Hello All, Today marks the start of our 14 Day Plan and Prep Challenge. Many experts and nutritionists encourage people to keep a food journal when they are trying to lose weight. Why, because keep track forces you to be conscious of your eating habit in a different way. You will be surprised to learn how much of your actions and reactions in daily life are food centered or affect your eating. The more you begin to pay attention to the details of your eating habits, the better you will be able to understand your motivations and stressors that affect things like emotional eating. You will also see the things you need to stop eating so that you can create a new eating plan to address cutting back or cutting out those foods.
Keeping a food log is also about figuring out what you DON’T eat.
Another good reason to start a food journal for weight loss is it will reveal what you don’t eat. People can overemphasize calorie counting and miss the fact that they are nutritionally deprived. Leading culprits of this are processed diet foods, like 100 calorie snack packages and sodium rich frozen diet meals. They make for easy recording in your journal and can help you maintain your calorie goal, but you have to look at what they contain to see if there is enough nutrition in it. Are you getting enough nutrients?
I’m so excited for you because over the next 5 days you will have the opportunity to do something that could change the course of your weight loss journey and ensure success going forward. What is that?
TELLING THE TRUTH about what you are actually eating and drinking. Period.
Do you find yourself eating too much or eating too much of the wrong things? Do you feel compelled to lie when people ask you how your diet is going or what you’ve eaten today. Do you hide food or feel bad about what you eat? Do you feel deprived and want to be able to better balance eating the foods you love and healthy foods without feeling guilt? Well, the truth will set you free. Over the next 5 days, let go of judgement and just eat. Whatever you eat, write it down. Simple.
Some of you may be saying at this point, “I eat really healthy. Why do I need to do this?” Yes, many of you are doing very well. There may be a few tweaks that you need to make to your eating habits, but for the most part you have a clear idea of what is healthy for you. That’s great. This 14 day process will help you refine your eating habits even more and get the results you want. Consider it a “Check-in”. It’s better to know you are on track than to guess, right?
70-80% of your weight loss success depends on what you are putting in your mouth. Food and drinks. In order to create a custom meal plan that works, we have to first figure out what is not working and our 5 day meal log will help us do just that.
- What are you eating?
- How much are you eating?
- How does emotion/stress figure into hunger?
Keep your log on paper with the form provided in the challenge workbook. You can do this with an app or online tool, like My Fitness Pal. You can use a regular notebook or journal. It’s up to you. Just be honest.
That handful of candy from the office candy bowl? Log it. That delicious, healthy meal you cooked from recipes you took time to research? Log it. Whether it’s soda, almonds, lean protein or french fries…LOG IT!
Yo-Yo dieting is expensive. Buying into weight loss plans over and over again is expensive. Gym memberships and personal trainers cost money. Buying pills and supplements for fad diets is expensive. Time is money, and you will spend a lot of it on your weight loss efforts in terms of workouts, preparing meals, etc. Knowing all of this, means that it is important to commit to your weight loss goals and do the work so that all of your effort doesn’t go to waste.
Today’s Weight Loss on a Budget Tip – #29: Don’t Follow The Fads! This tip is really easy to understand and follow. The bottom-line is that weight loss is an Industry! Any industry needs products, diverse products. If you’re in business, you also have to create new products to keep your marketshare and keep your customers interested. The way this works in the diet industry is that there are new fads, books and workout styles that become popular each year and those that die out. Sometimes the old diet and exercise fads will come back, and sometimes they are exposed as fads and abandoned by their followers. Buying into all of these plans and equipment can be very expensive, especially if you don’t lose weight with these plans.
Today’s tip for weight loss on a budget: Tip #28: Feed Your Family Healthy Food and Save Money. One of the main issues I hear from mothers is that they have to be able to feed their whole families while changing to healthier eating habits. Many people think that eating quality food has to be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be if you are strategic and do your research about deals, sales and pricing.
It’s day 22 of our October Challenge and we are focused on how we can save some money while losing the weight at the same time. Today’s Weight Loss on a Budget Tip: #22 – Skip Diet Foods and Pre-packed “Healthy” Snacks.
Weight Loss on a Budget Tip #21: Look for Free Weight Loss Related Offers Online! That’s right! If you are willing to do the work you can find lots of offers for free stuff online that can help you with your weight loss efforts. Here are just a few examples (some are limited time offers):