7 Steps to Building a Permanent Weight Loss Plan
In this post I'm really excited to share with you guys more about who I am, my approach, and some tips on how you can start losing weight today.
Let's start with who I am. As you may know, I am a registered and licensed dietician. I've been a dietician for about eight years, and I have had my business now for about a year and a half (time flies)! And I really gravitated towards helping busy professionals on how to lose weight. I've always been attracted to weight loss and helping people reach their weight loss goals, and I want to tell you a little bit more about my own journey of how this became my passion.
When I was only 14 years old I started Weight Watchers to lose weight. I was searching for a way to feel good in my body and lose weight. I was dealing with a lot of feelings of guilt and shame because of my weight. My clothes didn’t fit right, and I worried guys wouldn't like me because of the way I looked. I thought about my weight all the time - from when I woke up to when I went to bed. I never could just put clothes on and feel really good about my body. Instead, negative thoughts filled my brain like, “these pants don't fit me right,” or I would try to wear the trendy jeans that my friends were wearing and they never felt comfortable since I was a little overweight.
I was just going through all these emotions as a teenager, at a time that’s already kind of awkward. You're trying to find your place in the world - where you fit in and what you think. So all of my feelings about my weight on top of that was emotionally overwhelming. So one day I just decided I'd had enough and I was going to take action and find a solution. My solution ended up being Weight Watchers. It was really big at the time, and my mom had tried it off and on and already had the books, so I decided to take that route.
I talked more about Weight Watchers in this podcast episode, but really the main thing I got out of Weight Watchers was learning portion control. And while it did help me lose weight, as I went on to be a dietician, I learned so much more about how to nourish the body and what makes me feel full, and that has led me to maintaining my weight for over a decade now.
So, of course, I was excited because I’d learned how to manage my weight, and I wanted to start helping others find that solution as well. My mindset had totally shifted, where I used to be a binge eater, and now I was able to eat things in moderation. I never shamed myself for having a piece of chocolate. I had done so much mindset work, and I was so excited to share this with others.
When I started getting into weight loss work, I realized I was using tools in different ways for different people. And this is something I'm so excited to share about in this post, because I only recently realized this. To be honest, for the past few months I've been going through a little identity crisis as a dietician. I was asking myself - Who am I? How do I teach clients? I felt a lot of pressure from social media that I needed to niche down and teach people one way. I didn't want to confuse anyone. Yes, there does need to be a base of education that generally applies to everyone, but it's important to understand that your solution may not be what your friend's solution is. And that's okay. And that's something that took me a while to understand.
So I started trying a variety of methods to help my client. I had some of my clients doing food photo diaries, and they did so well with just looking at their plates and understanding portion size and how to balance a plate. Then I had other clients who would do the food photo diaries, and they’d forget to take pictures. It just wasn't enough accountability for them. So I would put them on MyFitnessPal, and that worked so well for them. So I ended up with this practice where my clients were all working towards the common goal of more awareness with food, but everybody was using different methods that worked well for them.
That's when I came to the conclusion that I am a solutions-based dietician, meaning that I assess my clients and their personalities, and I suggest solutions I think might work for them. And sometimes I don't always know which solution will work the best for them, but the best way to determine if something works for you is to try it out. Right? Trial and error is such a huge part of exploring what works well for you. For example, let’s look at cottage cheese. It's important to know what a serving of cottage cheese is for you, meaning what makes you feel full and satisfied. What do you need to pair with that cottage cheese to feel full? Can you eat it alone or do you need to add another food to it? What is that giving you? Is it giving you mostly protein, fat, carbohydrates? Is it giving you a combination of macronutrients? And what do you have flexibility with - meaning cottage cheese has one amount of protein, but when it comes to fat, you have different options. You can buy low fat or whole milk. So you have flexibility within the fat macro with cottage cheese. All of these things are really important for long-term weight management. It's just understanding food on a deeper level. And whether you're tracking on MyFitnessPal or using a food photo diary, I believe that there are so many ways to create this type of awareness about the actual food. This is what I wanted to help clients with.
And this brings me to the seven ways to building a permanent weight loss plan.
