It happens to everybody, often in more ways than one.

You go about your day to day life normally – work, home life, social gatherings, all of it on repeat.

Then one day reality hits you hard.

You’re in the fitting room and realize that nothing fits you like it used to.

You take the stairs one day and are more out of breathe than usual.

You overhear a comment about your weight from your friends – or even worse a little kid is playfully, yet brutally honest about your weight gain.

You take a picture with your friends and can’t help but wonder if everybody else sees what you see in that picture.

You’re not happy about it, in fact you feel almost defeated at the realization.

You know something needs to be done though, you don’t want to go on experiencing life this way.

The good news is you are in full control of changing that!

The problem is, you’ve never lost weight before so you don’t know where to start, or you have lost it before but weren’t able to sustain it.

It can be really intimidating to start a weight loss journey. With all the different diets, training styles, and ads you see on a daily basis it makes it so much more difficult to know what the best way to start your weight loss journey is.

So I made a list of  a few things that you can start doing immediately to help kick start your weight loss journey!

Create Awareness

You know you want to lose weight, you might even have an image of yourself or a goal weight in mind which is great because you need a goal to strive for. The problem is though you can’t start working towards your goal without knowing where you’re starting from.

It’s like driving to a place that you’ve never been to before. You know the destination you’re trying to get to and you plug that into Google Maps so you can get directions. Google Maps can’t give you directions though without knowing your current starting point!

Start counting calories with a food tracking app like MyFitnessPal – it’s free to download and easy to use. 

Once you actually see and measure your eating habits you’ll have a better idea of what you need to change for the best results.

Protein and Veggies

Protein and vegetables are criminally under eaten in today’s world. 

Both of these have insane benefits for your overall physical health, metabolism, brain function, heart health, muscle maintenance, and hormonal function.

Not to mention both of these are highly satiating foods and can help curb your appetite throughout the day.

You can see a quick boost in results by ADDING more protein and veggies to your daily nutrition before you even cut calories.

The average person should try to have about 3-4 servings of vegetables and 1.0g of protein per pound of bodyweight. You don’t have to hit those marks day one but it’s important to know what your ultimate goal in this category is.

Aim to have a serving of protein and vegetables in as many meals as possible throughout the day!

NEAT Activity

NEAT stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenisis and, like the name states, it’s all of the activity that you do throughout the day that isn’t happening in the gym. 

These include things like walking, taking the stairs, and any other movement that you can think of!

This is an easy way to burn extra calories in your regular day to day activities! 

Park further away from the entrance

Take the stairs instead of the elevators

Use handheld carts for shopping

Take 10 minute walking breaks

ANYTHING to get you moving more in general!

All of this extra activity adds up throughout the days, weeks, and months and will lead to pounds lost in no time!

General recommendations for NEAT is to hit  8000-12000 daily steps but if that’s way off of what you’re currently doing just try to do 300 more steps per day from week to week until you hit that number!

Water Intake

Sometimes the sensation of hunger that you get is actually a misread sign for dehydration!

Consuming more water during meals will also boost your metabolism, curb your appetite, and give you more energy throughout the day!

Here are some easy things you can do to increase your water intake:

• Drink a tall glass of water first thing in the morning
• Buy a really nice water bottle that you like the look of. It sounds silly but you’re more likely to drink out of a bottle you like and it makes the whole thing more enjoyable
• Order water with your meals

Typical water recommendations are going to be half of your body weight in ounces, but the more the better.

Sleep More

A lack of sleep leads to an increase of the appetite hormone ghrelin which causes overeating throughout the day.

Not to mention your metabolism is working hard while you’re sleeping to help keep you healthy and kicking so when you cut that short you limit how you feel throughout the day.

Aim for 7-9 hours of sleep which means you should spend 8-10 hours in bed.

If you want to read more about the effects of sleep click here.

Why Most People Fail At Losing Weight

The most important thing to remember when starting your weight loss journey is to keep it simple!

Find something that you can do even on the days where your motivation might be at its lowest. 

Trying to do too much from the get go is one of the biggest reasons that people fail at their weight loss journey.

Instead of trying to do it all, aim to for the minimal effective dose. The smallest things that will create the biggest change for you (aka everything in this blog)!

Once you master those, THEN you can build upon your success!

That is the ultimate secret to maintaining long term weight loss success!

Have questions? Wonder what the best thing for you might be? Shoot me an email here and I’ll respond to you – personally – in 24-36 hours.