Losing weight is probably the most popular goal or New Year’s resolution people make in late December or early January. However, most diets and New Years’ Resolutions around dieting fail. Actually, 80% of all New Year’s resolutions fail.
However, this article isn’t about some fad diet. It’s about healthy weight loss in the New Year. It’ll provide the best tips on how you can really lower your body weight this year and keep it off too!
I`m not going to tell you to go on a diet, or just eat less and move more. We`ll take a different approach. If you listen to me, you`ll abandon all conventional diets and will find a healthier way to lose weight and keep it off for good.
Maybe you`ve set a goal to lose weight in past years and were unable to achieve your goal. Maybe you did lose the desired amount of weight but could not keep it off. Or maybe for you, this year is the first year you have decided to shed some pounds.
Whatever the case may be, you are not going to regain the weight you lose this time.
Learn to manage your mind and update your limiting beliefs
I’ll show you many good practical tips to lose weight and keep it off in the New Year but none of them work if you can’t manage your thoughts. Your negative self-image, your unhelpful thoughts, and your disempowering unconscious beliefs will always drive you to self-sabotage your weight loss efforts.
Our limiting, disempowering beliefs stop us from taking action when we want to change something based on past (negative) experiences. Our brains protect us from pain and seek pleasure.
If you tried to lose weight before and you didn’t manage, your brain sees it as pain and wants to protect you from it. So it creates beliefs and thoughts like “I can’t lose weight”, “I don’t have enough willpower”, “Nothing works for me”, “Something is wrong with me”.
These beliefs make you give up and go back to your old habits and may even lead to emotional eating to feel better. In addition, these thoughts about yourself define your identity, your self-image, which in turn drive your actions and create your life.
Changing your unhelpful thoughts and beliefs
If you want to change your life, you need to change these thoughts and beliefs. If you only try to change your habits, you won’t be able to stick to your new routine for long because your limiting beliefs will always pull you back without you noticing it. You’ll wonder why you are doing something you don’t really want to and you might even think that something is wrong with you. Has this happened to you before? There is nothing wrong with you!
The elephant and the rider
If you’ve formed an overeating habit, you know that you shouldn’t overeat, but you still do it, again and again. It´s like having two parts of you: one that wants to stop overeating and one that doesn´t.
Using social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt´s metaphor, we can look at these parts as the elephant and the rider. The part that wants to stop you is the rider, your conscious mind. It can make plans, it can think logically and see future consequences but it can’t rule the elephant.
The elephant is your subconscious. It has been around for much longer. It orchestrates the hundreds of tasks our body does without us even noticing it (e.g. breathing, heart beating). This part of the brain is also responsible for our emotions, intuition, and responding to all kinds of stimuli we receive from our surroundings.
We usually think that we are in charge of the elephant or we are not even aware of the elephant. But when we find ourselves doing something that we don´t understand why we are doing, for example stuffing ourselves mindlessly, it’s always the elephant in action.
Managing your thoughts and creating harmony between the parts
The Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss course and the How to stop eating your feelings workbook provide you with the system and tools to understand your food story, and replace your disempowering beliefs with empowering, positive beliefs about yourself, your body, weight, and your relationship with food.
The course also deals with creating harmony between the elephant and the driver, because it’s a crucial part of changing your habits. If they aren’t in agreement, you’ll always self-sabotage your healthy habits.
These blog posts can also help you change your negative thoughts and emotions:
Avoid crash diets for healthy weight loss
The world has an obsession with getting what we want as quickly as possible. Losing weight is certainly not immune to this trend. If your goal is to decrease your body weight this year, you have probably done some research into what diet plan or list of foods to stick to. Unfortunately, a Google search is going to bombard you with the latest fad diet or magic pill promising to transform your body in no time.
The problem with these things is that they either do not work, have the potential to negatively affect your overall health, or are so extreme that there is no way you can stick to them long-term.
Healthy weight loss in the New Year is far from rocket science
So how to lose weight in the New Year and keep it off too?
