A love for yourself is the best kind of love.

Since I’m asked this question more than any other question, I thought I would make my own post about it. This is how I’ve lost the weight, and this is how I know I’m going to keep it off for good.

Before you start this weight loss journey, I hope that this is what you really want. Please don’t do it for anyone else but yourself. That being said, there are two keys to weight loss. The first is eating healthy. The second is burning more calories than you take in, which obviously means exercise. We need to figure out your BMR, and you can calculate that here:  http://health.discovery.com/centers/heart/basal/basal.html and this is how many calories your body needs to survive. If you decide eating below that many calories is going to work for you, then don’t eat below it too much. You should never have under 1,200 calories. And 1,200 is minimum. Now, figure out your AMR http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/calories-burned.php and set the level to sedentary, this is how many calories your body burns on a typical day, so even if you were in a coma, this is how many calories you would be burning. To lose one pound per week, you need to create a calorie deficit of 500. To lose two pounds per week, you need to create a calorie deficit of 1,000. Now for example, I eat about 1,500 calories daily. Say I were to burn 300 calories through exercise. My deficit would be 560, so I would lose a little or hardly over a pound per week if every day were like that. Your deficit is your AMR + amount of calories you burned through exercise - how many calories you’ve eaten. You can figure out how many calories you’re burning through exercise by using this website: http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc or by usinghttp://www.myfitnesspal.com, both websites are helpful. This sums almost all of it up, so if you don’t understand anything I’ve just said, then feel free to message me and I’ll try to explain it. I’d like it better if you weren’t anonymous so we could talk privately. But if you don’t understand, then read it over again carefully, because it’s self-explanatory. I think she explains it a lot better than I can, if you need a second opinion: http://th3skinny.tumblr.com/post/12828566968/how-to-lose-weight

Now that I’ve explained that, I think this is also an important part that you should read. Please, remember that this is not a diet. This is a lifestyle change. When you diet, you end up gaining all the weight back. You don’t want to think of this as a diet. Hence, my Tumblr name, neversaydiet. If you think of this as a diet, you think of it as saying that you’re only going to eat healthy and exercise until you’ve lost all your excess weight, and then you’re going to go back to your old habits. No, you need to eat healthy and exercise for the rest of your life. If you go back to your old habits once you get to your goal weight, then you will gain all the weight back like I said, and you’ll have to go through this process again. And don’t be discouraged if you only lose a pound per week instead of two pounds, this is what a pound of fat looks like: http://bp1.blogger.com/_q7b045vHYFc/RkR1LZtCk-I/AAAAAAAAABM/HyUJkW6WUL8/s320/untitled1.bmp so it may not look or feel like a lot, but it is. And one pound adds up to two, three, four, five pounds, etc, this is what five pounds of fat looks like: http://doubleyourgains.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/1and5poundsfat.jpg so take it slowly. Gradual weight loss may be frustrating, but it helps you get used to living a healthy life-style. If you rush losing weight, then you’ll never learn how to completely form new healthy habits that you can keep with you for the rest of your life. 

Take it ten pounds at a time. When I started, I had 65 pounds to lose. That’s a lot, right? Taking it only ten pounds at a time is important, especially if you have to lose even more than what I had to lose. If I kept thinking, “No, I have to lose 65 pounds, that’s way too much and it’s going to take me such a long time”, I would be so stressed and I would probably give up. But ten pounds goes by quickly, and every ten pounds I lose, I get a reward for myself. I would suggest doing the same, because it’s so helpful and so much less stressful than worrying about how much you have left to lose overall. The number one reason why people quit is because they think of how far they have to go instead of how far they’ve come. Don’t let that happen to you. Be proud of yourself for every single thing you’ve accomplished and keep it coming.

Another reason why people quit is because they completely restrict themselves. Don’t cut out carbs, don’t cut out fats, don’t cut out your favorite foods. Instead, switch to whole wheat pasta instead of regular pasta, brown rice instead of white rice, whole wheat bread instead of white bread, etc. And eat healthy fats, yes there is such a thing as healthy fats. You need fat. And don’t completely cut out your favorite foods otherwise you will be more likely to binge. Do you want a slice of pizza? Then have a slice. Do you want a bowl of ice cream? Then have a bowl of ice cream. As long as you don’t eat these things all day every day, then it’s completely fine. It’s about eating in moderation, it’s not about depriving yourself. Because like I said, this is a lifestyle change, not a diet. You can’t develop an unhealthy relationship with food. Carbs and fats don’t make you gain weight, overeating makes you gain weight. After all, fruits have carbs in them, and avocados, nuts, fish, etc have fat in them. As long as you don’t go over your caloric allowance and you have a caloric deficit, then you will lose weight. I’ve tried losing weight many times in the past and I honestly know that one of the reasons I always gave up was because I was restricting myself. It was put in my head that I can’t eat my favorite foods. I thought as long as I ate healthy and didn’t have any sweets whatsoever that I would lose weight. But I was obviously wrong. If I ate 3,000 calories of fruits and vegetables, I would still gain weight just because I was eating too many calories. Overeating is what makes you gain weight. 

