Practice. Re-evaluate. Repeat.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, periodic re-evaluation is necessary to keep making progress and identify habits that aren't working toward your goals.
I've recently made a few big changes that as you can tell from the weight tracker on the right are actually working for me.
In November, I was once again frustrated and disgusted with myself and not feeling very healthy at all. I was slacking on my food diary, drinking way too much alcohol, and had basically given up on exercising. Which is really sad because just a few months prior I had found the perfect routine and was going to the gym regularly and enjoying it quite a bit. But then we moved. Routine; out the window. Everything changed and all my forward momentum was lost. Additionally, living in a new area and not being settled due to the amount of work we had to do to the new house made us choose going to restaurants over home cooking so it was the perfect weight-gain storm.
At that time, I noticed I wasn't so much fat as I was bloated and out of shape, as well as having unpleasant symptoms like allergies to food that never bothered me before and other gastrointestinal unpleasantness. So my focus changed from weight loss to gut repair. I wanted to make my digestive system healthy and happy again.
I began by cutting out all alcohol, taking probiotics, adding foods like sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha, etc and making sure to eat as many vegetables as possible and I was completely obsessed with hitting as close to 100% nutritional values in Cronometer as I could get. Within a month, I lost 4 pounds, the bloating subsided, the allergies subsided, my digestion improved, and I was feeling much better.
The more I focused on nutrition and how to make my digestion happy, the more I got interested in LCHF (low carb, high fat) as a way of eating. If you think about it, carbs are the least natural, most processed foods we eat and I for one was eating a huge majority of my daily food intake as carbs.
Once I started cutting out the carbs, I lost another 9 pounds in the next 35 days and I am now very proud of where I'm at as well as very happy with my daily nutrition levels.
Make sure you are taking the time to really look at what is working and what is not and don't be afraid to make an adjustment if needed. It's unlikely the same strategy will work forever and once you get to one level of success, there may be more improvements you can make. Baby steps!
Post a Comment