How to stay on track over the weekends
For so many of my clients, weight loss seems to be easier Monday through Friday. There is structure and routine. During the week, it is easy to be focused but once the weekend comes, routine goes out the window! Here are five ways you can stay on track over the weekends: Make a plan While Saturday and Sunday might look different from the workweek, you probably have a general routine. Maybe you don’t wake up as early but you still get up around the same time every weekend. If you’re like me, you have kids that have sports the same time each weekend too. If you take five minutes at the start of each weekend day and brainstorm your commitments, where you will be for each meal time, and available options for food, you’ll be off to a good start in making a reasonable plan for yourself. Another important part to remember is making sure you stay hydrated over the weekend so make a plan for that too. Will you carry a water bottle around with you? Will you fill multiple water bottles and stash them around the house to remind you to drink water? Remembering to stay hydrated over the weekend will help you feel your best, have more energy and prevent snacking due to faux hunger (thirst). Anticipate the unexpected Weekends are more flexible and sometimes spur of the moment changes happen. That’s OK. You can be spontaneous and still make progress towards your weight loss goal. A spontaneous trip for ice cream doesn’t mean you have to order the largest sundae with extra chocolate fudge and whipped cream. In fact, a spontaneous trip for ice cream doesn’t actually mean you have to have ice cream at all. My 90 pound weight loss definitely included ice cream but sometimes it also included just loving the joy on my kid’s faces and being present in the moment without having any ice cream. Think about the past few months, what came up over the weekend that you threw you off your weight loss game? Make a plan for how you would ideally handle that if it came up again. Chances are those same challenges will present themselves again in the future. When you mentally rehearse for them, you’ve given yourself the instructions on how you want to handle it so you are better equipped for next time. Create a back on track plan Maybe you went face down into a pepperoni pizza and didn’t come back up until it was all gone. Maybe you’re feeling like you messed it all up and so you might as well eat whatever you want for the rest of the weekend. But hold on! Getting back on track is as much of an option as throwing in the towel is. You are a human being and sometimes you are going to make choices you wish you hadn’t. That’s OK. But don’t dwell there. Create a plan for yourself that helps you get back on track quickly. For me, I love to drink a glass of water and then go for a 15-minute walk. The hydration and moving my body really help to clear my mind. Plus it is two quick wins that I can feel good about! To create your back on track plan, think of one or two things you can do no matter where you are to help get quick win and get your head back in the game. Think something new So many of my clients like to say that the weekends are just harder. But says who? Sometimes we are just committed to the idea that they are harder simply because that’s what we always believed. How could they actually be easier? On the weekends, you may not have the structure and routine of the week but you might have a lot more time to workout, make a food plan or eat more slowly and enjoy your meals. Asking yourself how the weekends can be easier opens your mind to find more evidence that it actually IS easier. Encourage yourself to find ways that losing weight is actually easier over the weekends. Be patient with yourself If weekends have been a struggle for you, please be patient with yourself. Like learning anything new, these things take time. You won’t miraculously start going through your weekends flawlessly. You might still forget to drink water, make a food plan or move your body. That’s OK. The goal is progress, not perfection. If you do one thing better than the weekend before, cheer yourself on! Yay you! Then build on that winning momentum the next weekend. When you feel like you are winning, you keep trying. When you feel like you are losing, you quit. Look for your wins. Keep trying. And eventually you will learn to stay on track over the weekends and meet your weight loss goal. Your Coach, Andrea
Five tips to drink water when you HATE it
It’s no secret that drinking water is a vital part of weight loss. Our bodies are up to 60% water AND one of the steps of fat loss is hydrolysis (hydro = water). So to be the most effective at losing weight, you have to drink water. But what can you do to get yourself to drink more water when you HATE it? Here are five simple and effective tips for drinking more water: 1. Start where you are One of the best gifts you can give yourself on your weight loss journey is to meet yourself where you are. If you are only drinking sugary, caffeinated drinks and the thought of drinking a glass of water cues your gag reflex, then it will be really hard for you to start drinking 64oz of water each day. If that’s you, start small. Plan to drink just one 8oz glass of water each day. You can even spread out that 8oz if it feels better to just take a sip here or there. Don’t worry about how you are not getting “enough” or you are “supposed” to be drinking more than that. Once you get really good at drinking the 8oz in a day then you can increase it slowly but surely. When you start something that is so drastically different from where you are beginning, it takes a ton of motivation and willpower to do it. You spend all your time trying to force yourself to do something that feels unnatural and often times don’t enjoy. Instead, be OK with starting smaller and remind yourself that just because you start small doesn’t mean that’s where you will finish. 