How To Create A Weight Loss Plan You Can Live With

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How to create a weight loss plan you can live with involves developing a strategy based on self-awareness and observing what drives your behavior around food. Once you have collected some information, then you can start to create a weight loss plan based on your personality, likes, and dislikes.

I reached a major weight loss goal in 2017 by losing 100lbs using this strategy, and today and I’m headed back to the drawing board 10-12 lbs over my goal weight. 

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Between the cold weather, comfort food, and being home for almost 1 month with a work injury in November (which completely stressed me out), I easily managed to put on some weight. Needing to lose 12 pounds to be back at my original goal doesn’t compare at all to what I was facing in 2017 when I lost 100lbs. 

I’m super thankful that I have been able to maintain my weight loss (for the most part) because it tells me that I’ve been doing some things right. Even though I had a little weight gain I’m giving myself major props because I still feel that I beat some statistics by keeping 85% of that 100lbs off. I’m not beating myself up about where my weight is currently at all! 

If you’ve ever maintained a significant weight loss, then find yourself facing a small gain, there’s a lesson to be learned. What is that lesson? Old habits can still creep in especially if life starts throwing a few curve balls at you. 

As an adult, you already know that life gets in the way of your best intentions all the time, especially if you’re on a weight loss journey. You go into most situations knowing this, but sometimes you’re caught off guard. We’re human and definitely not perfect. 

The lesson I learned from my weight loss transformation a few years ago is that I’m in complete control at all times. This is why I don’t throw in the towel and sabotage myself by continuing to allow the old eating habits to take over. Just saying, if you had a flat tire, you wouldn’t slash the other 4 right? 🤷🏾‍♀️

Lose the Diet Mentality

If you want to create a weight loss plan you can live, the best approach is to work on your mindset. It will help you to believe in your ability to have control over your actions, rather than relying on willpower to lose weight. Believing that using willpower is the only way to lose weight is what I call the diet mentality.

The diet mentality (or using willpower) gives food power over your actions right from the start. 

I know this is getting a little deep, but this is what I needed to realize a few years ago when I created a weight loss plan for myself. Back then at 100lbs overweight, I wasn’t just unhappy with my weight and my size. 

I physically felt unwell and was worried that something life-threatening was going to happen to me if I didn’t make changes. The first change I made was what I thought about myself. Without self-condemnation, I created my weight loss plan from a place of self-acceptance. I realized that I was worth any effort it was going to take to turn my life around. 

You too are worth any effort it will take to get your body, mind, and spirit to a healthy place.

The thinking that helped me then and still helps is knowing that anything going on outside of me, does not have control over me, period. If you are believing that events, other people or worse yet, food causes your reactions, you have a diet mentality.

The diet mentality automatically the control out of your hands and puts you in a state of powerlessness, which means you actually believe that you lack the ability to change your behavior. If you want to create a weight loss plan you can live with, begin from a positive place.  

A diet mentality is simply a set up for self-sabotage. Trust me, if you are dwelling on being perfect with your food choices or a number on the scale, you won’t be creating a weight loss plan that you can live with. As soon as you have one misstep, you’ll most likely beat yourself up for it, and the next thing you know, one slip turns into a week or a month of indulgences. 

If you are not happy with your current weight your self-esteem is likely a bit delicate right now. 

To make changes in your behavior around food using willpower will only cause feelings of deprivation and make your weight loss plan feel like an uphill battle. 

Any decisions about food that you make will feel like punishment instead of something that is good for you. If your approach to your weight loss plan in any way involves using willpower, and the changes you make to support your goal feel forced, you won’t be able to sustain the habits. 

When you create a weight loss plan you can live with, it’s an opportunity to be kind to yourself. It’s like you’re beginning a new life living your body, so important to keep your mind on your positive attributes and the positive aspects of losing weight. Take time to visualize yourself going through the journey determined to successfully navigate through difficult situations.

Instead of imagining those difficult situations throwing you off your game, try to have a success mentality and become determined to reach your weight loss goal no matter what happens. So with your success mentality working for you as you start your weight loss journey, it just doesn’t matter whether you plateau.

