If you are struggling to lose weight there are a lot of things you can look at to help make improvements. Your diet should be the first! It doesn’t matter how much exercise, steps, or movement you get throughout the day, if your diet doesn’t match what you are doing it’s left just as confused as you are.
Whenever I get started with a newbie there are 5 habits we work on changing to help make a lasting change.
- Planning. Do not underestimate planning out your meals for the week, days, or even to the hours of the day. We all live busy lives and having your meals set for the day will make your daily activities 10x’s smoother. It will also allow you flexibility to move meals around when you know what you will be eating. Not planning is planning to fail.
- Eat every 3-4 hours. If your work schedule doesn’t allow this, just push it to when your breaks are. The idea is to be eating more often *if you can* to help with you getting hangry and going off the deep end with eating anything you can get your hands on. If you need to spread it out just make sure your meals are a little bigger to help you stay fuller longer. Bonus: you can set a reminder to go off every time you need to eat to help you out.
- Add in veggies and fruits. Especially when starting out, I hattttte taking food items out. There is a time and place for that, but not when you are first starting. Any minor changes you make your body is responding. You may not immediately *see* those benefits i.e. weight loss, but it’s happening. You don’t need to change everything in one day or month. Slowly building on your habits will help make them stick much better then doing it all at once! Add in 1-2 servings of each or aim to add them into each of your meals. You can keep it simple by just adding it in as a side or make it right into your meal.
- Wait 10-15 mins before going in for another meal or seconds. Most of us are so out of whack with our hunger cues we don’t even know when enough is enough. Your body takes minutes to register how much food you have eaten to then send the “all full’ signal to stop eating. Waiting is one of my favorite habits I use to keep me from eating like an asshole. I couple this with eating out and halving my entree as soon as I get it.
- Track what you are eating. I had to throw this in here, because it changed my mindset game. I didn’t realize just how MUCH or even how little I was eating at times until I did this. Most of my clients are shocked the first time they do this, because they just didn’t know. Knowledge is power my friends and knowing where you are currently at can help you that much more to your goals. You can track your food by hand, with an app, or even just your protein for the day as that is the number one macronutrient women fail to get in.
So, there you have it. 5 habits you can start changing now to help you with your diet.
