This post is going to be a good one but may hit you between the eyes as well if you are guilty of some of these self-sabotaging habits.
But I don’t want you to be discouraged.
Everyone probably does some of these at some point. I do these sometimes. It’s about whether these things become a HABIT that sabotage your fat loss efforts. So keep that it mind, this is meant to put a spotlight on things that are keeping you from achieving what you want to achieve, not a guilt trip.
These bad habits aren’t in any particular order of importance. These are all things that in my experience, when people let these things turn into a habitual part of their lives, are a recipe for not achieving your fat loss goals.
Also! If you haven’t read to part one and two of this series yet, do that first!
Number One is a big one: consuming sugary drinks.
If you are in a season of fat loss, you want your calories going to foods that are going to fuel your workouts or help you stay full and satisfied. Sugary drinks do neither of those.
So what am I talking about, specifically? Non-diet sodas, frilly coffee drinks like Frappuccino’s or lattes with syrups and whole fat milk added to them, alcohol is a big one…it may not have sugar but it has a lot of calories, also juice, energy drinks.
Look at your label on your drink and if it isn’t around 20 calories or less per serving you don’t need to be drinking it regularly. Notice I said regularly, there’s a season for everything right? But sugary drinks probably don’t belong in a season of fat loss.
Number 2: Treating weekends differently than weekdays.
Ok, so this one was SUPER hard for me to break.
I am really goal-oriented so I would tell myself things like “eat really good this week so you can splurge this weekend” and stuff like that.
I’m not talking about 1 planned meal that you eat a little more decadently than the rest of the week and then you go back to your normal eating habits. That’s planned and that’s ok if it helps you stay on track for the rest of the week.
I’m talking about all effort flies out the window all weekend.
Seriously, I can’t tell you what a difference it made for me when I started treating weekends like my weekdays. I was sabotaging my efforts so badly before, I’d work so hard all week eating right and then blow it so bad on the weekends and it would show.
Honestly I think it was because I didn’t want to acknowledge how 2 days of eating without limits could actually offset a whole week of work. Once I acknowledged that, and put some limits on myself for the season a fat loss I was in, my results started coming.
Number Three: Inconsistency.
You record your calories 1day, then you don’t for 2 days, then again for 3 days you track, and then you stop. Same goes for your workouts, you go to the gym one day one week, then 5 days the next week.
The problem here is usually that you haven’t set realistic goals for yourself. You set your expectations too high. Maybe attempting to track every single day or go to the gym 5 days a week when you have never exercised regularly or attempted to eat right is too lofty of a goal right now. Don't set yourself up for failure.
Instead, set SMALL, attainable goals for yourself: using the plate method instead of tracking, for instance if you are new (if you don’t know what that is, go read part 2 of this series). You can download the free guide here that goes over that.
So set those small goals and crush them rather than set unattainable goals and fail. You can always add onto your goals as you get into the habit.
Number 4: Not planning for sweet cravings.
The next bad habit that is undermining your fat loss efforts is not planning for sweet cravings. Or salty, whatever is your kryptonite.
Here’s the thing: It's really hard to just cut sugar or sweets out of your life completely and it's sort of unrealistic long term. Are you really going to not eat a slice of your kid's birthday cake for the rest of your life? If you have that kinda willpower than more power to you! Because I don’t.
I love sweets, and fun fact about me, I have a home bakery that I make the most amazing baked treats out of, and I honestly can’t just muscle up the willpower to avoid all sweets in my life even if I’m in a season of fat loss. So what are us sweets lovers to do?
Make a plan! First, prepare your environment to set yourself up for success. Get rid of the unhealthy stuff around. I keep all my baking supplies in a place I can’t see them in a cabinet to reduce the temptation.
If you have a box of cookies on the counter then you are setting yourself up for failure. You KNOW you are going to want a bite every time you walk by.
Every Halloween the kids of course get loads and loads of candy, and its usually the good stuff like Snickers or Reeses. It's super hard for me to say no to chocolate and peanut butter.
So what I do every year is I put it all in a big bowl and it goes in my husband’s locked study. So if I want to sneak in there and eat candy I have to face him on the way😂.
The main point here is that it gets put out of sight.
So do what you need to do and prepare your environment.
Oh, and if you are like: Well my kids have cookies and snack cakes and candy they like to have around, then just ask them to put it in their room or something.
Or maybe really think about if THEY need to have that around. They may be thin now, but set them up for success! Processed sweets for snacks aren’t a habit that will help your kids in the long run, or anyone for that matter, whether you are thin or not.