2. Pair it with a reward Doesn’t it feel good to be rewarded for our efforts? Of course it does! But far too often we don’t tell ourselves “good job” or sit in the pride of knowing that we did something good for ourselves. Instead the effort goes largely unnoticed and the only “reward” we get is the mental chatter about it dies down for a bit. Rewards help to reinforce actions we want to take in the future. They are really useful when you want to create new habits. So to create a new habit of drinking water and making it more enjoyable, incorporate a reward! Now this doesn’t need to be anything that you buy. In fact, it could be simply pairing drinking water with something you like to do that is already a part of your every day routine. For instance if you love drinking soda, you could pair drinking a glass of water with the reward of having a soda. You could also allow yourself to watch an episode of your favorite TV show once you have drank all of your water for the day. Remember gold stars from school? A reward could be as simple as a pretty sticker on a chart or a check mark on your habit tracker. To make it extra impactful, remember to say to yourself “I’m so proud of myself for drinking water.” 3. Don’t prolong the misery If every sip of water is pure misery for you, then don’t sip your water throughout the day. Guzzle it. There is nothing saying that you have sip slowly and consistently throughout the day. It’s just important that you drink it. I rarely take a single sip of water. I usually take ten sips at a time just because I know that means I am taking in lots of water at once and that increases my likelihood of drinking 64oz. Another great tip to get it done quickly: get started early. After you wake up, start drinking water. Your body is actually dehydrated when you wake up because of the hours you’ve spent sleeping and using the water in your body. Put a cup in your bathroom right next to your toothbrush then immediately drink at least one full cup of water after brushing your teeth. This is called habit stacking and is a great way to remind yourself of that new habit of drinking water. Getting started early in the day with drinking water means that you finish earlier and can enjoy the rest of the day drinking the beverage of your choice. 4. Disguise it Water doesn’t have to be plain to be helpful. Juice lovers can pour a glass 3/4 full of juice and then top the rest of it off with some water. After doing that for a while, you can change the ratio to 1/2 juice and 1/2 water. Keep increasing the ratio until you get mostly water. There are really great water enhancers that can be used to flavor your water as well. Use the same method of adding the amount you enjoy and then slowly decreasing it over time so you are drinking mostly water. There are tons of spa water recipes that you can try too. Spa water incorporates fresh fruits and herbs to flavor your water and make it more fun to drink. You can also incorporate herbal teas as a way to get in more water (just be careful with what you add to it!). I personally love dessert teas from Bigelow teas that have flavors reminiscent of lemon pound cake and chocolate macaroons. 5. Think sexy thoughts about water Ruminating on how much you HATE water will never help you drink more of it. It will make you feel angry and resentful that drinking water is something you HAVE to do even though you hate it. It will feel like a chore and a burden in your life. Try to find something that you like about drinking water. Get your brain primed to see the benefits by listing as many good things as possible about drinking water. Finally, make a commitment to yourself to stop saying you hate water. It may feel true but it will never help you drink more of it. Instead find some other thoughts you can practice thinking
Water and Your Weight Loss
Water is a vital part of losing weight. Our bodies are up to 60% water AND water is an integral part of fat loss. So to keep your body functioning at it’s best and ready to lose fat, you have to drink water. Period. How much water do you have to drink to lose weight? There are different recommendations out there for how much water is optimal for weight loss. I recommend 64 ounces of water as a minimum threshold. Optimally, I strive for half my body weight in water each day. So at my highest weight of 250 pounds, I aimed to drink 125 ounces of water each day. Three unhelpful thoughts about water: I hate the taste of water. Yes, you may not prefer the taste (or lack thereof) of water to other beverages. But dwelling and continuously telling yourself that you hate water isn’t the way to start drinking more of it. In fact, that will make you avoid it more and loathe it when you do finally drink some. Instead, consider what else you might be willing to think about water. I’m learning to like water. I’m willing to find more opportunities to drink water. I can do hard things (this one is for those of you really committed to hating it). You can also create rules for yourself that encourage more water drinking into your already established routines. If you drink a cup of coffee each morning, then create the rule for yourself that as the coffee is brewing you drink an entire glass of water. Your soda at meal time can also be preceded by a glass of water. It especially helps if the task you combine with your water drinking with is enjoyable so it acts as a reward for drinking your water. I don’t want to (or can’t) pee all the time. What goes in, must come out. I get it. Increasing your water intake means increasing your trips to the bathroom as well. Some people have rigid work schedules that don’t allow the luxury of frequent bathroom breaks, if any at all. Hello teachers! Instead of dwelling on the problem of not being able to go to the bathroom all the time, think of a strategic solution that allows you to get the water in as well as fit with your schedule. That might mean chugging 24 ounces of water as soon as you get up so you can use the restroom right before work. Then lay off the water until about an hour before your scheduled break and chug another 24 ounces then. Finally chug another 24 ounces prior to getting off your shift or right after you get off work and BOOM that’s 72 ounces completed. I am awesome at drinking water. How is this a troubling thought about water? Seems like you are doing just fine with water if this is your thought. But are you sure? What gets measured, gets managed. When we think we are awesome at drinking water, we don’t bother to measure it. We take it for granted that we drink more than enough and we never really know exactly how much we are drinking. This can lead us into a false sense of complacency as well as spinning our wheels when weight loss stalls. Because water plays such a vital role in weight loss, it is extremely important not to assume you are getting enough water. You can still think you are awesome at drinking water but always measure it to verify. So there you have it. Three unhelpful thoughts about water and how to combat them. Your Coach, Andrea