Eating breakfast is such an important part to weight loss. People say breakfast is the most important meal of the day for a reason. If you don’t know what breakfast stands for, it means “break the fast.” The fast is all those hours you spend not eating because of sleep. Which is another important part to weight loss. Lack of sleep can make you gain weight and it’s overall not healthy for you in general. Eat five to six small meals a day instead of three big meals. This helps to speed up your metabolism. It also prevents you from binging, because you don’t feel hungry throughout the day since you’re eating throughout the day. 

Weigh yourself only once a week, I can’t stress this enough. Weighing yourself every day is not healthy for your mind. And mental health is just as important as physical health. Because our weight fluctuates so much, we tend to get stressed, and stress leads to weight gain. So just because you’ve gained a pound does not mean it was pure body fat. It could be because you haven’t pooped yet, you just ate, you just finished exercising, you had a lot of sodium, you’re stressed, you’ve had a lot of water, etc. Weight can fluctuate up to ten pounds, especially if you’re on your period, so I would suggest not weighing yourself if you’re on your period as well. Weigh yourself on the same day each week at the same time with no clothes on, and if you have to use the bathroom, make sure you do that before your weigh in. Do it first thing in the morning before you’ve eaten, exercised, or had a cup of water. 

Don’t be afraid of the weights! Strength training won’t make you bulky. You don’t even have to lift 50lbs or bench press 200lbs. I use 5lb weights because that’s all I can take for now, and I still see a good difference in my arms. Strength training is also an important part of exercise as well as flexibility training. You shouldn’t do cardio alone. And if you want to burn more calories throughout the day, strength training helps with that. Every three pounds of muscle you gain, you burn 120 more calories while exercising and when you’re at rest. 

Drink at least eight cups of water a day. If you’ve exercised a lot more than usual for one day, then you should increase your intake of water to about ten cups, because you tend to need more water when you’ve had a good amount of exercise. If you get bored of only drinking water, don’t be afraid to drink some juice. Only have a cup per day and try to find 100% juice that’s completely natural. Not fake juice or juice that has added sugar. Tea is incredibly wonderful for you as well, and it has zero calories. There are hundreds of different types of tea that you can choose from. I personally have brewed iced tea every other day. You can also put lemon in your iced tea and lemon in your iced water, this helps to speed your metabolism as well. Lemon with iced tea and iced water is delicious. Flavored water is also good, but Vitamin water isn’t the best option because it has sugar, even the zero calorie Vitamin water has sugar. It’s fake sugar, but fake sugar is actually worse for you than real sugar. If you like vitamin water, then remember what I said, everything is okay in moderation. You could have crystal light or some other flavored water that’s zero calories and doesn’t have any sugar. If you decide to drink any of these beverages, you still need to make sure that you’re drinking at least eight cups of regular water per day.  

I thought I would also mention that just because something has saturated fat doesn’t mean it’s unhealthy either. *cough* egg yolks and peanut butter *cough*, those are two healthy foods that you should include in your diet UNLESS a doctor told you not to for health reasons. I’m sorry, but I’m tired of scrolling through my dashboard every day, and people are giving advice to NOT eat these foods. I have whole eggs and peanut butter every day and there’s nothing wrong with my health, I’ve also managed to lose 40lbs. Also, EAT YOUR POTATOES. They may have more carbs and calories than your average vegetable, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re a vegetable. By saying anti-insert this food here, you’re creating an unhealthy relationship with food. And by telling people not to eat these foods, you’re making them believe that what you’re saying is true, so they’re missing out on a great food. Eat any food you want, just eat it in moderation, and you will still be healthy and lose weight, as I already stated above. This is becoming a rant post, so I’ll stop here, and I hope this was helpful to you in some way. 

If you need help getting motivated, this is what I wrote to an anon: http://neversaydiet.tumblr.com/post/12910261707/hey-ive-been-following-youre-blog-and-i-think-its and that’s the best advice I can give on that subject.