The list below covers the basics you need to succeed in losing weight and making peace with food. But it’s a summary, not a step-by-step plan. Don’t try to do everything at once! That is the main mistake people make. Pick one or two bullets to start and go slowly. In later blog posts, I will provide more details on each recommended action.

• Don’t go on a “diet.” Rather, decide to create your own plan, gradually. It needs to be something you prefer to live with for the rest of your life. Allow it to easily fit in with your life—your schedule, what other people in your household eat, how much time realistically you have to shop and prep food, your food preferences, in short everything in your life! There is no diet plan out there that knows what your life is like, so design your own. Change one small thing at a time and practice being consistent before you add the next thing.

• Decide if you’re truly ready. In another blogpost I will teach you a method to explore the pros and cons of changing vs. not changing. It will help, too, if you work on your “why”. At the beginning we tend to get focused on the “how” but when the going gets rough, having a strong “why” will make the difference.

• Work on your feelings of agency. You are in the driver’s seat. If you’re trying to follow what an outside expert says is the best way, then there’s something to resist, to say “no” to. Instead, take ownership of all your food decisions, including the ones where you eat something that’s not on your plan. You make the rules and you may choose to break the rules sometimes. But don’t give your power away. Empower yourself to be the one who decides everything. Feelings of disempowerment lead to more eating!

• Reframe the notion of a “mistake.” It may sound corny, but the only way to learn is to make mistakes. Then analyze and think about how you might do it differently next time. Get back to your normal eating right away. If you beat yourself up for a “mistake” it can, ironically, lead you to this kind of thinking: “Well, I screwed up, so I might as well eat all the ________ and some ______, too and I’ll restart my diet Monday, or next week, or the beginning of next month.” Your brain is always looking for an excuse to eat the food, and beating yourself up is a sure-fire way to lead it to those “screw it” thoughts.

• Court compassion. It is the antidote to shame. If you can be kind to yourself, you will be far less likely to engage in eating behaviors that hurt you, that make you feel bad (physically and/or mentally) later.

• Find a support partner or support group of people who “get it,” who struggle with weight or painful eating behaviors. Share openly with them. Celebrate victories and analyze “mistakes” and turn them into learning opportunities for all who are listening.

• Eat protein! It may kick-start your weight loss, and certainly it will help you maintain lean muscle mass, give you abundant energy, decrease cravings for sweets and other carbohydrates, promote repair of vital tissues and organs of your body, support your healthy metabolism, and more!

• Observe your hunger. Start to try to distinguish true physical hunger (might be more than just a grumbling stomach) from the emotional desire to eat. Most of us did not learn this growing up and it will truly help your weight loss and maintenance going forward. In most cases, if you can eat only when hungry, you will reach your natural weight with little extra effort. And you will vastly improve your metabolic health!

• Observe your satiety. It takes 20 minutes for the brain to register that we’ve had enough to eat. Build that into your mealtime, the slowing down to see if you want seconds, etc. Also, there is a difference between satiety and satisfaction. Satiety is when you have that “just right” full feeling. Satisfaction is the emotional feelings of filling your meals with foods you love rather than “restricting”. It’s truly giving yourself the food, experiencing with all your senses, savoring the experience, loving yourself and the fact that you’re nourishing yourself and giving yourself pleasure. Too often we think in order to lose weight we have to eat foods we hate. Nothing could be further from the truth!

• Cultivate activities that you enjoy, that relax you, that cause you to “lose track of time.” All your self-care is extra-important during weight loss, but when you stop using food for all your emotional needs—including addressing boredom or using it for entertainment—you will want to replace that feeling with things that “fill you up,” that give you joy, that captivate your mind and senses. Pick up an old hobby that you’ve left behind. Or try new things and don’t be afraid to drop ones you don’t enjoy, but keep going until you land on one that you love!

• Gather data so that you can objectively see how you’re doing with the process. It’s easy to be batted here and there by your emotions, and it helps to track your food and/or your weight. Be careful to experiment with what “triggers” you and figure out instead what works. Try to make peace with the scale. Most people find that if they weigh frequently, but only watch averages, they can de-sensitize themselves from the problem that the scale dictates their mood for the day, etc. It’s just numbers! And lots of fluctuation is normal. So all you’re looking for are trends. This takes time to gather this much data, so work on making the whole experiment neutral in your mind. This will take awhile, but don’t give up!

• Reward yourself for positive behaviors. Keep tallies of when you successfully did a certain behavior (made a food plan, engaged in fewer snacks after dinner, etc.) Give yourself stickers or gold stars to visually see the progress. Your brain wants to focus on the negative and criticize you for what’s not going well. Instead, record and notice what IS going right. Promise yourself rewards for large milestones---5 pounds lost, 10 pounds lost, etc. Buy yourself a book, a movie, some new workout clothes, etc. And the data helps you have an objective record of what actually happened so you are less able to “rewrite history.”

• Practice your new habits consistently over time. This is the biggest secret to success. Be like the tortoise: “Slow and steady wins the race!”

I’d love to hear from you! Please send all of your questions, comments, and suggestions for future blogpost topics to Linda@RiseUpSlimDown.com or https://www.riseupslimdown.com/contact

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