Let’s say there’s a holiday coming up and you already know there will be tempting foods served, but it just doesn’t matter. 

Losing the diet mentality takes some effort because you have to change the way you think about what you expect the weight loss journey to feel like entirely. I promise you, if you create good feelings about yourself before you start your weight loss journey, and stay in that place mentally, you will be inspired to take actions to support the results you’re looking for. 

Create A Weight Loss Plan You Can Live With By Practicing Self Control 

My goal is always to get back to the drawing board with good habits around food whenever I feel like I’ve slipped into old patterns. It took years for me to learn that having a goal weight is good, however, it’s controlling your habits (or patterns of behavior around food) that should be the focus and not so much a number on the scale or having strong willpower. I believe it’s way more constructive to focus on practicing self-control around food than trying to will yourself to resist tempting foods.

Since the start of 2020, I’ve lost a few pounds which of course feels good.  However, I won’t lie, I still have some tendencies that don’t support my weight loss goals. Snacking is, and always has been a habit that I need to stay aware of. I’m still working on practicing self-control in this area. 

Notice I’m not labeling my snacking tendency as good or bad behavior. I can accept that I’ll never be perfect in this area, but it’s ok!  My goal wasn’t to be perfect but instead practice self-control and stay aware of my habits around food. 

Your eating habits will either support your weight loss goals or not. The more you practice control with your habits around food, the more likely you will be to achieve your weight loss goals. Be kind to yourself and know that you will have moments that you’ll indulge because these moments will happen. 

If you are good at keeping in mind that you are always in control of your actions, you’ll check in with yourself and discover if there’s another underlying reason that you are indulging. Only then is it easier to accept where you are mentally and emotionally and make changes from there. Progress, not perfection is always the way to go. 

Find A Way of Eating That Works For You

Think about what you like to eat, the way you like to eat and when. For instance, do you feel deprived if you don’t include bread in your diet? Are you someone who doesn’t gravitate toward eating meat all the time? What about the time of day that you usually reach for food? 

Another thing to consider is portion size. A good question to ask yourself is whether you eat with your eyes. I tend to fall into this category sometimes.

Consider whether you are a person who likes volume.  You may feel happier and more satiated when you have the sensation of feeling full after a meal. Knowing that you like to feel full will help you determine which foods you may want to include in your weight loss plan.

Determine Your Eating Patterns

Knowing your eating patterns will help you determine whether you’re eating because you are hungry or because of some other psychological reason. Are you triggered to reach for food at a certain time of day just out of habit? I was a creature of this food habit for years. 

To this day, as soon as I come in the door from work, I go to the fridge. If you reach for food to self soothe after a hard day at work or you are stressed about something beyond your control eating food will not make these events better. These are habits that can throw you off your weight loss plan in the blink of an eye. 

It’s ok to feel negative feelings – they are a part of life. However, allowing issues outside of yourself that are beyond your control have the power of your behavior is a sign that your mindset around coping needs work. Practicing self-control is necessary, and having a strong mindset that will keep you anchored to the goals that you set so that you don’t resort to self-destructive habits is key.

How Often Do You Eat?

Think about how often you feel hungry. There are diet gurus out there who swear by eating every 3-4 hours. Then some experts believe that we shouldn’t eat this frequently and we’re better off mimicking our ancestors by fasting periodically.  

Some people believe in eating intuitively which simply means paying close attention to your body’s clues. So whether you are hungry every 3 hours or every 8 hours, simply eat. The size of your meal does matter, but don’t deprive your body of nourishment when you are hungry.

I believe that not eating when you are truly hungry can trigger binging if you aren’t accustomed to fasting for longer periods of time. On the other hand, fasting isn’t as harmful as once thought and it does have many benefits. If you fast, you have to know what you are doing and why you are doing it, so education is key. 

