In January of 2020 I stood in front of the mirror and basically said to myself, “This is it. I am done messing around. I don’t know how, but I am going to finally lose weight for the last time.”
I had tried ALL of the diets over the years, and I am guessing that if you are reading this you have too. I did Weight Watchers…a LOT. I tried different websites (My Food Diary, Spark People); I tried different apps (My Fitness Pal). I tried riding my bike a TON (spoiler I actually GAINED weight doing this).
Some of what I tried worked. Until it didn’t.
I would be so “good”. I would keep track of all of my food, I would go to the gym or go for walks. I would lift some weights. I would make sure I was riding at least 50-70 miles a week.
And sometimes I would lose weight…until I gained it all back.
And I kept doing the SAME THING over, and over, and over again. Sure, I would try a different diet, but it would always be the same story. I would commit like crazy for a week, a month, sometimes even a few months.
The problem though was that even though I was trying a different diet, I wasn’t actually doing anything different. I was dieting. I was hoping that I could make temporary changes and get permanent results. And each and every time I gained all of the weight back. And then some.
In this article I am going to tell you all about why you need to do something different if you want to lose weight for the last time. I am going to help you figure out what that looks like for you, and then give you some suggestions on how to implement these changes in order to jumpstart your biking weight loss.
Why you need to do something different.
I was talking the other day to a friend. She was insisting, like nobody’s business, that eating low carb/keto works for her.
She talked about all of the weight she was able to lose in the past by cutting out carbs.
And then she started talking about cheat days, and how she has been bad, and how she needs to get back to the low carb diet because she gained back most of the weight that she lost.
Now, here’s the thing. If you did something in the past, and you lost some weight, then gained it all back…it didn’t actually work.
Whatever it was you were doing simply wasn’t sustainable for you. And that’s OK! There is nothing wrong with you. It’s what you were doing…in other words the diet, that was the problem.
You need to do something different if you want to actually lose your weight for the last time. It needs to be something that is doable and sustainable, and gets you the results you want for good…not just for right now.
What you can try to do instead of what you have done in the past.
I can just hear you saying, “OK Stacy. Fine. What I did in the past didn’t work. So what the heck should I do NOW?”
Right now I would like you to sit down and brainstorm all of the things that you think that you could try to lose weight. They can include things you have done in the past if you like, or they could be brand new ideas.
Here are just a few suggestions:
- Only eat when you are hungry or fueling for a ride.
- Drink at least 64 oz of water a day.
- Get at least 7-8 hours of sleep each night.
- Plan your bike rides for the week.
- Plan your meals daily.
- Fill half of your plate with salad at every dinner.
- Stop halfway through a meal and check in with yourself to see if you are still hungry.
- Avoid eating from pots when you are putting away dinner.
- At 1-3 strength training workouts a week.
- Eat veggies/salad with vinegar first before the rest of your meal in order to stave off sugar spikes.
- Have 2 cookies for dessert instead of three.
- Have dessert five nights a week instead of seven.
Now, those are all things that I have done at some point in the last 4 years to either lose my weight or maintain it. Your list might look totally different from mine, and that is completely fine!
How to go about implementing your new changes.
Next, I want you to go through that list and cross of anything you aren’t willing to do for the rest of your life.
Now, I know that sounds a little dramatic, but hear me out.
You cannot make temporary changes and expect permanent results. Jumpstarting your weight loss means getting it going, not doing a bunch of hard stuff that you hate. You wont be able to keep it going, will feel like a failure when you stop, and will gain back what you lost.
You know, everything that has happened to you before.
So if you love sugar, don’t decide you are going to quit sugar cold turkey if you know that isn’t something that is going to be sustainable.
Losing weight is not about restricting our favorite foods. It’s about making doable changes that we can live with.
Likewise, if you know that you only have about 3 hours a week total to ride your bike, don’t decide that you are going to ride 100 miles a week. That is just setting yourself up to feel bad that you are unable to reach your goals.
Now that you have a list of things you are actually willing to do I want you to pick the EASIEST one to start with. The thing that you KNOW you can do with as little disruption to your life as possible.
Maybe it’s getting your 64 oz of water in. Maybe it’s putting a salad on half your plate at dinner. I know that the first thing I did was to have 2 cookies with my afternoon tea (that already had real cream and sugar in it, mind you) instead of 3 or 4.
The idea is that we don’t want to try doing ALL the things, ALL at once. We want to do something simple, easy, and sustainable so that we can start gaining a little confidence in our ability to follow through with the choices we make.
Do that one thing until you have it on LOCK. When you are good, then and only then does it make sense to add in something else.
Now, you may have other things on your list that you are trying to do more often from time to time and that’s great! The idea is that you are only COMMITTING to one thing at first so that if you have a rough day you know that you can still do THAT.
Make sense? You can slowly start adding more and more to your list, and over time all of those little things from your list are going to lead to big results.
A Final Note
It took me 18 months to lose 50 pounds.
For many people, that is a really long time to be patient.
But for me the time it took didn’t matter. Truly. I knew that just but starting and doing something different and sustaining it that I was going to lose weight.
Over time I was going to eat less. I was going to look at bike riding in a totally different way. I was going to incorporate strength training (this one took me almost 4 years to implement!), and I was going to feel healthy and strong.
Fast forward 4 years later and I feel amazing. I feel like I am in control of my body and my choices, and I feel like I am never going to “have” to lose weight again. This is just the way I live now, and it is fantastic.
There is absolutely no reason that you can’t do this too. I cannot overestimate enough how I thought that weight loss was too hard. That it was for people who actually had motivation and willpower, not for someone like me who had to hold back every time there was a bowl of chips at a party so I didn’t eat the whole damn thing.
Each day you choose to do something different, to try something new, brings you that one step closer to having the results you want. You will be that much closer to feeling the way you want to feel in your own skin.
You’ve got this. I believe in you. Let’s GO.
Ride on!
xoxo
Stacy
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