Patience My Dear

About a month ago, someone said something along the lines of “Some people need to do _____ because they don’t have as much discipline as you.” I was awestruck. I had no idea what to say. I know myself to be someone who struggles with sticking to projects and ideas. I’ll start a million things but can’t see them to completion. There are distinct differences between what I’ve tried in the past and what I did at the start of this weight loss journey. Specifically, I’ve focused on creating habits with patience. Let’s unpack that.

I’ve spoken about yoyo dieting in previous blogs, and I feel like an expert at those. I’ve tried everything in the book. If you’ve heard anyone say “it’s the sure-fire way to melt belly fat,” I’ve tried it. They all lasted no longer than a month or two. Some of those diets saw results, however, I was incredibly unhappy the entire time. Even if the diet worked, when I stopped, the weight returned faster and even more than when I began the diet.

Define it

Before we talk about creating habits, let’s define what a diet is. Every person has their own opinion on it, but this is what I’ve landed on: a diet is anything where you can “fall off the wagon”, or “take a break” for a vacation. If it’s not something that you can sustain long term no matter life circumstances, then it’s a diet and frankly, it’s dangerous.

I’ve come a long way in 5 months, but I didn’t wake up on November 23, 2020, and start doing all the things I’m doing now and it all just happened to stick. In reality, I woke up on November 23 and decided I was wasting my life away not serving my body what it deserves. I wasn’t creating a life of happiness by any means, and so I decided, “I will work out every day”. That’s the only thing I did for a month. Along with that came some small nutrition changes, because I think that just comes along with thinking about health but it wasn’t intentional.

I believe they say that it takes about 4 weeks to create a habit? Don’t quote me on that, but it’s proven true in my life. I didn’t say that I would do this for a month and then add something. I said I’m going to do this until I don’t question if I’m going to do it or not, then I’ll add something.

DRINK YOUR WATER

In January I started drinking 3-5 litres of water a day and I stuck to that for a month. People underestimate the absolute necessity that is drinking the recommended amount of water. I became less bloated, less hungry, more normal bowel movements. Naturally, I started to drink almost nothing else (other than coffee) because I was satisfied. I prefer to eat my calories and not drink them so a lot changed for the better for me when I drank more water.

TW: Calorie Counting

In February I started to actually track my calories. Some people are going to come at me for saying this. A lot of dieticians and personal trainers would shout from the rooftops that tracking calories is a diet because it’s not sustainable. I’d actually agree with them for the most part. Those people would like everyone to subscribe to “intuitive eating”. This means eating what your body needs and filling it with healthy nutrients. This is great, and I agree but I think that most of the western world is woefully unaware of what our bodies need. We’ve been treating ourselves so badly and trained so wrong by society that we don’t know what or how much of anything is good fuel.

I believe that it’s important to track calories for a period of time until you can accurately know what it is that you need. I’m not there yet and I’ve been doing it for 3 months. I stick between 1600-1800 calories a day right now. I’ll do a whole blog about what to fit into that deficit.

In February, I started weighing myself every day. If you haven’t read the entire post I did about this, check it out.

Have you heard of vitamins?

In March, I started taking vitamins. I’ve struggled with knowing what kind of vitamins I need so I’ve kind of just ignored it. I started taking vitamin D, just because who doesn’t need more sun in their lives? No, but that’s actually one that almost everyone should be taking. I had a friend reach out and let me know that they also struggled with chronic anxiety and vitamin B12 changed their life, so I started taking that too. My anxiety is not gone and I don’t think ever will be but it’s SO much better and I’m so thankful.

The horror of sleep regulation

During the month of April, I learned about regulating sleep. For those who don’t know, I have a sleeping disorder. Doctors have told me that because of that I will have a harder time losing weight than the average person. If you have a stubborn number on the scale, check to make sure you’re getting a good 8 hours. I know some people are going to judge me when I say this, but I actually try to go to bed between 9 pm and 10:30 pm every single night. Obviously, there are nights where that’s out of my control, but I do this because I wake up at 6 am every single morning. I’ve done a fair amount of research on sleep cycles and everyone swears by a strict schedule.

I’ve started making my lunches the night before and setting out my vitamins, water, and journal to alleviate morning stress. I’m a monster in the mornings so I’m trying to set myself up for success.

And that brings us to May which is here! I’m starting to regulate my phone screen time this month and do more reading. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Thanks for sticking with me

This is a really long blog post just to tell you that if you start everything right away, your brain can’t process that much lifestyle change. You need to take it slow and maybe that means not seeing unreal results in the first week. This strategy is for the long haul. I’m excited to live the rest of my life exactly like this. These are lessons and tools that will be a part of who I am forever now! If you’re still here to read this THANK YOU. I appreciate your support.

Bye for now!

Starting Weight: 352
Current Weight: 298
Goal Weight: 150