Alright, off my soap box there. And please know I’m not judging here. I’ve been there too but it didn’t serve me and get me to my goals and I want you to know that as well.
So once you’ve prepared your environment, PLAN a healthy sweet treat for the night. Could be some Greek yogurt with fruit, could be a square of dark chocolate (if you can stop at one, I don’t do this because I can’t stop at one), could be a something you make every week for this purpose.
Every week I make a batch of crustless chocolate cottage cheese cheesecake -sounds weird I know- but man it is SO good. It only takes me like 5 minutes to throw the batter together and 40 minutes to bake, and let me tell you it is time WELL spent. Because I know at the end of a long day after putting SIX WHOLE children in bed I am going to be wanting something sweet and delicious. So I plan for it.
By the way, I put this recipe in my Free Guide for Fat Loss without Counting Calories. .
Ok this next one I have for you is a doozy.
Number 5: Not being aware of and/or not having a plan for emotional eating.
Ah, emotional eating. Our favorite coping mechanism.
Anyone else out there an emotional eater? Like something goes wrong in your day and then something else and then it snowballs and you finally are so keyed up you just start digging through the pantry for that half a bag of chocolate chips and just down it?
Anyone else been there? You aren’t alone my friend. So many people struggle with this.
I’m not a psychologist so I’m just going to speak from my own experience and understanding with this (although I did run it by my therapist and she said it's right 😂).
So your brain makes pathways when you do something regularly.
So there’s a trigger, something happens, and your brain follows a pathway that when you feel a certain way then you think about food.
I’m WAY simplifying this by the way. Like I said I’m not a psychologist.
Anyway, so when we eat emotionally, it follows a pattern.
Big emotional trigger--->brain says "we treat this feeling with food!" --->brain creates an overwhelming urge to eat.
So we need to help our brains remake that pathway.
I could talk about this forever but for simplicities sake, right now focus on being aware of this.
NOTICE wow, I’m super stressed and have an overwhelming urge to eat, what happened here?
Just be aware of what your emotional eating triggers are to start, plan to prevent them if you can, and then teach your brain to create a different pathway by doing the new thing, the desired coping mechanism, over and over.
You can even do a compromise sort of to lessen the reinforcement of the bad pathway, such as instead of eating half a bag of chocolate chips im going to measure out 25 and only eat that many.
Your brain is retrainable for sure! I have been working on this and now cope with taking a bath instead of eating everything in sight. Not easy, but very possible to retrain your brain.
I will say that if you have a super big problem with it, like you are binging or purging or something like that, then I highly encourage you to work with a therapist to help you reprogram your brain.
Number Six: Not planning meals.
This one is a big one. Well, I feel like they are all big, but this is probably one of the biggest.
Not having a plan for meals.
So you download my free guide, are going to try and eat right and next thing you know its 4pm and you still haven’t gone to the store for dinner and you have NO IDEA what the family is eating tonight. Chick-fil-a it is! Sound familiar?
I was sooo bad about this. The remedy is to meal plan.
Yes, it takes work. It takes intentionality. But if you have real goals and real desire for change then that’s what it takes.
It doesn’t mean you have to prep everything, some people like to do that and that’s great, especially if you are taking your lunch to work or something. But you need to plan.
What I do is a set aside an hour to and hour and a half each week and write down the plan for literally every meal we will eat this week. What are the kids eating for lunch, snacks for school, what am I eating for lunch, what is the family eating for dinner? I plan each one out.
Sounds like overkill to a lot of people, but let me tell you my stress level is WAY down. Because there’s a plan. Also I don’t go to the store 5000 times a week anymore😂.
I am going to do a whole episode on meal planning soon, so we will dive into that more later, but for now work on having a plan for a minimum your lunch and dinner meals.
So to recap, our 6 habits that are sabotaging our fat loss are: drinking sugary drinks, treating weekends different than weekdays, inconsistency, not planning for sweet cravings, and not being aware of or planning for emotional eating, and not meal planning.
So your action-item for this week, what I want you to focus on, is pick the biggest one of these habits, just one, and work on improving it. That’s your goal, and think about what needs to happen to get the needle going in the right direction.
For example, if you struggle with drinking sugary drinks, think about when you usually do that.
Wine after the kids go to bed? Juice with breakfast? Driving through Starbucks for a frilly coffee drink? Then think about what you can do instead of that.
Take action, come up with a plan.
That’s it for this week, and this ends our fat loss series! I will be doing a series very soon on muscle gain so look out for that.
Happy lifting!
-Rachel
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