Are you ready? I'm going to teach you how to lose weight permanently and have lasting results. It's very simple. I recommend you grab a notebook because I want you to write down a couple of points that you will review from time to time, so you keep them in mind.
First, I want you to be honest with yourself and ask how far you want to go. Let’s say you want to lose 10 lbs and you are for example 60 lbs. overweight. It is completely fine, because you are going in the right direction. You may change your mind along the way. But right at this moment I want you to be honest with yourself. You can push too much to get something that you don't want right now. For example, if you are thinking you want a toned body, it’s possible. But it requires a lot of effort and if you are not ready, you will fail. You need to be mentally prepared.
If you want to feel better or fit into an old dress or jeans…
The first thing you need to ask yourself is, Am I ready to put in the work to exercise, every day or three times a week. Everything is possible, just make sure you are ready to pay the price for a toned body. The more you want, the more effort is needed.
Now that you know how far you want to go, let's move on to the second point. So, write this down. What is the reason why you want to lose weight? This is important because it will awaken powerful emotions in you that will enable you to push forward making progress. It will give you the passion, the strength, the motivation and the energy to continue on when it gets difficult.
Let's say, you have a lot of problems in your personal life, family problems or money problems or you get sick. Remembering the reason why will give you the motivation to push onward no matter what problems you meet. So, make sure the reason why you're doing it is completely clear in your mind. Are you sick of feeling tired and not having the energy to do other activities? Are you tired of not fitting into your clothes? Do you want to have a more toned body? I want you to imagine all the things you will be able to do with a strong body. You will look great and be able to hike and bike or anything else you want you to do. So, make sure you know why you are doing this because if you don't know why, you will fail. Keep in mind that out of 400 people, only one person is successful, around five people will regain the weight they lost and the rest drop the program altogether.
Your weight loss plan starts here...
I want you to go back and review the reasons why you are doing this, review them every week, every month, every time life gets tough. This will give you the motivation.
Now let's talk about setting a goal. Make sure they are realistic goals. For example, let's say you want to lose 28 pounds. That's very possible. Now every month you need to make sure that you're losing those 4 lbs. So now you have a realistic goal. We will talk about all the small things that will help you achieve your goal. Make the smallest commitments. If you don’t choose that apple during the day, you're not going to cook the right food at night. If you are eating a candy bar, or processed foods or going to fast food restaurants all the time you won't achieve your goal. So, begin with the small things, you don't have to do this overnight.
You can set up small goals week by week. This week I'm going to replace the candy bar or processed bar with an apple. That's a good beginning and then next week you do something else, like prepare a healthy lunch to bring with you instead of eating fast food. Begin with a half hour walk or turning off the TV. Start watching these kind of videos or start reading about how you're going to reach your goal. All this will keep you motivated and on track. So, remember, all the small things will help you reach your goal.
Now let's talk about your eating habits…
First of all, this is not a diet. It’s about eating according to your body. What you like to eat and the foods you enjoy, but eating real foods, whole foods and getting rid of the processed foods. Dieting is not good for you because a diet doesn't fit everybody, and it is not sustainable. I recommend you find out what foods your body likes. Maybe you are allergic to certain foods even though they are healthy foods. You can do a test to find out if you are allergic to any foods.
After that, the next part is that everyone is allergic to processed foods. They are not made to eat; they are made for profit. All the nutrients have been taken out and chemicals have been added to increase shelf life and make them taste good, but don't have any nutrients to feed your body. Any processed foods that have chemicals and preservatives should be taken out of your diet. Buy whole food if you're going to spend your money. Make sure they have real ingredients; I'll give you an example. I’m Mexican, so I like to have cured jalapenos. I look for basic ingredients, jalapenos, vinegar, oil and salt. That's what it is. If it has high fructose corn syrup or dextrose or anything else I can’t pronounce, it’s going to affect my health. Fast food is equally as bad. So, get it out of your diet.
Secondly, sodas and drinks with added sugars, get them out of your diet. They don't help you. As a matter of fact, they actually cause diseases such as diabetes and kidney stones. Alcohol is another thing. It doesn't help you at all in life. There is nothing positive about it; it doesn't help with stress because it doesn't clear your mind; it makes you dizzy; it makes you forget things, but as soon as its effects wear off, the problems still remain. So, if you really want to lose weight, you have to choose to stop drinking. I'm not saying that you should not allow yourself a drink once in a while, a drink if you really want it, a drink once every two weeks. But if you do it every day it’s a bad habit. Think about it. How is it going to affect your future? Think about where you will be in two years or in five years. Is this habit going to add value to your life?
