Beginner's Guide to Healthy Weight Loss: The Proper Way to Shed Pounds Safely
Many people struggle with the constant stress and anxiety of wanting to lose weight. Starting from scratch many people do not know where to start and unfortunately fall for marketing schemes and or follow unhealthy advice from others who often contribute eating disorders to those who are desperate in losing weight fast. Society’s media and standards have created a very dangerous and mentally unhealthy perspective of weight and weight loss. Know you are not alone and your health journey isn’t hopeless. In this article we will go over changing your mindset when losing weight and maintaining a healthy lifestyle while also taking care of your mental health.
First, let’s dive into what creates unhealthy relationships between people and food. An unhealthy relationship with food can be a broad spectrum that can be caused by many reasons. For example a person could be suffering from depression and use food as a source to help counteract their negative emotions. On the other spectrum one can become obsessed with every ounce they eat and weigh themselves multiple times a day.
Tons share in the experience of going through a time where they felt like their life was out of control, but found they can control what they eat. It's not uncommon to use food as a way to feel better, even if only for a moment. This however creates a very toxic and negative relationship with food. Food becomes like a drug to suppress what your feeling and is likely to create a binge eating disorder. This is where our feelings and mental health with food can get messy because it can cause you to think food is your enemy. Creating a cycle of restricting foods, struggling to lose weight, finally losing weight, getting burnt out, binging again, gaining the weight back, starving yourself, then repeating each phase over again.
How to break the cycle? This is such a broad and complicated question. With anything it’s easy for someone to just say do it, but it’s a whole other thing to actually accomplish what you are trying to achieve. The biggest thing to help break this vicious cycle is to help heal and better your mental health with your relationship with food. Remember your health journey isn’t about how fast you can accomplish weight loss. A journey should be long and consistent, not a 3 month plan with unrealistic short sighted goals and unhealthy methods. Let’s start with some simple things to get started.
- Instead of eating out, try making your favorite fast food meals at home. You can typically make the foods you love at a much lower calorie and macro amount then what you would get eating out. You will also be eating the food you love without the extra additives, oils, and preservatives.
- Try finding a more nutrient dense alternative to the snacks you usually eat. Let’s use chips as an example. Instead of grabbing a bag of chips, grab a bag of popcorn. Popcorn is typically much lower in both calories and fat. (Keep in mind fat is not bad but something to keep in mind when and if you’re counting macros, this will be expanded more about in another article.) Popcorn is also high in fiber and contains antioxidants. Your cravings can also be better satiated with its versatility of being flavored in either sweet or savory. Overall instead of restricting your calorie intake, concentrate on consuming nutrient-dense foods that will keep you feeling full and content. Think high protein meals that include a good amount of fiber. Remember carbs and fats are not your enemy. In simple terms carbs fuel your body with energy and fat helps with your recovery process from working out and helps build muscle. Some vitamins are also fat-soluble, which means they require a certain amount of fat in your diet for proper absorption. More about this later.
- Find a type of exercise you love doing. This could be dancing, walking, swimming, playing a sport, est. VR gaming is a relatively rising new technological field that can also provide a fun and engaging form of exercise. Exercise shouldn’t be done for the sole purpose of losing weight. Exercise contributes little to weight loss but more importantly helps benefits your heart health as well as gives you better mobility. Going to a gym or a workout class might help some seeking for a community or an outlet to socialize. If you do this just be sure to not over do it to the point you’re pushing yourself even if it makes you absolutely miserable. If you don’t enjoy it you will not keep doing it.
- Taking time for yourself and your mental health to reduce stress can actually help you lose weight. Chronically elevated cortisol levels can lead to weight gain or difficulty losing weight. Cortisol is a hormone that is released by the adrenal glands in response to stress. One of the best things you can do to help reduce your cortisol levels is to get a good night of sleep. Consistent sleep loss will make you heavily fatigued and typically caffeine dependent which produces more stress and increases your cortisol levels. Some other things to help reduce stress are doing things you enjoy such as reading, painting or spending time with loved ones. Meditation can also be a good form to help reduce stress and boost mental health.
- Create realistic goals and expectations. Weight loss takes time and is meant to take a long time, this journey isn’t a race. Think about how long it took your body to get to the state it's at. Focus on healing your relationship with food and creating a new lifestyle. Learn to appreciate and love the body you have in the now and be proud of the accomplishments you achieve. Once you've reached your health and fitness goals, the amount of work needed to maintain that state is minimal.
In summary, some things you can do are to cook your favorite foods at home instead of eating out, turn to nutrient-dense snacks like popcorn instead of chips, find an exercise you enjoy doing, take time to reduce stress by doing something you love as well as getting plenty of sleep/water, and have realistic goals/expectations. These five things are just simple beginning steps to help you on your health journey and fix your relationship with food.
Once you’ve gotten to the point where you feel like your perspective and relationship with food has changed to be more positive you can begin to start taking steps to further help you on your weight loss journey.
Being in a calorie deficit is how you will be able to lose weight. Hearing a calorie deficit may seem scary and oftentimes make people jump to the conclusion they need to drastically restrict what they eat and essentially starve themselves. This is not the case, remember food is not our enemy and restricting only causes us to binge and start the cycle again.
Let’s look at an example of a calorie deficit. Let’s say there is a woman who is 5’ 5”, 242 lbs, and 29 years old. This woman works out about 1-2 times a week. To maintain her current weight she would need to eat 2,553 calories a day. Her calorie deficit would need to be 500 calories to be able to lose weight, leaving her at 2,053 calories a day. Consuming nutrient-dense food with preferably high protein with a good amount of fiber can produce plenty of food within a 2,053 calorie day limit that will leave you more satiated and full. As you lose weight your calorie deficit will also change. You can keep track and check your own calorie deficit using https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/calorie-deficit. When being in a calorie deficit keep your mental health in check. Ask yourself, are you starting to become too obsessed with what you’re eating and how much? If so, take a step back and see why you’re starting to become obsessed and what you can do to heal your relationship with food again. Also keep in mind you should never be starving yourself. If anything or anyone tells you that you should be eating only 1400 calories a day, especially for a long period of time, this is unhealthy.
Once in a calorie deficit you can also determine how much your macros (fat, carbs, and protein) should be within the calorie amount. In another article we will go over the specifics of macros and how it may be beneficial to track them. If this is something that may cause you too much stress it’s mainly important to keep in mind that you should at least have a good amount of protein in each meal you eat or at least in the day. Again more nutrient dense food is best to better help satiate and keep you full.
Additionally supplements are a great source to help boost your journey by giving you more energy as well as providing crucial vitamins you may be missing. Protein powder is also a great and convenient way to incorporate more protein in your journey if you struggle with eating a lot of meat or other protein based foods.
We hope this article has helped you rethink your perspective on weight loss and help you begin your journey with a mindset of healing your relationship with food. Something to keep in mind is being consistent is key to seeing results. With every journey there may be bumps and setbacks along the way. As long as you don’t give up and keep up with your new found lifestyle you will begin to see a change both mentally and physically. If you have further questions or possibly wish for a more in depth plan to help you on your health journey you can contact us by scrolling below this article.
