The Not So Sexy Truth About Weight Loss
“Holly, how did you lose weight and manage to keep it off so long?”
A friend of mine pulled me aside to ask me some advice on weight loss. She felt like nothing she was doing was working lately. It’s frustrating to do all the “right” things and not see any progress. It can make you feel like a failure. But you’re not.
This friend is not a big girl. She’s just a girl who isn’t where she’d like to be. And I spent most of my life in that space exactly. I wasn’t big, but I wasn’t what Americans would call small. And I spent a long time hating my body and feeling discouraged that I just couldn’t make it work.
Today, I straight-up love myself. I don’t have to buy bigger pants. Actually I don’t even know what size pants I wear if we’re being honest. Haha. I’m comfortable in my skin. I enjoy my body. It’s home to me. Before, it wasn’t home. It was a prison, and I was a prisoner within it.
While it did take me years to figure this out, decades maybe, I’m hoping to help you speed up the process. I’m going to share with you some super unsexy suggestions about this weight loss journey. No pressure. That’s one of the problems with weight loss, it’s too much pressure. We’re all unique individuals. Decide what works for you, adopt those pieces, and leave the rest.
UnSexy Tip # 1: Throw Away Your Scale
I can feel your tension, the way your body just seized up and you thought, “I can’t do that”. Yes, you can. Just hear me out. Someone somewhere made up numbers for the “ideal human” and they said to be beautiful you have to weigh this much. That number will vary for everyone. That number for me was 125. That’s the number I thought I had to be to be perfect.
How much do I weigh today? Not a clue. I haven’t weighed myself in years. The doctor’s office weighs me, but I’ll either not pay attention, or tell them not to tell me. Because I don’t care. It’s a made-up number that doesn’t matter.
“But Holly, how will I know if what I’m doing is working if I can’t weigh myself?” You pay attention to your body. I know some people want to come at this very scientifically, they want to measure and analyze. I’m telling you that was me. I’m also telling you it was part of my problem. If that scale didn’t say what I wanted it to say, I’d do one of 3 things: go to the gym to try to punish it out of my body, eat nothing or barely nothing, or eat every fucking thing I could get my hands on until I was sick. I repeat, none of those things were good for me.
There was never going to be a time when I could weigh myself and just be fine. I had tied my self-worth to that number. I had to ditch the numbers.
Take a minute to just consider how different all of us are. We have different heights, different bone density, different muscle size, but we’re all supposed to shove ourselves in the same size box? That’s ridiculous.
Throw away the scale.
UnSexy Tip #2: Healthy Food Isn’t a Punishment
If you hate salad, don’t eat salad. Eating healthy does NOT have to be painful. The key is to eat healthy food you actually like. Food you’re excited to eat.
Eating is a big part of our culture. It brings us joy. And that’s great. Don’t pretend you don’t like food. You do. We all do.
Focus on how food makes you feel and eat the things that make your body feel good. I don’t mean that 30-second high you get after eating a cupcake. I’m talking about the sick feeling 5 minutes later. Focus on how the food makes your body feel. Do you feel tired? Grumpy? Steady and happy?
I get that this one is probably the hardest tip. We eat in out-of-control ways. People binge eat, stress eat, shame eat, and all kinds of things. The key for everyone is to make peace with food. Food isn’t good or bad, it’s food. Some of it has nutritional value and makes us feel good, some of it is all chemicals and makes us feel bad. You’re not bad if you eat something that isn’t healthy. Your’e human.
My go-to guidelines for food are mainly to eat clean. That doesn’t mean pizza in the bathtub. It means clean of artificial poroducts. Fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, and meats. That’s what most of my diet is made up of. Because there aren’t any added unhealthy ingredients. If you look at the ingredients of something that comes in a package, you’ll see all kinds of words you can’t pronounce. Those things aren’t real foods. So I try to avoid them.
I feel the same about dairy. I know that’s a hill some of you are willing to die on. I won’t spend all day here trying to convince you dairy is bad. Some people do fine with dairy. But dairy gives me pimples and it makes my body inflamed and more prone to hang onto pudge around the midsection. It’s not good for me so I don’t eat it very often. But you can do whatever you want.
All that doesn’t mean I don’t eat unhealthy sometimes. I just give myself permission to and also ask if I’m willing to feel kind of yucky for it. Sometimes I want Ben and Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream. And I’ll have it. I know it’s going to make my stomach sad, but it’s what I want. But i do find the more I pay attention to how it makes me feel, the less I want it. Plus I make sweet treats that are actually better for me so that takes care of my sweet cravings most of the time. (Google dates snicker bars, thank me later.)
If you can’t find foods you like that are good for you while you’re out of the house, make them and take them with you. Don’t even start telling me how you don’t have the time or don’t know how. If it’s important to you, you’ll make the time and you’ll learn how. You won’t care that you’re the only one eating out of Tupperware at your kid’s wrestling meet.
“Holly, did you bring soup to a wrestling meet?” “Sluurrrrrp. Ahhh. Yep. And I’m not suffering.” I say that a lot. That I’m not suffering. I watch my family eat fast food sometimes while I’m eating foods that are good for me and that I like. I think of how sick they’re going to feel after eating that way. And I think of how good I feel and how good it tastes. And I realize all over again that I’m not suffering. ANd that’s what eating healthy used to be, suffering. Now it’s tasty.
Change your perspective on food.
That brings up another tip.
