Earlier this week I wrote about taking your weight loss goals/progress one day at a time, since it can be overwhelming to look at the long-term when you are just beginning. When you feel overwhelmed, this can sap your motivation. I’d like to expand on the idea of one day at a time and make it even simpler: why not take things one meal at a time?
If you’ve read very many of my other posts, you know that I advocate getting off of the bulk of processed food and replacing it with whole, healthy, real food, real food that you cook at home. Sounds hard? If you’ve never done it before, it will be a change, but once you get into in and experience for yourself the benefit of physical wellness that you might not have ever felt in your life, that will give you motivation to continue.
The goal is to get you moving in a healthier direction in the first place, and if even looking at a whole day of eating healthy whole foods instead of your regular pre-packaged, additive filled foods seems overwhelming, then take a step back and just focus on each meal.
Whether you have made the decision for yourself to change your eating (and exercise!) habits because you need to lose weight, or because you’re sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, that processed, sugar-filled food will probably still be calling your name the first 3-7 days that you kick it.
Honestly though, my experience holds true that once I’ve gotten past those first 3 days without eating the processed, sugared foods (or foods high in natural sugar), those cravings have truly disappeared. You could refer to my progress in my ban on refined sugar experiment for the details (note: I cut out all addictive foods/ingredients).
If you implement your new lifestyle one meal at a time, I also suggest you document your progress in your journal. At the end of each day you can look back at your string of successes and feel great about what you’ve accomplished. You could continue to look at your exercise plan one day at a time, since you don’t need to exercise day and night.
If you feel lost on how to return to healthy eating and exercising, I do recommend the Six Week Body Makeover. I have been writing about this program frequently and the reason is that it gave me all of the tools to know how to live a healthy lifestyle.
Good thoughts. I would add that in addition to taking things one step at a time, one might want to pick a time to start when one has relatively few responsibilities; summer vacations are a good time, but definitely not when starting a new job, or other stressful time.
Hi, thanks for your comments!
I agree that it’s better to make a lifestyle change re: your eating and exercise habits when you aren’t making another large change at the same time (new job, moving, etc.).
One caution with this thought, though: it’s easy to come up with excuses to put off improving your health by saying that you have too much going on. In current society, most people have full schedules, so I say that today is the best time to start….it’s as good a time as any! 😉