Most of us know what types of foods are considered healthy and what is complete junk. Many of us also know that instead of buying into a fad diet, it`s better to take a day-by-day approach in which you eat mostly wholesome foods, drink enough water, and move your body regularly.
Not so many people know that you don`t need to completely deprive yourself of your favourite not-so-healthy snacks. It’s enough to reduce the frequency in which you enjoy them. Also not so well known that sleeping enough and reducing stress are also crucial for successful, long-term, healthy weight loss in the New Year (or any other time of the year).
While these tips sound relatively simple, it`s so tempting and more exciting to follow the new fancy diet you saw on social media or your friend or colleague is doing instead of just being consistently imperfect with your healthy habits.
I know simple healthy habits done consistently don’t sound “sexy” but it definitely works if you not only want to lose weight in the New Year but you want to keep it off too.
Why diets don’t work
While diets can work for many people for some time, the chance of them allowing for long-term weight loss is slim to none.
There are many reasons for this, from having restrictions that lead to binge eating, to how unrealistic it is to have so many rules about what you can and can’t eat.
I wrote about the most common reasons why diets don`t work in this post.
I also have an article about how yo-yo dieting affects your body and mind.
Now let`s discuss only a few aspects of dieting here.
The Diet Mentality
First of all, you are dealing with the diet mentality, which can be really harmful to not just your mental health, but your physical health as well. When you`re on a diet you need to follow rules about what you are eating, and you need to avoid certain foods. Suddenly, you want nothing more than all these “bad” foods, even though before the diet, you would eat them only sparingly.
This is the diet mentality you want to break by giving up on these types of restrictive diets, and instead just focusing on fueling your body and staying nourished with healthy foods. You concentrate on adding more foods that nourish your body instead of removing foods from your diet.
Resulting in binging
Another thing that often happens when people go on diets is that they go through cyclical binges. You start off great and almost get a kind of high by sticking to your diet plan. You are sure this is going to be the one that helps you lose weight and keep it off for good.
But ultimately, you end up failing. There will come a day when you have a craving for the food you are told not to eat, and then you remind yourself you can’t have it, which in turn increases the craving. Eventually, you give in and have a full-out binge session.
Then you go back on the diet, possibly an even more restrictive one to erase the damage you just did, and the cycle repeats itself.
NOTE: In this 1-hour live class, I talked about 5 of the most common mistakes that dieters make that drive them to overeat and how to fix these issues. Change these and you are on your way to food freedom (a.k.a. eating the way you want to eat instead of how your cravings make you eat).
You can watch the recording of this class here.
Stopping the cycle
The only way to stop this unhealthy cycle and lose weight for good is to ditch the diet mentality. Start focusing more on foods that are healthy and will nourish your body, and suddenly your entire mindset about food and weight will change dramatically.
And the best part? You will lose weight in a healthy and natural way, that doesn’t feel difficult at all.
How mindful eating can help
Speaking of healthy weight loss and not sticking to diets, mindful eating can be really effective at helping you to lose weight and keep it off.
With mindful eating, you actually pay attention to the entire eating experience. It isn’t about what you are eating, but HOW you are eating.
How mindful eating works
Mindful eating works just like any other mindful practice you have. You are going to be completely present during your meal, appreciating every bite, paying attention to the experience, and most importantly, noticing how your body feels when you eat certain foods.
Most people eat very mindlessly. You might watch TV while eating chips out of a bag, or rush through lunch because you have work to do. This can cause you to get bloated from eating too fast and eating too much.
With mindful eating, you are paying attention to your body and really savouring each bite, which in turn can allow you to see what foods your body loves, and which cause digestive issues. You also get more pleasure from food so less food will be enough to satisfy your tastebuds.
Using mindful eating to lose weight
The reason this helps you lose weight is all in your mentality and in the practice itself. Here are some reasons mindful eating can help you to lose weight:
- You don’t overeat as much.
- You start figuring out what feels good for your body.
- You understand more about nourishing your body with important nutrients.
- By changing your eating habits, you don’t just snack all day long.
- You learn to listen to your body’s cues.
