson 2: Set one goal that you can track easily. For me it's been the weight on the scale. Every morning I step on the scale and my goal has been to get that number to drop. Everything else is a distraction. When you set too many goals in life you are setting yourself up for failure. If you want to achieve lasting change, goals need to be singular and easy to track. Let's say at the beginning I had set a goal that I wanted to lose weight, but also to reach a body fat percentage of a certain percent, and reach some fitness goal, and I have to do it in X amounts of months.. I would have to make sure to track my body fat somehow, with a tape measure perhaps. What if I forget? And I would have to track my fitness, make sure I'm progressing in the gym. And what if I'm not reaching all my goals within the time frame I set for myself? I'm not saying it's wrong to exercise or lose body fat, I'm saying if you overcomplicate things, it's more likely you will be overwhelmed and give up.
Lesson 3: Weight loss is achieved through diet and diet alone. You need to consume less energy than you expend and the only way to do it is by knowing how much energy you consume and how much you expend. By knowing how much you can eat and still lose weight you can make a diet plan that will make you lose weight. Download a calorie tracking app, I use myfitnesspal. I plan out all my meals for days ahead. I'm lazy so I meal prep my dinners 4 days ahead. For breakfast and lunch I always eat food that is easy to prepare. I make sure to get as much protein as I can within my calorie restrictions. Learn the best sources of lean protein, my dinners will usually be ground chicken breasts with lots of vegetables for volume. But you have to find your own recipes that you enjoy while still hitting your calories and macros, again don't listen to the "experts", they don't know what works for you, only you do.
Perhaps meal prepping doesn't work for you, perhaps keto works for you, or a vegan diet, I don't know, I'm not an expert on you, whatever causes the number on the scale to go down for you is the right diet for you! I do know however, that if you find a diet that causes you to lose weight, that diet will contain less energy than you consume.
Lesson 4: If you want to lose weight you're going to have to be hungry for a long long time. It sucks, literally it will feel like your stomach is sucking you dry. Whilst uncomfortable, it's your body telling you that you are making progress. Don't see it as a bad thing, the discomfort you feel is you getting closer to your goal. Mentally, you need to shift from thinking "oh I'm so hungry I can never do this, this sucks" to "this is great, my diet is working because I can feel it in my body, it's uncomfortable but in the end it will be worth it because it means I am getting closer to achieving my goals".
Lesson 5: Don't eat too few calories. Crash dieting never works in the long run. You have to experiment and find a calorie deficit that you can put up with for months while still getting results on the scale. For me that number has been a calorie deficit somewhere in the range of 5-800 kcals but it may be different for you.
Lesson 6: Keep yourself occupied and keep your home clean. It's my experience that staying on a diet is easier when you're not home. Home is where you relax and let your guard down. Don't let the demons sit in your food shelves. If you have unhealthy food in your home, you're more likely to screw up on your diet, so throw it out and only have the food that is in your meal plan at home. Working, staying out of your home, bascially avoiding boredom helps keep your mind from thinking about unhealthy food. So try to do that as much as possible.
Lesson 7: When you exercise, be careful of eating too little! Obviosuly working out causes you to expend more energy which in turn will cause you too have a calorie deficit which is too big, this will cause unbearable hunger which in turn will make you overconsume calories. Again, you need to find a calorie deficit that is sustainable in the long run, if you move more, you also have to eat more.
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