Why Slow and Steady Wins The Race
February is a great time to re-evaluate your New Years goals. For those who had fat loss on their list, then this is a perfect article for you. To lose weight and keep it off (even with the best weight loss plan) you need patience. For both physical and psychological reasons, patience is key. And with the added stress and pressure of COVID, patience is even MORE important these days.
First, for the physical; it's hard to lose more than about 1 - 2 pounds of fat a week. If you have such a severe calorie deficit that you are losing more than that, you're also probably losing an appreciable amount of muscle, which is not what you want to do since muscle is your fat and calorie burning machine.
Second, from the psychological perspective, a crash diet is very difficult. You are constantly denying yourself the delicious foods that you want, and since you're on such a difficult diet, the cravings are even harder to resist.
Third, don't even try separating the physical and the psychological. Your body and your mind work together, and part of a good diet is knowing how to get them both to change.
Finally, the more slowly you lose weight (within reason), the easier it will be for your body to adapt. Slow is sustainable, while fast fractures easily. Coach Catherine and Coach Mike are here to help; please ask if you have questions on how they can help motivate you this year still!
The More You Have to Lose, The More You Need Patience to Lose Weight
If you have A LOT of weight to lose, these considerations are even more important. Losing 10 pounds to get cut might be difficult, but losing 50, 75, or 100 pounds takes uncommon dedication.
Patience to lose weight is even more important in these circumstances. It will take you time to lose all that weight, so you need a nutrition plan for the long haul.
And again, it will be easier to keep the weight off if your healthy diet to lose weight is slow. The faster you lose weight, the more chance there is that you'll just gain it right back.
Tips on staying committed:
◆ Get Involved and Busy!
Stay busy!
When you're on a "diet" do not think, "I'm On A Diet." That's a sure way to have an unhappy time and waste a lot of mental energy. This is a lifestyle change - it isn't a diet, it is how you eat now.
The healthiest way to lose weight and keep your mind off of the difficulties of change is immerse yourself in the rest of life. Go for a walk, hang out with friends on Zoom or while social distancing, do work and get involved with interesting projects, take up a new hobby, go to boot camps/Small Group classes, volunteer and so on.
Following a meal plan isn't a full time job. It's a change in eating habits, nothing more or less. So get on with life - which, paradoxically, will distract you and make the meal plan much less painful.
◆ Track Your Progress
Yes. Not neurotically, not anxiously... but track your progress.
For many people, weighing themselves once a week gives a general idea of how you're doing. Or weigh yourself every day, and see the gradual (though not perfectly direct) loss of weight. This is a simple way of tracking your progress. I personally ONLY weigh myself when I am prepping for a competition and even then it is only a few times a month BUT that is what works for me. Most of the time, I focus on how my clothes fit. That really tells me how I am doing.
Don't freak out if you're a half-pound heavier one day than the last, if you've been doing everything right. Your level of hydration, whether you weigh in after a meal, whether you have just exercised can all play a role.
We don't like people to get too caught up on a "number" with weight loss. Another way to track is to learn how to do some basic measurements on yourself and follow those.
◆ Make A Post-Meal Plan Eating Plan
Most importantly, make a post-meal plan eating plan. This may not make total sense - but there should be a slight adjustment once you reach your goal and enter maintenance mode. As someone famous (and probably now dead) once said, "Failing to plan is planning to fail." Without a good post-goal weight plan, all your patience to lose weight will be wasted. Most nutrition sites will call this kind of meal planning, your maintenance calorie intake.
◆ Take Photos
In the beginning this will seem embarrassing and unnecessary. I do not like it either! Do it anyway - trust us. And if you don't trust us, at least fear/respect me enough to take a photo of yourself every month. :)
…Because at the end, you'll look back at that first photo and say, "Damn, I've come a long way!"
And in the middle, when you're just losing steam… this WILL draw your attention back to how important burning fat is to you. And to how much you've accomplished by going slowly. Slow and steady wins the race!