As I’m sure you can imagine, after reaching my goal to lose 100 pounds two years ago, the number one question I was asked was, “what did you do exactly to lose so much weight?
Most people want the glamorous explanation when they ask how they can lose weight. They think that there is some unknown secret to weight loss success.
Is there a secret to losing weight? The answer is yes, and no.
Whenever I attempt to summarize the answer to the question of how to lose weight, I see eyes glaze over. No one wants the real explanation.
The answer cannot be condensed down to one sentence or just one word
The Real Deal
There were many things I did that helped me lose 100 pounds in one year.
Almost every strategy I created was what I knew would work for me. At the risk sounding like a broken record, and as much as we like to think it’s true, the one-size-fits-all mentality simply does not work.
It’s so funny to me because people earnestly wanted to know my “secret” to weight loss success. However, they prefer the cliff notes version only.
I’m an ICU RN working the night shift. A very long, and exhausting 12-hour night shift three nights per week. Through a combination of experimentation, trial and error, I came up with a plan.
My plan was consistent but it had to change slightly from week to week because of my crazy schedule.
As I mentioned, I work three nights every week. I don’t work on the same nights, and I don’t always work on consecutive nights. In the past, this was a huge obstacle for me whenever I would attempt to start a weight loss plan.
The struggle really was real. However, I refused to give up.
A Basic Strategy
Following a healthier way of eating wasn’t so much of a problem. We all know what we should do but we don’t do what we know. Am I right? Because of my unique work schedule, I had to lay some basic ground work. Therefore, it took a period of two weeks to do the necessary thinking, journaling and planning.
Finally I was ready. I lost 100 pounds while working the night shift by taking these 13 steps:
- Practicing Forgiveness
- Be Grateful
- Examine My Habits
- Observe My Thoughts
- Check in With My Feelings
- Choose Supportive Actions
- Keep It Simple
- Meal Planning
- Let Go of Perfection
- Practicing Visualization
- Create Incentives
- Be Patient
- Stay Committed
1. Practice Forgiveness
The only thing I hated more than the way I looked was the way I felt about how I looked. I would think about how I failed myself with past attempts at losing weight. Here is where I had to forgive myself. Not for failing, but for punishing myself for it.
2. Be Grateful
Yes, I had 100 pounds to lose. I didn’t like the way I looked or felt. However, I was thankful. Why? I did not have any of the obesity related illnesses that I saw in the patient population that I took care of as a nurse in the ICU. Losing weight was within my control and I never let go of that fact.
3. Examining my habits
When it came to my eating habits, I had to ask myself some hard questions. Most of the questions started with “why”. What was even more difficult was answering the questions I asked myself.
The truth is hard to face, but it was undeniable. Work was tough on the mind and body. Trying to balance in family life left me completely drained.
Here is the reality I had to face: I wasn’t entitled to indulge as I had convinced myself a million times just because I felt stressed. Period.
Continuing the bad habit of unconsciously eating comfort foods or drinking too much wine because I was either bored, tired, stressed, angry or depressed wasn’t a solution and was only going to keep me stuck.
4. Observe My Thoughts
I’m an avid fan of the life coach Brooke Castillo. She has a method for reaching goals that she breaks down through a strategy she calls, “the model”. I love this method because it is applicable and easy to understand.
Brooke teaches that your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings create your actions, your actions create your results, and circumstances are neutral.
I wasn’t aware when I started my weight loss journey that I was actually doing “the model”, until I listened to her podcast (The Life Coach School Podcast). Now I’m hooked! My goal is to one day enroll in her program.😀
My thoughts that led me to make poor choices were all about what had happened in my past. I didn’t realize my choices on any given day didn’t have to come from what had already happened in my life or what was going on at that.
Where goal achievement is concerned, our actions or choices needed to come from what we want to see in the future. If this isn’t how you live your life, you’ll only get more of what you are already getting. Mind blown.
5. Check In With My feelings
I figured out the way I felt was related to what I was thinking about my life’s circumstances.
The way I felt caused me to act on cravings and urges to eat unhealthy and when I was not physically hungry. I knew I had to change this mindset I had or I would never overcome my issues with weight.
The actions I took which were based on my feelings had to change. So, it seemed logical to me that if I wanted to change what I was feeling and I to change what I was thinking about. It’s not as if I didn’t think about my circumstances on a day to day basis. However, I learned I could control what I thought about my circumstances at any given time.
