Earn your right to diet? What does that even mean? Well, let me break that down for you. I am going to use the most common things I see to make my example. In your teens and early twenties, you start down the road of birth control, for skin, period pain, pregnancy protection, whatever you may want you to take it. You didn’t take into account the side effects or the negative long-term effects. Also, you probably didn’t really exercise all that much, you were one of the lucky ones who could eat and drink whatever you wanted and not gain a pound or you just didn’t give a shit. Next, you start approaching 30 and have a couple of kids and during your pregnancy, you ate whatever you wanted because you were eating for two, you packed on the weight and it never came off you became pregnant again right away and now have a couple little ones at home. You may or may not be working but you’re sure as shit aren’t sleeping and your stress levels are high. You are not happy with your life, you’re not having sex, you don’t fit into the clothes you want to so you head down the 21-day fix, “eating clean”, “under-eating and committing to drinking shakes instead of food. You lose some weight but not a lot, now your starving, underrating, not sleeping and feel like your lost. Next, you find a coach, aka me. And You think “problem solved”
Wrong, problem Not solved, we have a lot of work to do. You see, we have to start by fixing that mess. We have to reverse diet, start sleeping, swapping out booze for water, figuring out how to relieve stress, how to meal plan and prep, how to stay focused on the long haul.
Many think it’s just going to happen, but you have to really stop and think, How long did you treat your body like garbage and how will it respond to you being nice to it. Everyone is different, so so very different. There is no answer to this. How do we prioritize these issues? Well, I always start with the food, Start eating more. Figure out how many calories you need to be at and start reversing up. Normally adding food will make people feel much better and SLEEP better so that’s super important for fixing the hormone mess.
Hormone mess, well that’s between you and your Doctor about coming off of the pill, I have made my stance on that very clear however I leave it to my clients and start down the road of supplements if needed.
Food quality is high up there! Focusing on eating good quality foods and limiting the amount of processed garbage, sugar, and other inflammatory foods such as grains, wheat, and dairy always seem to make a big impact on how the body feels.
Relaxing techniques and sleep habits are a must if we want to recover from the day and get our hormones back fired up and regulated. Shift workers have a hell of a time, but it can be done. I rule of thumb I like to use with clients if you don’t sleep for 8 hours, you don’t work out. Period.
Understand that everything you want is one choice away, however, understand that everything you’re trying to fix, you did it to yourself. You choose the lifestyle that got you to where you are and now you have to choose a lifestyle to fix that. Some clients fix this hot mess in a year, they are super diligent in following through, checking in and staying focused, some much longer because they are constantly pulled back into wanting to eat less, not sleeping and having the “this sucks” attitude. At the end of the day, you have to earn your right to diet and lose weight. You can’t beat your body up for long periods of time and expect it to do one of the hardest tasks, lose body fat just because you decided you were ready.
As said many many times before, stay focused, trust the process and give your body some credit it, you put it through some pretty tough times and your asking for some more.