Someone that does CrossFit a few times a week will not have the same dietary needs as someone who does yoga 6 days a week. Experimenting with different styles of eating has helped me to discover what works for losing weight and my nutritional needs. However, I urge you to speak with your physician before making any extreme nutritional changes.

As a general rule, it’s more important to abide by what your body is asking for. How you know this is by giving your body a chance to know what true hunger feels like. “But Robin, I ate 4 slices of pizza because I was really hungry and my body wanted it”. 

I know it’s hard to face the truth by looking at less than supportive eating habits when you’re at the beginning of a weight loss journey. Don’t lie to yourself and use hunger as an excuse to reach for empty calories instead of nutritionally dense food.

If you know you do this, you are responding to cravings to satisfy your palate instead of real hunger, and you will only leave yourself wanting more food even if you get full! 

Again, check-in with yourself and see if you are truly hungry or if you just have a taste for XYZ. One thing you’ll notice is how good you feel when you make eating real nutritious food a priority. That’s why eating clean most of the time really works. 

Creating A Weight Loss Plan That Is Unique To You

We’ve all heard that there are 3500 calories in 1lb of body weight, and creating a deficit of 500 calories every day for a week will result in losing one pound. Counting calories, carbs, and changing your way of eating to any of the popular diets today will cause a calorie deficit. It is true, all of these dietary styles will work in helping you lose weight. 

In fact, you can have success with any weight loss plan as long as you follow it perfectly for a long enough period of time. This is where it gets a little sketchy because the popular commercial diet plans aren’t tailored to you. If you want to go the done for your route, dive in but give it time to see if you can live with it for a month. 

This is IMO why the majority of people gain all of their weight back. You have to play the long game when it comes to following a weight loss plan. There will be ups and downs that you need to be prepared for. If you can’t live with the rules of the game (diet) you choose, you can always go back to the drawing board.

I’ve tried a few popular diets over the years. There were some aspects of those diets that I felt were good, and other aspects that didn’t jive with me. A few years ago when I created a weight loss plan for myself, I put together only those features of different diets that I felt could work for me. This was how I created a weight loss plan that I felt I could sustain.

I’m happy to say that it worked! But please know, if you are on a certain diet and you cannot picture yourself eating that way forever, you are not on a weight loss plan that you can live with.

In order to have any kind of success with losing weight, you must create a weight loss plan you can live with for your entire life. Get yourself ready to really do some self-study. It will help you tremendously to know your likes, dislikes, and your habits and triggers around food. 

Remember, you can do this and you are worth every ounce of effort it will take.

To create a weight loss plan you can live with, there have been 10 areas that are necessary to address. You can always tweak any of these areas when the need arises. If I slack in one of these areas, it will slow down my results.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the awareness of what you are doing in any of these 10 areas determines your success. 

1. Plan your weight loss strategy
2. Let your family know about your plan
3. Create a supportive environment
4. Decide what foods you will eat and when and how you will cook them
5. Meal Prep to eliminate any outside excuses for poor choices
6. Keep a food diary and/or a fitness tracker
7. Weigh yourself weekly
8. Add exercise (optional)
9. Celebrate reaching your goals or NSVs
10. Ignore Outside Influences (Emotional triggers, friends, co-workers)

Plan Your Weight-Loss Strategy

Planning your weight loss strategy takes into account your life’s activities. Your work schedule, the hours that you work, when you get breaks in your work-day and your days off. The types of meals you prefer to bring to work and types of foods you like or love and whether or not you feel you need snacks. 

Let Your Family Know About Your Plan

The people you live with are really the only people that need an explanation about what you are doing. Outside influences from friends, coworkers should be ignored. I know this sounds rough, but this is YOUR journey, only the immediate family members need to understand how important it is to you, and what your needs will be. 

You have this opportunity to communicate to your household that everyone will benefit from the changes you will be making and how. Reassure everybody that they won’t be forced to eat food that they hate. If you still don’t have the support of your household, please know that you don’t need it to begin. 

