I love helping women become healthier (body and mind). It’s what I live for. So, it equally drives me crazy and breaks my heart when I see or hear them spinning their wheels trying to lose weight by out exercising their crap diet. This. Does. Not. Work.
I forget sometimes that I live in a health bubble and there is still so much confusion and misinformation regarding weight loss so I wanted to simplify things for you guys. Here is the reader’s digest version for effective weight loss:
- The foundation of your weight loss plan should be consuming whole (non-processed) and nutrient dense foods. This means vegetables and some fruits, nuts and seeds. This should be the primary focus.
- The second thing to consider is the amount of food you are eating. Eating a whole food based, nutrient dense diet will naturally cause you to consume fewer calories but it’s important to be aware of how much you are consuming so you don’t eat too much or too little. Both can be detrimental to long term weight loss. Using apps like My Fitness Pal or My Macros Plus are your best bet here. You don’t have to commit to a life time of calorie counting but it’s essential to know how much food you are consuming if you want to change your body in any way.
- Incorporating resistance training is the next step. This is intentionally put before doing cardio because building muscle is more important for weight loss than just burning calories through cardio. Building muscle will cause your body to burn more calories at rest which allow you to avoid the trap of having to continuously increase activity or cut calories to avoid a weight loss plateau.
- Cardio is often the first thing people do when trying to lose weight but it’s actually the least important part of a sound weight loss plan. If you love doing cardio by all means do it it’s great for your mood and overall health but it’s not the best tool for weight loss. I advise people to focus on the first tree steps first and incorporate cardio if there are any stalls or plateaus in weight loss
Using this pyramid, start from the bottom and lay your foundation. Once that’s in place go to the next level. Spend a week or two focusing on each step until you get to the third. Spend a good 3-4 months here before adding the fourth step. Remember, it may not be easy but it is simple. You can do it.