Just give it a try! Sit quietly during your next meal, with no phone and no TV nearby. Focus on what you are eating, eat slowly and mindfully, and be present. You will notice just how amazing this experience can be.
This post will also show you how to use mindfulness to prevent or stop overeating.
If you want to know how mindful eating can also help to curb emotional eating check out the post below:
Can Intuitive Eating help you lose weight?
The next part of healthy weight loss has to do with intuitive eating, which can also be combined with mindful eating.
What is intuitive eating? This is where you learn how to listen to your body to decide what to eat and how much. Nothing is off the table, there are no restrictions, and there are no calorie counting, carb counting, or specific diets.
It does take some practice, but when you learn how to give your body what it needs, you naturally lose weight and get to a really good mental place at the same time.
Listening to your body
You`ll first need to learn how to listen to your body, which is the most important part of intuitive eating, but also the most difficult. People who are going from yo-yo diets to this way of eating find many challenges. You fear gaining back all the weight you lost, and struggle with suddenly being allowed to eat whatever you want without guilt or regret.
The most important thing to remember is this – everything will even out and level out in time. In the beginning, you just focus on eating whatever you crave, not worrying about what you eat. This is to heal your relationship with food.
Then you go through other stages, such as listening to your body, understanding the difference between satiety and being full, coming to terms with the feeling of hunger, understanding the hunger scale, and trying to figure out exactly what your body is craving.
It doesn’t happen overnight
This is not a quick fix and you won’t start losing weight immediately. In fact, it can take longer to lose weight than most diets and workout plans, but you are looking at longevity here. You are healing your relationship with food, nourishing your body, and getting rid of that diet mentality.
What you need is patience, kindness, and the understanding that you will be healing your body from the inside out.
Reaching your body’s natural weight
Another thing to understand about intuitive eating is that it’s not about losing the most weight or being a certain size. When you follow it correctly, listen to your body, and eat whatever your body needs at the time, you will eventually reach your body’s natural, happy weight. The weight and size it is meant to be.
Once you stabilize a certain weight where your body feels comfortable but it`s still higher than your ideal weight, slowly you can lose more weight. See how to do it in the blog post below:
The Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss course teaches both mindful eating and intuitive eating. It also shows you how to apply structured flexibility if intuitive eating scares you and you want to have a bit of structure in your eating habits at the beginning.
Accepting and loving yourself as you are
Most people think that they will be happier, will love their body more, will be more confident and more outgoing when they lose weight. But if they haven´t learned to love themselves as they are right now, they will not like themselves at a smaller size either. They will always find something wrong with them, something to be unhappy about. You may have lost the unwanted weight several times, but you always regained it – a very typical story.
“If you don’t know how to show yourself kindness when you’re a size 18, you won’t know how to do it wearing a size 4.” – Unknown
Self-love is your greatest ally
It doesn´t mean that you need to accept your unwanted eating habits and never want to change. It means that you start loving yourself now. There is nothing wrong with you, you are perfectly fine as you are. You just have an unwanted eating habit that you will be able to stop by finding ways to cheerlead, inspire, and uplift yourself to change.
“You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress, simultaneously.” – Sophia Bush
Hating ourselves into change may work for a while but it never results in true transformation. Nature always wins. When you fight a habit it tends to fight back. What we resist persists.
Food is not the solution to our problems and also not the enemy.
Enjoy your food and eat it with pleasure but remember that cheesecake (or any other food) cannot substitute for the love of another human being or our own self-love.
Because learning to accept and love ourselves is such an important aspect of successful, long-term healthy weight loss in the New Year (or any time) it is also extensively discussed in both the Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss course and the How to stop eating your feelings workbook.
If you want to learn about the connection between hating your body and emotional eating check out this blog post.
Finding your fitness motivation
After you have figured out the diet aspect of your weight loss efforts, it is time to move on to fitness. This, as you know, makes up about 20% of your weight loss journey.
The problem isn’t starting a fitness program for most people, but keeping up with it. Here are some tips for finding what will motivate you to stick with it.