UnSexy Tip #3: Do It Alone
You want your husband, wife, kids, or best friends to do this with you. It’s lonely going it alone. But here’s the thing, we’re all on our own journey. It’s important to you right now to do better for yourself, but maybe others aren’t there yet.
The more you try to force your husband to do this with you, the less he’s going to want to. But if you do it for yourself and you have a good time with it, others might join in. But even if they don’t, you’re not suffering. Reframe it in your mind.
It’s okay to do this on your own. Stop looking at it like you’re doing it alone, and look at it as being a trailblazer. You’re leading the way. And maybe you’ll find other support in friends or family who do want to do this with you, but it’s not required.
My family hates salmon. I love it. Once every two weeks or so I cook salmon knowing I’m going to be the only one that eats. it. I tell my family it’s salmon night and to fend for themselves. I don’t make them a whole alternative meal. If they’d like to have some salmon, great. Otherwise, they can make something else. (Except for the 3-year-old, he eats the salmon unless Dad makes him nuggets).
You’re living this life with other people. But this is your life. And you have to make space for the parts that are important to you knowing they aren’t as important to others.
Don’t get mad. It’s okay to let them do their own thing. And don’t feel guilty for doing what is good for you. Period.
UnSexy Tip #4: Move Your Body Because You Love It
This is the only body you get. You can’t trade it in or beat it into submission. The only way to change your body is to love your body. Sure you can punish your body for a long time, but it’s not sustainable and it’s not fun. It doesn’t feel good.
Work out because it makes you feel good. Any kind of workout you like. If you hate running, don’t run. This is just like the food thing. It shouldn’t feel like a punishment. If you hate yoga, don’t do yoga.
If you love yoga, do it! If you love to walk, walk. If you enjoy lifting weights, make that your thing. If you love to dance, sign up for a class.
There are so many different ways to work out. Find one that you enjoy that also supports your goals. I get bored easily. So I like to mix it up. Some days I run, some days I lift weights, and some days I do yoga. You can do it however you want to do it.
Working out raises endorphins, it makes you feel better, and yeah, it makes you look better too. It’s okay to admit that. Working out makes you look better. We all want to look and feel good.
Just keep in mind it’s different to go to the gym to punish yourself for eating a piece of pie than it is to go every day because it makes you feel good.
If you’re eating beautiful foods most of the time, that piece of pie isn’t going to hurt you. You don’t have to “work it off” at the gym. Your body will naturally get rid of it if you just go back to eating healthy after you have it. The problem many people find is they’ll eat the pie, feel bad, try to work it off, see that the scale went up, and go off the rails eating everything. Or, they’ll have the one “bad” food, and like a junky trying to avoid crack, one taste will send them over the edge and they eat it all.
Food is not your enemy. You’re not a piece of crap if you eat pie. Just keep going. No one is perfect all the time. You’ll miss a workout, you’ll indulge a little too much. It’s okay. It all evens out if you keep a healthy perspective about it.
It gets worse when you treat yourself like a failure and give up. Then the eating gets worse, the workouts stop, and your house turns into a prison you wish you weren’t inside of.
That brings us to the least sexy tip of all.
UnSexy Tip #5: Be Consistent
You just have to keep going. If you keep walking, you’ll eventually get to your destination. So what you couldn’t run there? You’re not out of breath dying at the finish line. It’s perfectly fine to walk.
It’s the small consistent things you do that will change everything. Every day you work out, every day you eat mostly healthy, and every day you choose to be kind to your body. All of it adds up. It tips the scale (literally) to the side of healthy. Without it feeling like this big hard thing.
We make it a lot harder and a lot more complicated than it has to be. Just be consistent.
A Few More UnSexy Tips
Your body can’t focus on weight loss if it’s trying to survive. Make sure you’re not ill, you’re taking vitamins, go to a doctor and get bloodwork done. If you have a thyroid issue, or some other medical thing going on, it can prevent weight loss. Still do the things you can to support weight loss, but sometimes you need to get your body in order first.
I also do a detox twice a year. The body is designed to detox itself naturally. But there are a lot more toxins in the world than ever before and this is the way I personally like to support my body. Check with your doctor before doing anything like that. Here’s a link to one of the detoxes I use (but remember I’m not a doctor and you should check with yours):
https://amzn.to/4hPC7qc
I am an Amazon affiliate, but someone might as well benefit from your purchase. There’s another detox I like that I get through my natural path as well. If you see a natural path, check with them to see what kind they like.
And lastly, I just want to encourage you not to give up on yourself. You’ll never feel good if you give up. Sometimes it takes time to find the perfect set of circumstances for your life. But you can’t get there if you give up. Keep trying. And not to get the perfect body, but to love the body you have. It really is the only one you have. Love it. It needs you to love it.
If you need support, get it. I’m a Health Coach. You can always reach out to me if you need a coach or support. All you need to do is comment on this post or shoot me an email at write2holly@yahoo.com. If that’s not your thing, that’s okay too. As I said, we’re all unique and have to figure out what works for us individually.
But don’t give up. I believe in you. You can live in a body you love.
I’d be delighted if you shared this post with someone who needs it. We’re all in this together.
If you want to check out the Podcast I co-host, go here:
Growing Up for Adults on Spotify
For my favorite books, and health and wellness products, go here:
And check out the books I authored here:
How to Be Friends with Your Ex
Thanks so much for reading today. I love you and want all the best for you.