1. Understand Yourself
The first step in building your own plan for weight loss is understanding yourself. Get to know yourself. Have you ever taken an Enneagram test? I love Enneagram! I feel like it really gives you a little bit more depth into the way you function. And a good example would be with meal prep. With my personality type, I know that when I'm on, I'm on, when I'm off, I'm off. So if you're going to ask me to meal prep every Sunday, I will not be consistent with it because there might be a Sunday where I'm completely exhausted and I can't do it. So, what I have found is that it's important for me to take advantage of my “on days” and get things done. In order to be organized, I just make a plan so that when my “on days” come, I have a plan that I can put into action. Understanding this about myself has really made my life a lot easier. So instead of forcing myself to do things when I don't want to do, I save them for times when I feel motivated. As you get to know yourself, maybe you realize you really like checking things off your lists, and like to do a little bit every day. If you understand those personality traits about yourself, you can make the meal prep process so much easier.
You can also find the trackers that are going to work the best for you and that actually make you feel excited about tracking every day. Losing weight doesn't have to feel like a drag. If you wake up every single day feeling like it’s hard and you hate tracking, it's not the best tracking method for you. It doesn't mean tracking isn’t for you or that there aren't other tracking methods out there that work better for you, but it's just not the best one for you.
Understanding yourself has really helped my one-on-one clients with coming to their own solutions, not just what I have found as the solution for me. And so number one would be, get to know yourself and your habits and recognize when things aren't working for you.
2. Find Your Solution
When I talk about solutions, that means solutions within hydration and tracking food. Building a permanent weight loss solution for you requires finding a solution that works best for you. What do you gravitate toward? Are you gravitating towards more of a plant-based diet? Does that make you feel great? Do you gravitate more towards a high-protein diet? Does that make you feel great? I know we always want things to be black and white, like here are five things I want you to go implement, but it's just not life. I really believe that we're all unique.
We all have different needs within nutrition and you can still nourish your body if you eat higher protein, more moderate carbs. Or maybe you’re plant-based and you eat a higher carb, lower protein diet. Maybe you feel great on the higher carb diet! That could be due to your exercise, because if you work out more, a higher carb diet is better for you. If you do a lot of cardio, you're going to definitely feel better on a high carb diet. We are not all the same, despite what diet culture and all of the fad diets and trends try to tell us. And I think that that is really why there continues to be new diets and new diets and new diets, right? Because different things work for different people. So instead of just doing what everyone else is doing, try things out for yourself, be curious, and find what solution is best for you.
3. Test Your Belief System
I got a photo from my cousin the other day asking me why there is so much sodium in carrot juice (Bolthouse smoothie)? It had 250 milligrams of sodium in it. So the RDI (Reference Daily Intake) recommendation is less than 2300 milligrams a day. If you compare 250 to 2300 milligrams, it's not that much. And 250 was for the whole bottle, which you probably wouldn’t want to drink the whole bottle at once because of all the sugar in carrot juice. So anyways, whenever I explained that to my cousin, it made a lot of sense to him.
With that said, I challenge you to test your belief system. Is what you're perceiving to be “too much” really too much? Do you think that low carb is the only way, and you're on and off that diet constantly? If you're on and off a diet constantly, that's not the best diet for you and that's not your solution. Take some time to think about what works for you.
Another example is vegetable intake and hydration. Sometimes clients will come to me thinking they eat a lot of vegetables, but then when they start tracking they'll realize they actually don't eat enough vegetables. And that's a belief system. You have this belief system that you are eating a lot of these things when in actuality you're not. So test your belief system. Is what you think you're doing, really what you're doing. And then be honest with yourself when something's not working. And this goes back to finding your solution. I'm going to give you several examples so that you can start to uncover your solution. But be realistic with yourself if something's not working. It's okay. You don't need to feel guilty or like a failure. Maybe you tried the keto diet, and you didn't feel good on it. You had so many carb cravings, and you feel like a failure because you couldn't stay on it, but your friend Sarah lost 20 some pounds and said she feels great keto. Maybe she does feel great on keto, but it’s okay if it’s not your solution.
So let’s get into some ways that you can start losing weight today and how you can find your solutions within these things.
