Dieting is always the first thought when it comes to losing weight. But extreme, dramatic diets are not the best course of action to lose weight and keep the weight off. However, changing your lifestyle for weight loss can be much more effective and healthy.
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Losing weight is a massive part of our society with many celebrities like Adele showing off the fruits of their labour. But one thing that these transformation images miss out is the hard work that goes into weight loss. If it were so easy, then the success of people in the public eye probably wouldn’t be such enticing news.
But what these celebrities also reveal is how easy it can be to put the weight back on and that fad diets aren’t the way to go. Now, lifestyle changes are a preferred method of weight loss.
But changing your lifestyle for weight loss is not just starting an exercise routine and eating healthy.
This article will inform you about why changing your lifestyle for weight loss is important, the areas to focus on and activities to help you start the process.
Why is changing your lifestyle important for weight loss?
As I mentioned, the first thing that comes to most peoples mind when trying to lose weight is diet and exercise. But this typically is not enough for successful, healthy weight loss or to help you keep the weight off after your diet is over.
Changing your lifestyle can be much more effective in losing weight, maintaining a healthy weight and creating healthy habits. This is because your lifestyle informs the choices you make in every part of your life. Including how you spend your time, how you work, what you eat, and the activities you participate in.
Instead of allowing yourself to follow the habits that no longer serve you and resulted in weight gain. You can choose health, wellness and to look after your body.
Creating a lifestyle that empowers you to make healthy choices and reach your goals.
Task 1: Evaluate your current lifestyle
There would be no point to me telling you how and why to change your lifestyle for weight loss if you did not understand where you are now and how to move forward. I want you to review your current lifestyle right now.
In each point below describe your current lifestyle and the habits you hold in that area of your life. Thinking deeply about how it makes you feel mentally and physically and what kind of impacts it has on your life, positive and negative. As well as considering if you actually enjoy these habits and if you want to change them.
With these questions and reflections in mind, evaluate the following areas of your life:
- What time you wake up in the morning and the kind of morning routine you have in place. Does this include eating breakfast?
- Your typical workday including how long you’re sitting down, breaks and how you spend them, and the relationships you have there.
- How much do you move your body? Do you exercise often or at all?
- What do you spend your free time doing?
- What your eating habits are like. Do you eat out at restaurants, often order takeaways or home cook? What types of food are you choosing to eat?
- How do you spend your evenings, do you have a routine?
- The quality of your sleep, the duration of your sleep and how it makes you feel.
If you think of other areas of your life you want to review, do it and make as many notes and ideas as possible. This will help inform you of how and what you want to change within your current lifestyle.
Potential areas for change in your life
Now that we have evaluated your current lifestyle choices, it is time to consider the changes you want to make. Here are some powerful ideas to get you started…
A Morning Routine
A morning routine is a powerful and useful lifestyle change to implement and help set you up in the best way for the day ahead. Providing time to get your head in the right space and choose how you want to go about your day.
A morning routine can include:
- Getting up at the same time every morning
- Journaling
- Meditation
- Eating breakfast
- Working out
The best part is that you get to choose exactly how you want to start the day! I encourage you to experiment with different morning activities to see how they positively or negatively impact your mindset and wellness. Check out the resources I’ve included below to help
An Evening Routine
An evening routine is just as important for the next day as your morning routine is. This is because it can help you have a much better nights sleep and wake up in a better mindset and health.
I am an advocate for better sleep because it’s just so important for your health. Did you know that poor sleep can reduce your natural killer cells by up to 70%? Poor sleep can make you much more susceptible to illnesses, weight gain and chronic disease.
An evening routine can include taking sleep supplements, turning off devices an hour before bed to reduce blue light exposure, and reflective meditation or journaling. In addition, ensuring that you go to bed at the same time every night helps your body establish consistent sleep cycles. Resulting in much better sleep and much better health.
Changing your diet
Your diet is an obvious choice when making changes to your lifestyle for weight loss. However, as we established, embarking on extreme diets to then revert back to old habits is not the way to go. Choosing a healthy, balanced and calorie orientated diet will be more beneficial to help you lose weight and maintain it.
After evaluating your current diet, examine ways that you want to change it or things you can do better. Perhaps you want to eat more plant-based food and less processed food or cook more homemade meals rather than eating out or ordering takeaways.
Other ways to change your diet can include drinking more water, tracking calories and the nutritional value of your food and reducing your sugar intake. Small changes to your diet can make the biggest difference in your weight loss journey and help you keep the weight off in the future.
How, when and were you shop
In addition to being more considerate of the food you eat, you’ll also want to change your shopping habits. If you go to the supermarket and you’re absolutely starving, the likelihood is you’ll choose food that is processed and quick to eat. Similarly, if you don’t have lunches for work and tend to head straight for fast food, you could shop elsewhere.
Grocery shopping on a full stomach and with a food list can be more successful. Helping you to avoid comfort food and keeping you focused on your weight loss goal.
Subsequently, aiding you in changing your negative shopping habits. Instead of heading straight for the sweet aisle and stocking up on sugary, calorie-dense food. You can keep to a meal plan and enjoy a healthy, plant-based diet.
How much you move your body
Going to the gym is not the only way you can burn calories and get your body moving. Walking more is a great solution to get you moving more and burning more calories for your weight loss journey.
When revhen reviewing your current lifestyle, have you noticed how much you are sitting down? I find myself sitting for the majority of the day especially as I now work from home on my laptop and sitting watching TV or on my phone during my free time.
Being more mindful of how sedentary your lifestyle is can motivate you to move more. Moving more can involve walking to work or to the supermarket, joining an online workout class, cleaning at least 15 minutes every day, or taking up a new hobby.
Practically anything that involves moving your body more than you are right now will be beneficial for your health. As s well as help you establish healthy habits and alternative activities to your current lifestyle.
Work/life balance
There are, of course, many other areas of your life that you may want to change. One way to do this is to look at your work/life balance.
- Does the current balance between your work life and the rest of your life support and serve you?
- How does this current balance make you feel?
- Do you find your relationships suffer?
- Are there people and things you want to dedicate more time to?
Armed with this knowledge you can then think of ways to change your life balance so that it serves you better.
Task 2: make action plan
Now that I’ve given you some ideas on the changes you can make, it is time to go back to your initial lifestyle review. List down the changes you are going to make and why.
Go through this list once you think you’ve covered everything and number them in order of importance. This is an essential step as it will give a plan on which changes you should implement first.
Implementing the new lifestyle for weight loss
First things first, you have to decide to change your lifestyle.
You can go through this whole process and detail an action plan, but if you haven’t decided and committed yourself to this plan, you will not be successful.
Changing your lifestyle completely is not going to be easy. Your mind and emotions might run wild with fear of the unknown. You’ve heard of the flight or fight response? This is the instinct used to protect us from danger. As far as this primitive part of our brain is concerned, anything unknown is dangerous.
As a result, changing your lifestyle can be terrifying. Your brain might try and stop you in order to protect you. However, you have to keep pushing on and soon enough the habits will form and stick. The unknown becomes known and no longer dangerous.
As well as staying strong, you can start off with change slowly Gradually implementing one lifestyle change at a time.
As your priority is weight loss, choosing to change your diet and exercise might be first on the list. This is why you should number the changes in the order of importance. Starting small can be introducing calorie counting and a food diary or getting off your commute one stop early to walk more.
It is up to you what changes you implement first but you must be committed to your goal and follow through with your new lifestyle.
Task 3: Take the action
Now is the time for you to implement your action plan and create your own lifestyle for weight loss
Let me know about the lifestyle changes you have made in the comments!