alone summer. Dwindling motivation, fading dedication, and busy, busy life start to intervene, and the best-laid plans become just that. Action takes a backseat until next January.
Iâve always believed that exercise and nutrition go hand in hand. While exercise is important, the key to losing weight and keeping it off lies in what you eat. Iâm not talking about a fad diet, though. Iâm talking about a nutritional lifestyle changeâa holistic approach that takes into account that you will fall off the wagon, eat out at restaurants, and plateau in your journey to lose weight and get healthy. What you eat is the single most important factor in losing weight.
As I stood at the mirror, examining my 70-plus pounds of baggage, I realized that it was critical to share with those who were following me that exercise doesnât get you all the way. It helps, absolutely, but it isnât the critical piece.
While exercise is important, the key to losing weight and keeping it off lies in what you eat. Iâm talking about a nutritional lifestyle changeâa holistic approach that takes into account that you will fall off the wagon, eat out at restaurants, and plateau in your desire to lose weight and get healthy. What you eat is the single most important factor in losing weight.
So I decided to forgo one of the most important parts of my personal training regimenâworking out; I would do only stretching and basic core exercises. I would change my nutrition first, hoping that my results would show that what you put into your system is much more important than anything else when youâre trying to lose weight and become healthy.
Unlike the fad diets and workouts that many of us have experienced to some degree (my condolences to all of you), my approach to health is simple. Itâs my belief that weâre all in charge of our own success in finding the path to our health. This approach is a lifestyle, not a diet!
Most approaches require an individual to become almost roboticâeat this, avoid that. What this type of approach fails to consider is that weâre human. Weâre going to struggle, and weâre going to make mistakes. And if an approach doesnât make concessions for mistakes and lapses, itâs easy to predict the end result: failure.
Many people start exercise and diet routines with the best of intentions, and when they encounter adversity, they quit. Quite simply, quitting is easier than putting in the work. And yet part of the urge to quit is the frustration of feeling like they arenât doing things right or the program isnât working the way theyâd hoped.
Besides, when someone else is telling them what to do, itâs difficult to own their own decision-making process.
I had always believed that there was an intrinsic choice within everyoneâpeople either chose to be healthy, or they chose not to, and in this way the results spoke for themselves. Becoming overweight provided me with a new reality, a more complicated understanding. I was right that the ability to become healthy was about choice. I was wrong, though, about what the word âchoiceâ meant. I thought that once your mind kicked into gear, everything else would fall into line.
I realized now that nothing was going to simply fall in line for my weight loss. But thatâs not how I became overweight, either. I had to force myself to start choosing unhealthy foods and behaviors. I had to force myself to eat that first doughnut.
As I started putting on extra pounds, I was making choices multiple times a dayâthe wrong choices for my health and fitness. Sometime along the journey, however, I stopped having to force myself to choose what was unhealthy. The choices became easy; Iâd grown so accustomed to them that I forgot I was making choicesâunhealthy onesâevery single day. Instead, it just felt like my new routine.
At the end of my six months of weight gain, the
Iâve always believed that exercise and nutrition go hand in hand. While exercise is important, the key to losing weight and keeping it off lies in what you eat. Iâm not talking about a fad diet, though. Iâm talking about a nutritional lifestyle changeâa holistic approach that takes into account that you will fall off the wagon, eat out at restaurants, and plateau in your journey to lose weight and get healthy. What you eat is the single most important factor in losing weight.
As I stood at the mirror, examining my 70-plus pounds of baggage, I realized that it was critical to share with those who were following me that exercise doesnât get you all the way. It helps, absolutely, but it isnât the critical piece.
While exercise is important, the key to losing weight and keeping it off lies in what you eat. Iâm talking about a nutritional lifestyle changeâa holistic approach that takes into account that you will fall off the wagon, eat out at restaurants, and plateau in your desire to lose weight and get healthy. What you eat is the single most important factor in losing weight.
So I decided to forgo one of the most important parts of my personal training regimenâworking out; I would do only stretching and basic core exercises. I would change my nutrition first, hoping that my results would show that what you put into your system is much more important than anything else when youâre trying to lose weight and become healthy.
Unlike the fad diets and workouts that many of us have experienced to some degree (my condolences to all of you), my approach to health is simple. Itâs my belief that weâre all in charge of our own success in finding the path to our health. This approach is a lifestyle, not a diet!
Most approaches require an individual to become almost roboticâeat this, avoid that. What this type of approach fails to consider is that weâre human. Weâre going to struggle, and weâre going to make mistakes. And if an approach doesnât make concessions for mistakes and lapses, itâs easy to predict the end result: failure.
Many people start exercise and diet routines with the best of intentions, and when they encounter adversity, they quit. Quite simply, quitting is easier than putting in the work. And yet part of the urge to quit is the frustration of feeling like they arenât doing things right or the program isnât working the way theyâd hoped.
Besides, when someone else is telling them what to do, itâs difficult to own their own decision-making process.
I had always believed that there was an intrinsic choice within everyoneâpeople either chose to be healthy, or they chose not to, and in this way the results spoke for themselves. Becoming overweight provided me with a new reality, a more complicated understanding. I was right that the ability to become healthy was about choice. I was wrong, though, about what the word âchoiceâ meant. I thought that once your mind kicked into gear, everything else would fall into line.
I realized now that nothing was going to simply fall in line for my weight loss. But thatâs not how I became overweight, either. I had to force myself to start choosing unhealthy foods and behaviors. I had to force myself to eat that first doughnut.
As I started putting on extra pounds, I was making choices multiple times a dayâthe wrong choices for my health and fitness. Sometime along the journey, however, I stopped having to force myself to choose what was unhealthy. The choices became easy; Iâd grown so accustomed to them that I forgot I was making choicesâunhealthy onesâevery single day. Instead, it just felt like my new routine.
At the end of my six months of weight gain, the
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