Accountability

This is everyone's favorite section, I'm sure.

You will have terrible days when it feels like you’ve made no progress and nothing you’re doing is working – I had MANY and here’s how I got through them.

Have A Support Group

It doesn’t have to be a group, but have someone to talk to – someone you can be completely honest with, someone you can tell your fears to, someone who will go wild over even your smallest successes and someone who isn’t afraid to call you out on your shit if you’re deluding yourself. My best friend and I started a GoogleDoc at the beginning of 2017 (we were both turning 30 that year and had some major life goals to accomplish) and wrote back and forth to each other pretty much every day. Not only did it document everything for me to look back on, but it allowed me to use my strongest form of communication (writing) to express my fears, concerns, woes, weird small successes, weird big successes, etc. We wrote down all our goals so they were right there, reminding us of what we wanted to accomplish. We also shared recipes and workout ideas and could encourage each other in moments of crises.

Tracking Your Progress

One of the most important things I did in that GoogleDoc was keep a progress table. Each month had a spot for my goal weight, my actual weight and a progress picture. Each month, I took a picture in my sports bra and shorts (those first few months were less than fun) and posted it into the GoogleDoc. These photos became super important about half way through my year. The weight comes off slowly so it’s not always obvious to you that you’re losing weight or sometimes you’ve gaining muscle so the scale doesn’t seem like it’s moving as much as it should be, but when you compare photos from month 2 to month 7 you will see a HUGE difference.

Buy New Clothes

This was really hard for me – A) I hate clothes shopping (still now, I just find it exhausting), B) I usually wear my clothes until the fall apart so letting go of (even donating) “good” clothes that no longer fit me was really hard, C) the idea of spending money on clothes that (hopefully) wouldn’t fit me within a few months seemed like a waste. All of that being said, I found it was really important for me to either tailor my old clothes so they fit or buy new clothes that actually fit (buying my “in-between” clothes from Goodwill/second hand shops helped to assuage the guilt!) It was an important confidence boost and really helped me see my progress. This is also especially important for workout clothes! I had to get rid of my absolute favorite pair of workout pants because at one point they got too big and started to fall down while I was running - it broke my heart. (Not to worry though, I recently bought another (much smaller!) pair.)

Cheat Every Now and Again

This is a slippery slope, I know, but it’s also some of the best advice I received. I knew you shouldn’t reduce your caloric intake TOO much because your body would think you were starving and hold on to as much weight as it could, but even if you’re not reducing your calories by crazy numbers, your body will get used to your “new normal” and could slow your metabolism down to match. I do well with one “cheat meal” a week (this is going to be one of those experiment things to see what works for you!) – this isn’t to say I go to Five Guys and get a double burger with everything and fries and a milkshake and then take myself out for dessert afterwards. Honestly, my best option for a cheat meal is sushi – high carb plus a bit of fat and protein – and it still feels like a treat. The science behind a cheat meal essentially equates to an extra dose of carbs which reassures your body that you’re not going to starve any time soon and it’s okay to let go of the excess weight.

Fuck Ups

This is what I called (call, actually, ongoing…) my days where I slipped and decided I really needed to eat an entire frozen pizza and a bag of trail mix and a sleeve of thin mints and a block of cheese, etc. But tomorrow was always a new day and a new opportunity to make better decisions. You have to tell yourself this AND believe it (not always easy.) I still logged these days in my calorie tracker – if only to provide myself a reason as to why I wasn’t losing any weight.

Be Honest

It's also super important for you to be honest with yourself - about why you're doing this, why you haven't succeeded in the past (identifying these things will help you address them now so they won't hinder you this time) and what your obstacles might be now. This is especially important if you're not seeing the results you wish you were. I had to get REAL honest with myself about the amount of cheese I was putting on my scrambled eggs every night - it seems like such a tiny thing, but 200 extra calories of cheese EVERY NIGHT adds up.