4. Track Food
First, I wanted to touch on tracking food. You don’t need to track food the rest of your life, but I do believe that it's very important to track food at the beginning. Whenever you are building your own weight loss plan, it is important to understand food on a deeper level. Going back to the sodium in the carrot juice example, if you're not aware of how much sodium you need in a day, how are you going to pick up a product and know if the sodium is higher or lower for you? Maybe you don't eat that much sodium in a day, or maybe you actually undereat sodium, which I've had several clients because sodium has been demonized. Sodium is actually an important mineral for your body, and if you don't get enough per day that can hurt you. So are you actually eating too much sodium that you'll have to watch the label like that? Or are you pretty moderate in your sodium that you don't really need to be as concerned?
So tracking your food is very important for education, especially if you're trying to learn more about food and nutrition on your own. The more you look at a food, the more you're going to understand how it fits in your daily routine. If you’re a numbers-based person, MyFitnessPal is a great choice! Or maybe you've tried that and you just don't stay consistent with it. In that case, maybe a food photo diary where you take pictures of your food would work better for you. If you find that you're forgetting to take photos, try a voice recorder food diary, which is my solution because I am so bad at writing things down and taking pictures. I really like the Nutritionix app tracker. It was developed by registered dieticians, and it’s so easy to use! You just go in, hit the voice command button, and literally speak into it , “One medium apple, one cup of 1% cottage cheese,” etc. You have to be as specific as possible whenever you do the voice recorder, but it literally takes me less than 60 seconds to record an entire day of food. It's fast and simple, and that motivates me to track.
Think about how you can track food consistently. Because consistency is so important for weight loss success and long-term results. And if you are in the learning phase, then you do need to track your food, so you can start to learn more about what's in your food. However you track, just find the system that works for you and stick with it.
5. Hydration
Here I'm going to talk about not just meeting a water goal, but about hydrating your body with electrolytes. You don't need to just pound a water goal every day. You need to hydrate your body with electrolytes. Purified water is actually stripped of natural water’s vitamins and minerals, which we actually need. If you’re only drinking purified water, you aren’t getting those essential vitamins and minerals, and that's a problem. You're never going to feel hydrated. I don't know if you've ever felt like you've been drinking water all day, but you're still thirsty. That means you're not actually hydrating your body.
Some ways that you can hydrate your body are by adding chia seeds and/or lemon into your water. You can also buy sports hydration packets, like Nuun, that replace electrolytes and help you feel hydrated. I also have a Berkey water filter that filters water pretty well, so I add mineral drops back in. If you're using distilled water or purified water, it’s really important to replace those minerals that your body needs. You can buy mineral drops on Amazon.
Minerals from water provide many benefits, but one way they help is with cravings. If you are having a lot of cravings, hydration isn’t the first thing you think about, right? You think it might be because you’re not eating a balanced diet or doing X, Y, and Z. But if you've ever felt like you are eating really healthy, but still struggling with cravings, you may not be hydrated enough. To test if you’re hydrated enough, take a look at your pee every couple of hours. If it looks like apple juice or ice tea you are not hydrated enough. It should be a light yellow color.
Going back to finding your solution within hydration. If you have identified that you don't drink enough water, what is your solution to this problem? There's an app that I love called Habit that allows you to set an alarm to remind you to do certain habits. You can put in your water for the day and turn on notifications, and it sends you alerts to drink water. This app works really well for me. I've had other clients use the app Plant Nanny. It’s a Tamagotchi and you feed your plant water all day. And then when it's full grown, you plant it in this garden. Some of my clients love that app, and literally had gardens full of plants. It worked so well for them, so that was their solution. I have another client who bought a Hidrate Spark water bottle which is a Bluetooth water bottle that lights up when you need to drink. And when you fill it, it records how many ounces in your phone. One of my clients told me that it was her best investment in 2021, besides her Peloton bike. That's how valuable this water bottle is to her because writing it down and tracking on apps wasn't working for her. She needed something right in front of her that she could see that could help her reach that water goal.
All this to say, we live in a day in age where there are endless solutions to our problems and we just need to find the solution that works best for us. Do not spend years trying to do what everyone else is doing and feeling like a failure if it’s working for you.
6. Movement
This is like my third thing that you can start implementing to lose weight. Again, what is your solution for movement? Do you love to walk? If you do, how are you keeping yourself accountable? How do you get more steps in movement per day? (which you know I’m a huge fan of). I think everybody should be walking more. Recently, I’ve been doing a step challenge with my clients, and it's been going so well! But you do need a step tracker because that's awareness, right? It goes back to tracking food. If you have no idea how many steps you get in per day, how are you going to set a goal or even know if you walk enough in a day.