Even if I felt negatively about whatever my thoughts were about, I had to be okay with just letting the negative feelings exist rather than stuff them down with food. It wasn’t a solution and it didn’t even work!
Real talk: Life can be hard. To paraphrase Brooke Castillo, “we aren’t going to be over the moon ecstatic about everything 100% of the time. The beauty of life is the contrast been the good and the bad times. If we didn’t have the bad, we wouldn’t known what good felt like.”
6. Choose Supportive Actions
My goal of losing 100 pounds was based on how I wanted to feel in the achieving of that goal. Now that I knew I could control my thoughts, and then choose how I want to feel, I could begin to trust that my behavior would support what I wanted, which was to lose 100 pounds.
Realizing I could reach my goal simply by choosing my thoughts so I could direct my feelings and then do the things that would support my goal was huge.
7. Keep it simple
Honestly, planning what to eat was the easy part. We all know what we should eat! There is no magic food formula.
I didn’t label foods “good or bad”. If I labeled the foods that I ate that way, I know I would have thought of myself as “good or bad” in making food choices. Trust me. This isn’t the page you want to be on when you want to lose weight. It’s all just food and it’s all just choices.
8. Meal Planning
In my case, and because I work the night shift, creativity with eating times was just as important as eating choices. I generally ate four to five times per day. My meal times change based on whether I am going in for a shift at work or coming home from work and sleeping during the day. On a day off work I can function like the rest of the world if I so choose.
9. Let Go of Perfection
Perfection when it came to food choices was not in my vocabulary during my weight loss journey. In my opinion, it’s important to make sure you love or at least like what you eat. There were times that I ate really clean. There were times that I didn’t. What mattered most to me is that I made choices I was okay with making.
10. Practicing Visualization
Visualizing what I wanted was just as important as believing I could achieve this weight loss goal. After doing all of the initial mindset work, then planning what to eat and when to eat it was in place, it was time to implement.
Unlike any of the other times I started on a weight loss journey, this time I had a smooth beginning. I saw results on the scale my first week. Within the first month of starting, my vision of what I wanted to look like became more vivid to me than what I was seeing in the mirror. I don’t believe starting would have been as seamless had it not been for the initial groundwork I completed up front.
11. Create Incentives
About two weeks into my journey and seeing the scale move, I started to brainstorm ways to keep my motivation high.
I decided to create mini goals to keep myself excited and always moving forward. Keeping my focus only on the next 10 pounds was the perfect may to keep overwhelm away.
As it turned out, the incentive to treat myself to something I wanted when I reached or surpassed any small goal was a huge motivator! A stipulation was to only reward myself with things that supported my weight loss goals, and not to use food as a reward.
I sometimes chose to treat myself to a day at the hair or nail salon. Buying something small like a motivational book, or a new exercise DVD always made me feel great.
The Secrets To Success
12. Be Patient
If I had to give a one-word answer to the question of how to lose 100 pounds, that word would be patience. And, it just happens to be the least popular answer.
It seems obvious, but when you have to put it into practice, having patience to stick to your weight loss goal is no easy feat.
In the past, I have been guilty of abandoning my weight loss goals due to not having enough patience. My yo-yo dieting history would not exist if I had taken the time to practice patience.
13. Stay Committed
Commit to believing that you can succeed no matter what you feel like or what the scale says. Life Coach Brooke Castillo would say committing to believing you will achieve your goal is more important than actually achieving the goal. I just love Brooke. Hey girl, I see you!😉🙋♀️
In my opinion, accepting that there is no end game is the most important thing do when you want to lose weight.
I have also found through my weight loss journey that separating your feelings from what you really want is the key to success.
Why? Because feelings are fickle. You cannot rely on always feeling like doing all the things that support your weight loss goals.
Yes, you are human so perfection isn’t what you are after. When it comes to accomplishing big goals, it’s best to keep your feelings out of the equation. This is what works for me when I want to accomplish anything big.
You can also use this philosophy as a life lesson. Accomplishing big goals means you’ll likely have to do what you don’t feel like doing.
As humans, we never want to feel uncomfortable, but if you want to see that big scary goal come to pass, ignore the urge to shrink back from feeling uncomfortable and move forward anyway.
Keeping your word to yourself to stick to your weight loss goal (no matter what), helps you build confidence, and reinforces your ability to have faith in yourself to achieve the outcome that you want.
Have you set out to lose weight only to become impatient with the process and then give up? What is your biggest struggle with losing weight? I would love to hear from you!