You’re starting this weight loss journey because you value yourself. Anybody else’s thoughts or feelings cannot and should not influence how you treat yourself. You do not need your actions to be validated. #toughlove

Create A Supportive Environment

A supportive environment not only includes getting the people in your home on board but also getting your surroundings in order. Is your kitchen equipped to accommodate your needs? Do you have the appropriate cookware and storage containers? 

How about your cabinets, pantry, and refrigerator? Are they cleaned out and organized? Sometimes you won’t get it all done perfectly. You will find this an ongoing task, and it will help to get creative in finding little pockets of time to work on your surroundings. 

Decide What Foods You Will Eat (and when)

This is the fun part really. A weight loss plan that you tailor to you will have to include food that you like or love, period. I wouldn’t have been successful at losing 100lbs a few years ago if I forced myself to eat foods that I think are gross. You want to look forward to every meal or snack that passes your lips. 

Since you will likely be brown-bagging it on workdays, it may help to bring food that can be packaged easily and will hold up well in the container. Sandwiches sometimes do well, but it all depends on how you pack them – you don’t want soggy bread. The same idea goes for snacks that you bring with you. 

I tend to bring salads to work or leftover dinner from the night before. One container is all that’s needed. Salads need a small container for dressings but these fit right into my salad bowl. My snacks are individually wrapped so my lunches are easy to pack.

Meal Prep To Eliminate Excuses

This is a major part of ensuring your success when you create a weight loss plan you can live with. Cooking ahead keeps you out of the kitchen. If you are going to be in tune with your body’s hunger cues then you will benefit from less exposure to food in general. If you aren’t eating, then there’s no need to even go into the kitchen. 

When you cook, it’s wise to make extra food. Consider how many people you cook for and double or triple the amount you make. Portion out what you want for your meals and store the rest in airtight containers for the rest of the family. 

You can freeze a few meals so that you or someone else in the house can have a cooked meal on those days when you just can’t bear the thought of cooking or being in the kitchen.  

I’m not someone that likes to cook all the time, so if you are like me you will have days when you don’t want to be bothered with pots and pans. When I was 100lbs overweight, I would call out for fast food a lot because I hadn’t cooked anything. Other than alcohol, nothing will put weight on you faster than take out fast food. 

Some people have to have variety and can’t bear the thought of eating the same foods every day. If this is you and if you like cooking, get into it! This is your chance to try new recipes. 

I am the type of person that can eat the same foods all the time.There may be a new dish that I cook once in a while, but for the most part, I eat the same foods week in and week out. I believe this is why I’ve been able to maintain 85% of my weight loss. 

I sometimes call myself the laziest cook in America. If you work a full-time job with long hours like I do, you have to work with your energy levels. As a nurse, my work weeks can be so brutal, I often come home and can feel my feet pulsating when I sit down. 

There isn’t one thing wrong with grabbing a rotisserie chicken, and a container of organic salad greens. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do to make your weight loss plan work for you.

Keep A Food Diary and/or Fitness Tracker 

Another big part of creating a weight loss plan you can live with involves recording what you eat. I would start keeping a food diary right away. The reason is to bring your awareness to what you are doing. We often underestimate how much and how often we eat. 

You want to be clear about where you are starting when you create your weight loss plan. My advice is to make exercise optional at the very beginning. But, if you incorporate exercise at the start, keeping a record of what you do for fitness will help your progress. 

Weigh Yourself Once Every Week 

Please don’t feel like you need to be a slave to the scale. I remember feeling so much anxiety around weighing myself before I created my weight loss plan. Going to doctor’s appointments would bring up so much dread because I was embarrassed by my weight and size. 

I remember postponing doctor appointments because I was so embarrassed about my weight. Of course, eventually, I had to keep my yearly appointment. But the shame I harbored around facing the number on the scale at the doctor’s office was so great, I would sometimes refuse to get on the scale. 

However, if you want to create a weight loss plan you can live with, it’s important that you see where you are starting from. I would suggest that you weigh only once a week. Weighing more often than that borders on obsession.