So step one would be to buy a tracker. Now what's your solution with a tracker? Do you like the Fitbit? Do you like Garmin? Do you like the Apple watch? I have a Fitbit versa2, and I love it. But there are many options out there! When choosing a step tracker, think about which one would make you excited to wear every day. Check out my top five fitness trackers here.
Going back to finding a movement solution for you. Maybe you love to lift weights, or you really like to do cardio, or you're a runner. Whatever it is, find what you love and make it work for you. It’s also okay to have a movement solution mix which for me is like part pilates, part walking, part hiking. I love hiking! I usually go hiking on the weekend and could do it for hours. I suffer from a lot of stress and anxiety and being out in the woods in nature really helps me. Hiking helps decrease my stress and anxiety, because being in nature quiets my mind.
Maybe you like to water ski or surf, or you like to do a hobby that involves a lot of movement like golf. Those are all great things to make sure that you're consistent with so that you can get that movement in. So find your solution that you enjoy, and that’s what will give you those long term weight loss results you want.
7. Fullness
The other thing is I want to talk about fullness, and what I believe to be the three superheroes of fullness. I like to call them superheroes because they really are. They have changed my life. They are protein, fat and fiber.
Let’s start with protein. Protein decreases the hormone ghrelin, which is your “hunger hormone.” In addition to tracking what you eat, it’s really important to control your hunger. One way to do that is by eating enough protein. Eating protein with each meal is a great place to start. If you find that you don't eat protein at breakfast, try incorporating some protein before noon. For example, if you had oatmeal for breakfast, and it didn't have that much protein in it, add a protein snack at 10am so that you're not ravenous by noon and end up overeating. It's okay if your plate isn't perfectly balanced every time, you can actually have pieces of balance within your day, and it still works really well. So what that would look like is maybe have a Greek yogurt, hard-boiled eggs or some beef jerky at 10 or 11 so that you can get some protein. A general recommendation is to have about 15 to 25 grams of protein per meal. You also want to have protein in your snacks too so you can get enough protein each day. Everyone is so different with their protein needs. So I'm going to leave it at that. I really just do customization for my clients with how much they actually need based on activity, etc. It’s pretty subjective. But if you are just looking for a place to start, start with about 15 to 25 grams per meal, and then maybe like 10 to 15 grams per snack. But, again, I'm not saying that's exactly how much protein you should be eating.
Next, let's talk about fat and how it's been so demonized. I love fat! It's the last to leave the digestive tract, so it's going to make you feel the most full. I don't know if you guys ever saw the bulletproof coffee trend. What I heard from people who drank bulletproof coffee was that they loved it because they didn’t get hungry before lunch. It literally made people feel so full all morning because it was full of fat, because again fat is the last to leave the digestive tract. Something that I do with clients is maybe add collagen in their coffee (for extra protein). I sometimes recommend Bulletproof coffee if they feel like they aren't full enough. It’s just one possible solution. And if you haven't done bulletproof coffee, it's basically butter and coffee blended up. So if you eat oatmeal for breakfast, but you're not full enough, you can add a bulletproof coffee to balance out your meal. You can utilize fats in different ways. Adding hemp seeds or chia seeds to your oatmeal are another great way to feel full. They're all healthy fats and good ways to keep you full.
Lastly, fiber. I love fiber so much. It expands in the stomach, revs up metabolism, triggers a hormone that tells your brain you're full, and it's non-digestible so it will never be stored as fat. So if you want to lose weight, but you feel like you need to reduce carbs, reduce sugary and starchy carbs, don't reduce fiber-rich carbs, because they're so healthy for you. They're going to keep your bowels moving. They're going to keep you feeling more full. And if you combine them with fat, you're actually going to lose fat. So it absorbs fat in the stomach before it flushes the fiber. And so that's just a way that you can strategically eat carbs, and that's why balance is so important. These foods all work together. And if you're not incorporating them together, then it makes it really difficult to feel balanced and feel like you can actually achieve a calorie count without feeling deprived or starved.
So I am going to stop there cause I know I gave you guys a lot of information today. If you are looking to connect with me, I would love to connect on Instagram.
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