Changing your mindset about fitness
While you are changing how you think about food and diets, you also want to change your mindset around exercise. Instead of thinking about it just for weight loss, think about it for your health. Get it into your head that you are working out for your health, including mental and physical health.
Remind yourself that it is good for your heart, improves your strength and flexibility, it helps manage stress, and reduces anxiety. There are many reasons to exercise aside from just losing or maintaining your weight, though those are definite bonuses.
Find exercises you love
You also want to have fun with your fitness routine, which means finding exercises you love to do. Even if you have always imagined exercise to be a chore, there is something out there for you, you just have to find it.
Experiment, try different online classes or YouTube videos, check out local gyms in your area, and think about something you have always wanted to do. Here are some options that go beyond the standard exercises:
Indoor rock climbing
Tai chi
Yoga or Pilates
Dance classes
Biking
Ice skating
Stop feeling forced to exercise
You don’t want to feel like you’re forced to exercise, otherwise, it’ll keep feeling like a chore, and eventually, you’ll give up. Change your entire mindset around fitness. Think of it as something that’s great for your body, will give you energy, and will help with your mental health and wellness.
Exercise alone is not the foundation
Physical activity does in fact burn calories, but not nearly to the extent to which you can consume them! For example, the average human burns about 100 calories during a mile on the treadmill, while a normal piece of chocolate cake contains over 300 calories.
Do you see the issue here? Exercise alone is not going to get you where you want to be regarding weight loss.
Let your results become a lifestyle by building habits
Let’s now assume that you’ve stuck to a consistent, sustainable, and healthy diet, committed to an exercise routine and the results are starting to show. This is certainly an achievement and you should be proud of yourself! However, this is when another, just as important issue needs to be addressed.
If this New Year’s resolution that you’ve worked so hard to bring to fruition doesn’t transition to an overall lifestyle change, regression is inevitable.
Don’t let your success cause you to become complacent and fall back into your old habits. Instead, use these results as motivation to transform your newly established health habits into a part of your lifestyle. Learn to build these habits into your everyday routine and find ways to stick to your healthy habits in the long term.
Once you build a habit you don’t need to force yourself to do it, it becomes second nature
I teach you how to effectively build and then stick to your new healthy
- eating,
- lifestyle (exercise, stress management, and sleep), and
- thinking habits (to stop self-sabotage)
in the Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss course. The course also helps you find the habits that will move the needle for you the most. The most effective habits for YOU to focus on. You only need to build a few habits and break some old, non-beneficial habits step by step. You don’t need to overhaul your whole lifestyle at once. That would lead to overwhelm, confusion and failure.
This is the only way to maintain and continuously progress with not only your weight loss but also any other fitness and wellness goals you set for yourself in the future!
To learn the 20 most important habits to build and stick to in order to release weight permanently – even if you’ve always struggled to lose weight – check out this FREE ebook.
Surround yourself with the right people
As part of changing your lifestyle to be healthier, don’t forget about the importance of who you spend your time with. If your group of friends seems to eat out nearly every day, along with a big Sunday brunch, happy hour after work, and practically no physical exercise while spending time together, it’s going to be hard to stick to your healthy lifestyle.
This doesn’t mean you ditch your friends, but still, look to expand your friend group and find people who live the type of healthy lifestyle you are looking to live.
You are on a life-changing journey not just to lose weight, but to improve your health and well-being. This makes it crucial that you have the right kind of support.
People supporting your journey to better health and weight loss in the New Year
Look for the people who are offering their unconditional support. These people might not be the ones on a similar journey themselves, but they are still rooting for you nonetheless. They encourage and help you on the good days and the bad.
You will notice that the more you spend time with people who support your lifestyle goals, the easier it becomes.
Do you have trouble finding friends or people to spend time with who support your healthy lifestyle journey? Join the private Facebook Group dedicated to the Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss course. For daily inspiration check out my Instagram and Pinterest accounts or hire me as your coach to guide and encourage you. Book a free call here.
I hope you found these tips useful? Which one surprised you?
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