Lose weight and keep it off

How to lose weight and keep it off: we share 5 simple healthy habits for weight loss anyone can develop. Plus the most important part: the mindset you need to have for these weight loss tips to work.

“we're gonna try that cayenne pepper and lemon thing. Our notary lost 50 pounds in 3 months doing that.”

That’s what our friend at work told us when she saw our notary (who was overweight before) and Beyoncé lose weight with the Master Cleanse as if it was nothing.

She had been trying to lose the same 40 pounds for as long as we had known her. Even though she often said she’s fine the way she is. And we agree she’s a wonderful person and is still a dear friend of ours, even though we don’t see each other that often anymore.

The thing is, our friend wanted that change, and even though she was “fine”, once a seemingly simple solution like the Master Cleanse presented itself – she was all eyes and ears.

There it was again – the goal of fitting into that dress she bought before she had a baby 4 years ago, wearing a bikini on the beach without having to cover up and just feeling confident about the way she looked.

Can You Lose Weight Fast And Keep It Off?

Well, it depends on your habits and lifestyle. If you lose weight fast on a calorie-restricted diet and then get back to your normal routine right away, you probably will gain the weight back.

For example, our friend didn’t end up doing the Master Cleanse and that notary gained all that weight back after a couple of months. And then some.

This happens unfortunately because we always hope for fast results. We want to get it over with. Nobody cares about what happens after losing weight. Nobody wants to know that it’s still a struggle and that you still need to keep the self-discipline…that’s boring.

However, to achieve anything worthwhile, the one thing you need most is persistence. Not being solid at it, not being hard on yourself, but being persistent.

You rarely make a major change, because you’ve done something once. Even if you did it perfectly.

So this fast fix mentality, if you have it, it needs to go.

How long can you do the Master Cleanse for? A week? Two? Then what?

You can’t be persistent with something that’s

1. too hard and

2. doesn’t feel good AT ALL

The Difference Between Beyonce And The Notary

To lose weight and transform your health you need to fall in love with the habits, that are going to take you there. Because you need those habits to keep going further.

So, the real goal on your weight loss journey is not to look great and to be skinny, it’s to develop the habits that you’re gonna practice even after you achieve what you want.

That’s the difference between Beyoncé and the notary. That’s the secret.

That cleanse worked for Beyoncé because she’s always been someone who ate healthy, worked out and was dancing most of the time.

But for someone like the notary, who sits for a living, overeats and has a love affair with sugar, the Master Cleanse doesn’t do a thing. Sure she would lose the weight, but after that’s done, the notary is lost and goes back to what she knows.

The Mindset For Sustainable Weight Loss

The key to losing any amount of weight without gaining it all back is to change your habits AND mindset. Stop trying to lose weight just to lose weight, change the way you think and feel about it.

If you need a simple action plan to lose 10 pounds in one month, you can check out this post…But, and this is a big but, to keep it off, you need to start by keeping the following things in mind.

Focus on Feeling Good

The habits we wanna develop and practice should feel good.

Even if something is challenging if it kinda feels good and helps you get where you wanna go – you’re more likely to do it again. And it will be hard only for a little bit.

For example, we know people recommend drinking apple cider vinegar to suppress appetite. Well, we don’t like apple cider vinegar outside of a salad. If we try to make this a habit – it will be something we hate and eventually won’t do it at all.

But we know the other thing that suppresses appetite is working out. Exercise is challenging for us and everyone else, but we kinda like it. So we do a 10-minute workout and that works like a miracle for our cravings.

Do the thing you actually enjoy.

Do it first

You probably have a set of habits and things you’d rather do instead of practicing something that’s hard, but feels good and will bring you more benefits along the way.

For us, that’s drinking coffee instead of water.

So what we've now committed to try is do the right thing first (which is drinking water). When we drink water first often enough, we actually stop craving coffee (which is HUGE to us).

Another thing: usually in the morning we would just grab our phone and scroll through stuff. That’s simple, and even if it doesn’t feel good – we do it anyway.

The habit that makes us feel good in the morning is exercise.

Now that habit requires more effort.

What we now do is: we wake up and exercise for at least 5 minutes before we look at our phone. 5 minutes feel so good, that we need to do more.

Remember, Today is the right day to start.

Stop hesitating and waiting for everything to be solid. People are afraid to even listen to common sense and start eating healthy, just because they’re not sure if that’s gonna work for them. Because they’re not sure if there isn’t a shortcut somewhere. (there isn’t, trust us!). Don’t wait and don’t hesitate.

The more time you spend looking for the solid solution, the less time you have to enjoy the ride and the results.

Plus the more you exercise a bad habit, the harder it becomes to stop it and to develop a good habit. Start now.

Be Realistic

Manage your expectations.

At the beginning of the year, we were the heaviest we had been our entire life. We're not overweight, but that weight gain just didn’t feel right.

We were sitting for too long, was stressed and overate. That reality felt so uncomfortable, so not us, that we just wanted to get out of there. We wanted to escape as quickly as possible from this situation.