As a personal trainer I could be making around 1 to $2000 a month extra by selling supplements…
And putting up big advertisements. I did a lot of research, and I haven’t found that supplements make a difference. As a matter of fact, one of the supplements I was taking was causing shortness of breath at night when I slept. Once I stopped taking it, I stopped having those problems. I did not do well on protein powder either. It would make my skin breakout. My stomach was bloated most of the time, my brain was foggy. As soon as I stopped taking supplements, I felt better and stronger and I realized I didn't need them. Instead, it is toxic to the liver. My suggestion is to choose real foods, which are grains,meats,veggies,fruits, legumes and everything that Mother Nature gives us, the natural way.
So, if you start cooking at home, you will start losing weight...
Now once you have gotten rid of all that junk and you find out what whole foods agree with your digestive system, the next morning you can start eating on schedule. If you don't have a schedule you will overeat. We have a survival mechanism. It is a good thing when our brain tells us that we're hungry. We need nutrients, we need energy. But if you don’t eat for 5,6,7, up to 12 hours, your survival mechanism will kick in and you will eat anything that is in front of you. It doesn't matter if you know how bad processed food is. You are so hungry that you will just eat it and because you feel like you haven’t eaten for a while you will over eat. That is just human behavior. So, you want to avoid that by eating on schedule.
So, the first thing I recommend is to eat your breakfast within the first three hours, then a piece of fruit 3 hours later, 3 1/2 hours later your lunch, then another 3 ½ hours another piece of fruit and then eat your dinner.
For breakfast, I recommend oatmeal, put fruit on it, maybe some raisins. But don't add refined sugar. It will just add extra calories. You could add honey. It's ok to eat an egg with the spinach. You can fry it with olive oil. Another thing that you can do is make a smoothie. There are a lot of recipes online that you can get. You can eat fruit for your snack. Replace that bar for any fruit you have. For your lunch you can eat leftovers from the night before, but I recommend you eat mostly veggies. You can combine them with legumes, grains or meat. You don't have to eat meat, but if you like meat, go ahead. Put about 20% or 25% meat with it. So now we have your whole plan right there.
So, let's talk about exercise...
Any exercise is going to help you. Go for a walk, a swim, a run or anything else you want. But once again, find out what you want. If you want to tone your body, none of the cardio exercises are going to do it for you. You need to lift weights, because you need to work those muscles; you need to challenge those muscles in a different way than cardio is doing it, but if you are looking only for weight loss itself without toning your body it's completely fine for you to do only cardio.
Whatever plan you choose for weight training make sure you do periodization- Make sure you increase your weight little by little, continuing to progress. Learn more about periodization and continue to progress working on your big muscle groups. Including your legs, your stomach and arms. Running 3 or 4 times a week for better results.
Let's move on to the next point. I have clients that come to me, and they ask me if they're going to lose weight. I say yes, and why do I do that? The reason is that I want them to have some peace of mind. I want them to believe that they will succeed. When you believe it, your brain sends signals to your body. If you don't believe you won't be motivated to move your body. So, you need to believe, believing in yourself, believing that it's possible. I'm not sitting here wasting my time telling you something that is not going to help you. I want you to believe in yourself, no doubts.
Your friends, your peers, that's your next goal…
You need to find the right people. If you have a problem with alcohol, choose to be around someone who has succeeded in overcoming that problem. They will encourage you to do the right thing. So, make sure you find people that are exercising and eating healthy, that want to see you succeed.
The next point is pain and pleasure. Write it down. We human beings run from pain, and we love pleasure. That's the reason why bad habits are so easy to acquired, because they give you pleasure right away. A great example is drinking, at the moment it feels good, drugs have the same effect. It feels good at that moment. Eating the wrong foods will give you momentary pleasure. Do alcohol or drugs add value to your long term goals? So, all the bad habits that we talked about already are not going to bring anything good to your life. On the other hand, good habits bring only good things to your life. You will have health, a strong body and you will learn to deal with stress in a healthy way. This takes more time and is a little bit more painful but in the long term it brings good results. Those good habits require time and pain to see good results. That is how to start your weight loss plan.
Life has a balance. It's not all of anything. I'm very happy with my life. I'm very happy with the way I look, the way I feel. I'm very happy with who I am. And why is that? Because I have balance in my life. My life is not only exercising and looking great. I also grow spiritually. I have a family that contributes to my happiness. My health, my profession and my finances, all of which make me happy. I take care of these aspects in my life. So, you need to find balance so you can be happy. And when you have balance, the other areas don't suffer.