30 Lessons from 30 Pounds of Weight Loss: Part 1
Back in January I received an invite to one of my close friends weddings. The save the date told me that the party was going down in the middle of June and that I needed to bring my dancing shoes.
The dancing is neither here, nor there, but I felt was important for the story, haha!
Like many, when I received my invitation, I thought about what I was going to wear. I pulled out a few of my 'go-to’s’ as far as fancy-pants, dress up clothes, and much to my dismay, the pants didn’t fit.
I’m not talking about sucking it in.
I’m talking about stealing one of my wife’s hair ties and wrapping it around the fly of the pants to bungee those suckers shut.
Alas, my weight-loss motivation began!
From January 2023 to June 17th 2023 I lost a total of 36 pounds on the scale. As a Personal Trainer, and someone who tends to work with individuals who have their own weight loss goals, I am no stranger to the 'process’ of losing weight, however, this time was different, as I documented the different strategies I used along the way.
Here are the first 10 (of 30 total) strategies I used to help navigate over 30 pounds of weight loss.
1) Put the motivating factor somewhere you can see it every day.
In this case, I didn’t want to spend $100+ on a new wedding outfit to accommodate my new body proportions. I hung the pants up that I wanted to wear front and center in my closet so I saw them every damn day when I grabbed a pair of socks. Whether it’s your goal written on a post-it note or the cute top you want to wear, make it visible, and see it every day.
2) Give yourself time to lose weight. Slow isn’t sexy, but slow is enjoyable.
I gave myself a solid 5 months to lose weight with a goal of 1 pound per week. I ended up going over my goal of 25 pounds, which had to do more with the sustainability of my strategies. By giving yourself months (not weeks) you can slow roll the weight loss, and make more small changes that are less dramatic in your current lifestyle.
3) If the goal is weight-loss, focus just on THAT goal.
In the past I have often tried to lose fat AND build muscle or lose fat AND do ____ alongside…what I did this time, and highly recommend it for those who have singular goals, is to focus just on that 1-thing and not try to add additional goals along the way. By focusing on just losing fat and weight on the scale, I was able to take a lot of perceived pressure off my plate, keep my weekly/daily ‘goals’ manageable, and devote my energy to one over arching goal much more efficiently. In short, keep the goal the goal.
4) Nutrition > Workouts
Over the first month I lost about 8 pounds and people noticed. When they asked me what I was doing in the gym, many were shocked that I said ‘nothing’. I had really focused on cleaning up some poor nutrition habits and spent the first 4ish weeks on finding sustainable (and enjoyable) nutrition habits that would help keep me consistent in the kitchen. This was probably the best thing I did throughout the entire process. I actually followed my own advice that I wrote about in this past article. Like I said in the intro- I help people do this for the living, I really needed to walk the talk, and there aren’t any secrets to the success.
5) Steps matter.
The hardest part - for me- was having the self realization that my activity levels are very low. I work from home, spend a lot of time with my 18 month of baby, and don’t walk 15-20K steps in the gym like I once used to. I had to really work to get 7,000 steps a day and also programmed cardio - walking and biking - as my warm up when I worked out. The cardio didn’t magically make me lose weight, rather, it helped me reach movement/step count minimums that have been proven to help with total HEALTH.
6) You can drink and lose weight, but it’s really hard.
The first thing people assume when you lose weight is that you quit drinking. I knew during this weight loss period that I wanted to enjoy 1-3 drinks a week, but wanted to make sure I did it in such a way it wouldn’t negatively impact my goals. You can lose weight and drink, but what tends to happen is you enjoy a few drinks and then think eating half a pizza is a good idea. If you can keep the alcohol calories isolated, and enjoy them alongside your calorie deficit, you can do it.
7) SLEEEEEEEEEP
During the second month of my weight loss I really focused on getting 7 hours a night of sleep. More is better, but realistically, as a parent of two under 5 years old, 7 hours is a lot. Studies have proven that the more sleep you get the better adherence someone has towards exercise and nutrition. When you sleep, your body can focus, also when you sleep, you can’t stuff your face with midnight ice cream sandwiches.
8) Automate as much as you can.
Decision fatigue is real. Automate what you can. By automate I mean, order groceries for pick up and/or delivery on certain days. Make sure you have a fitness program or personal trainer who can modify workouts for you to keep consistent. Take as much off your plate as possible! Shameless plug, I worked out with my Home Gym Heroes community - the monthly workout subscription that I write- shout out to those homies for keeping me consistent! Click here to check it out!
9) Make your goals public
I am very thankful for having some awesome family support. I told my wife what my goal was and that she could help me by not leaving her snacks around the house and buying less junk food. I also told her that I would be weighing some of my food to better measure it and that it was a normal part of the weight loss process. So, in a way, I told her my expectations of her as well as what she could expect from me. Her support has been amazing!
10) Have an anchor activity
I’ll talk more about workout-stuff specifically in further installments of these 30 goals, but this is a huge takeaway. In order to give me a solid baseline of 1 workout per week, I started playing pickup basketball on Sunday mornings. This gave me community accountability, a fun fitness activity that I wanted to do, and ensured that even in my worst weeks, I would have 1 workout completed. I always recommend to my clients that having an anchor activity will be a catalyst for their exercise consistency.
What did you think? Did anything surprise you? I’ll leave the comments on for this article and if you have any questions or want me to elaborate on a topic more, sound off and I will make sure to check in with an answer!
Stay tuned for part 2!