So we said: we'll lose those 20 pounds in 2 weeks and be done with. Well, the 2 weeks went by and we were even heavier.

Those expectations put so much pressure on us, that we would self-sabotage just to prove to myself how insane that goal was.

Then we just decided to take it one step at a time. How much on average do people lose in a week anyway? We knew it was about 2 pounds.

So losing those 20 pounds would take us 10 weeks or about three months.

Not two weeks.

Once we started taking it step by step (like week one we will weight ___, week two we will weight ___, and so on…) we started losing weight and feeling better. Now we still haven’t lost all the weight, but 10 pounds is better than nothing. The point is to be realistic and to keep going in the right direction.

Trust

After failing so many times at the same thing, we sometimes lose hope that we’re ever gonna achieve what we want. We’re too much of a failure.

And diet programs and supplement suppliers are no help here. People always make you think you need their stuff to achieve what you want. That you’re lost without those things and you’ll never be healthy if you don’t follow their advice.

You need probiotics, you need fat burners, you need a detailed plan, you need a community…

Actually, you’ve got everything you need:

You’ve got a body (great start!), you’ve got the information, got healthy food and you’ve got time (don’t use that excuse!). That is all you need to lose weight.

We've heard different things for years from our mom:

“we can’t lose weight, because we have Hashimoto’s.” or “we can’t lose weight – it’s our genes, your grandma was also heavy.”

Both of these are true, but here’s what happened. Once she started eating healthier (no plan, just cutting out junk food) and walking more – the weight came off quickly. She’s not quite there yet, but on her way. Magic, right?

Trust that a healthy body is not reserved for special people.

It’s everyone’s right – yours too. If you use common sense with your food choices and habits, you’re gonna feel and look better sooner than you think. Life’s not against you.

How To Lose Weight And Keep It Off

Now, let’s get more specific and take a look at the 5 simple habits that can help you lose weight and make a big change in your health and life.

1. Drink water.

Such an underestimated tip. Water is where life starts.

Today we’re so dehydrated, we don’t even know what it feels like to actually be hydrated.

We’re constantly complaining how we’re tired, in pain, can’t focus…

Here’s a little known secret: water can fix all of that.

The other great thing about being hydrated is that you stop craving bad things. There are synergies among the things we consume every day and when you drink enough water you actually start craving foods that have water in them. Yes, those are vegetables. So drink more water.

via olia danilevich

2. Cook More.

There’s a big misconception about cooking healthy and it’s that it takes a long time. It doesn’t.

Most healthy meals take less than 30 minutes to make. In fact, we always keep in mind this as a rule of thumb: If it takes more than 30 minutes to make – probably not that healthy anymore.

3. Move, even if you don’t exercise.

Being in one place can’t help a lot with weight loss or feeling good. And it is boring. Out of that boredom, you end up overeating. It’s a cycle.

Moving is simple. Take a walk, start stretching, do 10 minutes of yoga, go dancing. That is way better than not doing anything. Do something you enjoy and start moving.

via Hatice Baran

4. Eat, don’t diet.

Most diets are focused on what you can’t have and what you need to eat in excess. Good examples are high-protein diet, Atkins diet, ketogenic diet, high-carb diet….diet diet diet. These diets can go wrong if you just simplify the concept of eating more of one macronutrient and avoid the other.

You need to look for diversity in what you eat, for different nutrients that come from different foods.

So eating chicken breast with broccoli every night is not a reliable strategy. It’s important to develop a healthy relationship with food.

The most important distinction you need to make between foods is natural (one ingredient foods) & processed foods (even if seemingly healthy).

Just so you know – your body did evolve on the natural stuff, so that’s what you can process. The other stuff? Well, your body doesn’t know what to do with it.

5. Stop Being Hard On Yourself.

Relax. If you keep beating yourself up you’re not gonna make anything better. Be kind and forgiving. Go at your own pace and don’t blame your body for not being able to drop 5 pounds within a week.

If you fall off the wagon, don’t make it a big deal, forgive yourself and focus on catching that wagon. The sooner you do that (so today, not tomorrow), the less time you’ll spend chasing that wagon or waiting for another one.

This means, if you forgive yourself you’ll get to your goal sooner. We’re all human and make mistakes, and that includes you too.

48-Hour Weight Loss Challenge

So. If you’re up for it, during the next 48 hours, do your best to practice the right thing first, without hesitation.

There’s always time (and opportunity) for a bad habit, so don’t feel like anything is forbidden. Just focus on the things you wanna do first to feel great.

Your action steps:

• Choose 3 healthy recipes for the next 2 days, go grocery shopping and make them.
• Get a big bottle of water and keep it within reach all the time. Whenever you have a craving – drink a sip of water first (Yes, you’ll need to do it a lot at first!).
• Exercise every day for 20-30 minutes. You can go for walks, do at-home workouts or even go to the gym.
• Sleep 8 hours every night. You’re more likely to make bad choices when you’re tired, so, please give yourself a reliable chance to win the day by getting enough sleep.

That’s just 2 days, do it for 2 days. See how you feel.

We hope after the 48 hours you see that you can actually do it.