5 Things I Wish I Did Earlier To Reach My Health Goals.
Here’s what I would’ve done earlier to reach my health goals!
1. Approach Weight Loss with a Different Mindset!
This is the most important step I took to find success with losing weight and eating the right foods. Many people including myself approached weight loss with the mentality of looking for a quick fix to the issue and looking back at this, I realized how detrimental such a mindset is to staying open-minded and learning new things.
Being able to approach a newfound interest, hobby, or profession requires a fresh perspective to learning new things and this includes nutrition and fitness. Once I was able to change my approach to losing weight and worried more about the journey than the end results, I came out learning much more about health and nutrition than I ever would if I didn’t change my mindset and look at it from the perspective of someone who wants to know the relationship between the components of food and the human body.
2. Eliminate or Moderate Obstacles Keeping You From Succeeding!
This was one of my biggest roadblocks to reaching my health goals since I cared too much about what people would think if I was to follow the strategy I implemented to lose weight, lower my blood pressure, and still eat the foods that I love.
I’ll share the details in later blogs as to what I did to be able to do all of this as sharing this now would drag the article out for too long.
There’s many things that could get in the way of losing weight, so I can’t take everything into account. All I can say is to do whatever is necessary to get to your goals. However, don’t make it an excuse to get into arguments with people for no reason as you don’t have to completely eliminate every obstacle you have.
For example, I like eating pizza, but I didn’t eat it everyday as I still remembered that I have a goal to hit, yet I was aware that only eating pizza once a week wouldn’t cause me to lose all of my progress due to what I already knew about losing weight.
3. Do Research on Common Health Myths!
There’s many health myths floating around the internet and by word-of-mouth that have not been thoroughly researched and confirmed or if they have, then there’s enough bias within research studies or experiments to make them invalid.
Another reason for health and food myths being so widespread in the United States is also because of a lack of proper education about these topics. For example, salt gets the blame for causing high blood pressure/hypertension among adults in the US. (Disclaimer: I am not a doctor!) What people including doctors, fail to take note of are various factors that are involved with regulating water retention like potassium, magnesium, insulin, and sugar that have far more significant effects on water retention than sodium in affecting blood pressure.
When I was able to get past the “fat makes you fat” myth, then I was able to remove unnecessary obstacles and other health myths from my mind to get to my weight loss goals.
4. Stop Counting Calories
I understand why counting calories is so addictive! Many people that want to lose weight want information they already understand. It’s a measurement that everyone understands and it’s quantitative, but the main issue behind counting calories is because one of the food myths I explained earlier comes from calorie counting.
It is true that dietary fat has double the calories of carbohydrates and protein, but there’s no context of the calories within dietary fat and what it’s actually doing to the body. This leaves many people with no qualitative information about fat especially when it’s the most important part that gets left out, which is its negligible effect on insulin. People have used calorie counting as an excuse to eat whatever they want and think they won’t have to deal with the consequences of what their body takes in.
Counting Calories can get depressing when you calculate the amount of time you’ll have to spend doing certain exercises to lose very little calories. This can erode your will to continue losing weight when you see how much effort you have to put in to get very little done when this is far from the truth as the calories method has failed us countless times and people have lost weight with zero calorie counting.
5. Switch It Up!
It’s important to add variety into your life when it comes to what you eat and how you do it! Variety is how we create new and unique experience for the things that we already do. People are inclined to drop out of a diet regime if it’s too restrictive.
The reality about diets is that most people don’t stick with them; but that doesn’t mean it serves no purpose.
I hopped in between using keto, low-carb, cheat meals, and fasting to add variety to my weight loss strategy. I only went into keto and low-carb because I knew they would help me, but it isn’t something I would be able to stick with long-term when I know there’s many of my favorite foods I would have to give up.
The main thing to remember about whatever you do is to have fun and enjoy yourself. If you’re not enjoying a particular diet, then it is best to find alternative methods to help you lose weight without feeling restricted.
Bottom Line is that reaching your health goals require you to know how to approach them and the dedication to stick with them while having fun. The sacrifices that help you get to your goal will be worth it as change comes at a cost and I hope everyone of you guys find success with your health goals.