The scale isn’t always an accurate measurement of what’s really happening in your body from week to week when you are on a weight loss plan. For instance, the scale does not take into account the fluid shifts that occur during your monthly cycle.

If you weigh yourself more than once a week you will be annoyed seeing a 5lb gain (out of nowhere) and not even consider it’s just water retention from a higher sodium meal. Trust me. Spare yourself this aggravation. 

At the start of 2017, I wasn’t thrilled with weighing myself each and every week, but you know what? I quickly came to look forward to it! Weighing once per week kept my weight loss goal in the front of my mind. You cannot improve what you don’t measure. 

Add Exercise (optional)

Some people believe that if you start a weight loss plan, you have to begin an exercise program at the same time. I’m not one of those people. For one thing, you are giving yourself new habits to learn by tailoring a weight loss plan for yourself and incorporating it into your life. 

There’s already a lot to do at this point because you are changing your life. I believe being fit is important, and I’m working on it for myself, however, if you don’t have a clue about losing weight, and never exercised at all, it wouldn’t be smart to give yourself too much to get used to. 

Remember, if you want to create a weight loss plan you can live with and if you add in some crazy exercise regimen too soon, you will likely stop doing everything all together. I’ve done this to myself a few times over the years. 

I remember trying out the south beach diet several years ago and really liking it. Within 2 weeks I lost 11 pounds. Then I decided I would start running and lifting weights at the gym for 4-5 days a week. 

Not only was I so sore I could barely walk, but I also became discouraged too. It was hard enough to do all the things the diet required but adding in the exercise was overwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, my ego was stroked a little because it felt good knowing that I could physically do the workouts. 

But after a few weeks, I knew I couldn’t keep up the pace of the workouts and the food rules. Back then I had school-aged children to look after and it all became too much. The point is, exercise is great, but you’ll get more out of it if you look forward to it. 

If you want to add exercise, less is more especially in the beginning. Start slow and easy. Walking is the best way to get started. Try some stretching, and progress slowly by adding in some pilates or yoga-inspired core exercises. 

When you slowly incorporate exercise into your life this way, you create momentum and your overall fitness level increases. You will be motivated to do it more often when you see how fast your body changes. This strategy gives you a huge self-esteem boost because now you have more confidence in your ability to do more difficult forms of exercise. 

Celebrate Reaching Your Milestones and NSVs (Without Food)

I created a reward system for the first 6 months of my weight loss plan in 2017. For every 10lbs I lost, I would treat myself to something I really wanted. Any of my NSVs (non-scale victories) like sticking to my plan if I went out to dinner warranted a smaller reward. By the way, none of my rewards involved food. I was too motivated by my results to sabotage my hard work. 

These are some of the things I treated myself to with 10lb loss:

• An appointment at the salon
• New workout clothes
• A new pair of sneakers
• A new exercise DVD
• Fresh flowers
• A bubble bath with candles
• A new book (which meant a trip to the bookstore) I’m a nerd, don’t judge me.
• Going to the movies

Conclusion

Now is the right time to get your head on straight about your weight loss goals. If your clothes are still fitting a little too snug, then it’s time to get serious, by creating a weight loss plan you can live with. You have the power to figure out what that looks like for you and it doesn’t have to be complicated. 

If you have tried to lose weight in the past and just scrapped the idea because you found that some things didn’t work, think about what did work and build from there. You can pinpoint the triggers that throw you off and create another way to work around your patterns with food.  

Instead of getting down on yourself because you had an unplanned treat, then eating to make yourself feel better (which never works), accept where you are. Believe in yourself,  and your ability to control you. Remember that you are worth any effort it takes to achieve your weight loss goals.

It’s a brand new day and the past only exists in your head. This great news isn’t it? You can make every moment an opportunity to choose what you want for yourself in the future. You can do this!

Are you ready to lose weight this spring? Do you want to learn how to create a weight loss plan you can live with?

Let me know in the comments!

Sources:

https://www.today.com/series/one-small-thing/relying-willpower-lose-weight-why-it-s-better-create-new-t94876

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