To put it simply, I’ve struggled with my weight my whole life. I grew up in a household that commercialized weight loss programs were part of the norm. I was a teenager in the 90’s when “Fat-free” everything started to become the diet trend, then quick-fix rapid fat loss programs were all the rage, diet pills like Hydroxycut, and shakes like Slim Fast would fix our weight issues. I toggled between a pattern of strict control over my eating to zero control. I’d follow all the rules and if some restriction was best then more must be better right? That pattern continued up until I was 40! Decades of yo-yo dieting cycled me up to my highest weight (pregnancies included) of 217 pounds. This last time I remember vividly, I got to the point that I knew I needed to go on another diet and I truly didn’t even know which one, I felt like I had tried them all and it felt like nothing worked for me. It’s like there was something I wasn’t getting, was I just destined to be overweight? Truly it didn’t make sense to me, all the things I had tried and the many times I had tried them it never seemed to stick. I understood the concept of making it a lifestyle change and a mindset but in practical terms I really didn’t know what that meant because I clearly wasn’t able to make that happen. I wanted it desperately but it just wasn’t sticking for me. It’s like this giant puzzle of life, I had a lot of the other parts figured out or were only missing a few small pieces but the health and nutrition part that I felt so many other people had figured out but mine was missing this big section, I felt like I had a big question mark on it. Regardless I needed to do something, the trajectory I was on left me terrified and even though I didn’t know how I was going to do, I truly didn’t know what else to do. I jumped back to my old toxic friend “calorie counting”, and met up with her just as terrible friend, “hours at the gym”. I would spend at least 2 hours, 4x/week doing moderate-high intensity cardio and eating 1200 calories/day. I obviously saw weight loss, but I also found it challenging to sustain, this was honestly the only thing I knew to do. I just went right back to my old toxic relationships because I didn’t know better. I didn’t even realize the disordered eating patterns I was in. Restrict and binge cycling, emotional eating, I looked at the scale to judge my efforts, not realizing eating out didn’t have to equal and indulgent experience every time, no carbs, no sugar, no….. so many things that I didn’t even think to question. It was about this time, shortly after I started that I was introduced to coaching and slowly the pieces of the puzzle started to appear, at times I still didn’t know how to put them into place but I at least had something to work with. One of the biggest pieces I learned in the process is that there is so much more to weight management than on or off a diet. Weight management is on a spectrum and my old version of dieting was to go from one extreme end of the spectrum to the other. Not realizing all the levels of managing weight that reside in the middle of the spectrum. Had I recognized these different levels and started to learn the skills of each level, it would have saved me from years of yo-yo dieting and disordered eating behaviors.

It’s that time of year! It’s a great time to reflect on the past year, assess where we are and where we want to go and then come up with goals to help get us there. Many people like to use the S.M.A.R.T. acronym for creating their health and nutrition goals, I personally didn’t find success using this process. But let’s break it down, S=Specific, M=Measurable, A=Achievable, R=Relevant, T=Time-bound. If this works for you…. great! For me it feels very rigid, with qualifiers and rules to follow. Honestly, I already felt not good enough in this area of my life, and truly in a few others as well, whether by others or myself I felt “not enough”, which cuts deep into one of our core needs in life. To my mental and emotional health, this approach to goal setting felt like a “set-up” to cut that wound a little deeper. I needed a different approach, one that honored a healthier version of the whole me, because I’m much more than just a number on a scale. Another example, I had a client tell me that she was proud of her 40# weight loss this year BUT it wasn’t the 60# she had hoped to lose. I asked her if the previous version of herself, who made that original goal, would have been happy weighing 40# less when she said that? Of course she would! If I looked at the trajectory I was on prior to this last attempt at weight loss even if I maintained my weight it would have been an improvement. I really needed to let go of the “Specific” part of the goal. I had time-bound, just by nature of it being a New Years, but I needed my goals to be measurable, achievable and relevant. With that I offered her my New Year’s Resolutions/Goals, to end the year healthier than I started it, creating a Healthier Version of You. You have the freedom to choose how you want to measure it and honestly I’d cast a wide net, compare it to recent bloodwork you had done maybe lower your cholesterol, take pictures of yourself, take measurements, and obviously the scale. Get creative about different ways to measure health because it is far more than the number on the scale. Maybe you do a mental health journal? Whatever it looks like for you. Noting your water intake, how many fruits and veggies you eat in a day. Anything goes because ALL of it goes towards your health. I honestly think that especially in the beginning of your health journey it is best to have a wide definition, encompassing many different data points and values. You need to create a different cycle for yourself, you need some wins. You need a year that you can look back and see objective proof that you achieved that goal for yourself because there are so many markers of health. We have the rest of our lives to continue to improve and continue to get better it all doesn’t have to happen in one year. NEXT… Take that larger goal and break it down. I like to break my goals down into seasons. January- June, I am dialed in to a specific health goal with 1-2 maintenance breaks. In the summer, with kids home from school and summer vacations I find it’s best to stick to a gentler version of my habits that keep me in maintenance. It’s a great break for my mind and my body. Then come Fall, I’m back to being dialed in on a specific health goal and then during the Holidays I go back to maintenance. I’m never on or off, I make slight adjustments in my nutrition and workouts to support my current health goal. You should not push hard on any one goal for an entire year, but you also want to spend enough time pursing it to see progress. I find seasonal adjustments are great for my life and schedule. And once you decide on seasonal goals then you break them down further into the actions that will help you achieve those goals. What are the daily and weekly actions that realistically fit into your already busy life that will support your goal. Visual from Precision Nutrition (below graphic)

This feels slightly gimmicky, which I slightly cringe at but the reality is when life happens we start to make this process far more complicated. In no way am I trying to downplay the real issues of why weight loss isn’t sustainable. The mindset, negative thoughts, all or nothing thinking, sabotaging behaviors, and honestly things you don’t even realize you do or believe, that make this process far more challenging. I titled it this way to remind you that it really is this simple, NOT EASY, but simple. Don’t complicate it, when “it’s not working” it’s likely because of one of the deeper issues mentioned above. This is typically how this goes down, we start off strong but then something derails us. It’s like going on a road trip from your starting weight to your goal weight and you get a flat tire along the way. What we need to do is pull over, pause there, fix the tire, then keep going. Instead, most of us either slash all the other tires (ie: well I already ate over my calories today I might as well eat everything else in sight) OR we go ahead and tow our car all the way back to the start of the trip (ie: all or nothing, anyone?). I want to reminder you to not make this complicated, pull this list back up (save it to your notes section on your phone) as many times as you need to remind yourself to just pull over, eat maintenance calories, fix what needs fixing, keep your progress, then when you are ready just pick up where you left off to preserve all the hard work you’ve put in to get to that point. Make progress from there, not starting all over or worse off then when you were derailed.

Why is protein so important?

Short answer is no, but let’s look at why we track our food, the benefits and limitations, different ways to track and what your ultimate goal for living your life.

Let’s start with some great resources and I’ll end with what has worked for me to increase my water intake.