1. Get smart.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to be educated about your body before attempting to lose weight. Most of us are very undereducated when it comes to our bodies and the foods we put into them. If you don’t know much about the two, it’s extremely hard to feel good and look good. To get smart, I suggest learning about nutrition and how your body responds to different foods. Everything you put in your mouth should serve some kind of purpose. When I first started to lose weight, I would listen to podcasts about nutrition via itunesU. Later, I enrolled in nutrition and wellness classes at my university. None of this was easy, but my health mattered to me, so it made everything worth learning and it kept me interested.

2. Go to the doctor.

Once you’ve started learning about foods, you’ll start analyzing your body and how it is responding to certain things. At this point, you may feel ready to see a doctor. Before you go to a doctor, I suggest asking your friends if how you are seeing your body/health/habits/etc. are accurate. Your friends may think you are on point, or they may think you’re a hypochondriac. Either way, it’s in your hands to choose which truth to believe and go to the doctor about it.

When I first gained all my weight, I felt as though something more was wrong with my body. My face had broken out as though I had just hit puberty for the first time at the age of 21 and the weight seemed nearly impossible to get off. I didn’t feel like myself- AT ALL. So I decided to get my hormones checked and had tons of blood work done. This was one of the best decisions I made for my weight loss journey. The tests came back and showed that I was extremely healthy and everything was great except one small thing- my hormones were ever-so-slightly out of whack. This slight imbalance was so small that my doctor seemed to not believe that this could be the culprit, but after I started to treat it, the excess weight finally started to come off.

3. Become your own doctor.

This is important. Doctors are humans who treat so many people for so many illnesses. Your 10, 20, or even 50+ lb. weight gain cannot be their biggest concern. However, those 10, 20, 50+lbs can be taking away joy, energy, and experiences in your life that you are not ready to hand over, therefore, becoming your biggest concern. It is up to you to gather the information (via tests, blood work, etc.) from a doctor and then treat yo self from there. The information you gather from a real, licensed doctor should be your foundation and starting point- not your finish line. Use this information and start reading, researching, and getting educated.

Like I mentioned before, my doctor wasn’t too concerned with the slight imbalance of my hormones, but the more I researched and read, the more I realized that all my symptoms could be linked to this imbalance. I also learned that while everyone was munching on, and drinking soy to lose weight, because of my imbalance I needed to avoid soy products like the plague. Had I not educated myself, I would’ve sacrificed certain foods for soy alternatives and hurt myself rather than help myself. There is a reason one person can lose 20 lbs. on a certain diet and a different person can follow the same diet plan and barely lose 5 lbs. Figure out what you specifically need- and don’t need- and act accordingly. You may need to actually eat more of certain foods to lose weight! Or maybe you should take specific vitamins (like me –I’ll write a blog on vitamins later). Just remember to get smart and then, be your own doctor!

4. Think about it.

Here is the part where things get less physical and scientific and become more emotional. It’s time to think and reflect. Take a good amount of time to really think about when you started gaining weight. Then, start reflecting on that time of your life. What was happening? What had happened? How were you feeling?

This definitely is not my favorite part of my weight loss journey to share. When I looked back on when and why I had gained the weight, it was embarrassing. I realized that my weight gain began when I decided to really try to live for God (when I “got good”). See, before this time, I had control of my life. I did what I wanted, when I wanted for the most part. I filled my voids with guys, partying, shopping, and whatever else I decided to do- because I was in control. Then, to “get good”, I gave up my control and handed it to God (or so I thought). I gave up filling my voids with partying and guys and attempted to fill them with church and God instead. It wasn’t that easy. Church isn’t always comforting and sometimes we get in our own way and prevent ourselves from connecting to God. Food, on the other hand, is so comforting and it is always easy to get. Once I reflected on my past, I saw that when I had tried to fully give God control, I subconsciously kept some control for myself. This resulted in trading sex and booze for potlucks and pews. Ugh.

5. Talk about it.

Any time you are making a change in your life, it is important to talk about it and let people know. If you were the most self-controlled, self-motivated person on your own, you wouldn’t need to lose weight in the first place and you wouldn’t be reading this blog. We need help. We need accountability and encouragement. To get those things, we have to open up and talk. Don’t just talk about the fact that you want to lose weight or how fat you feel after eating that whole pizza by yourself. Everyone has those conversations all the time. Most people don’t even listen when others make fat comments because it has become like white noise in our culture. You have to have real heart-to-hearts with the ones you love. Tell them how desperate you are to lose this weight and how this weight is truly affecting your life physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Then, you will encounter two types of people. Ones that will look at you like you’re a crack head, and those that will physically restrain you from eating too much pizza.

This is the part where I get to brag on my friends for being The VERY best. Once my friends realized the depths of the pain that my weight gain was causing me, they stepped up to battle and fought the fight beside me hand-in-hand. They refused to let me hold onto my weight because they refused to let me hold on to guilt, feelings of defeat, and a lack of self-control. When I was weak, they were strong for me. They would physically remove food from my hands, call me out for continuing to eat when they knew I wasn’t hungry, go to they gym with me even when they cared nothing about working out or losing weight, send me texts about what I was eating/had eaten, do my chores for me when I was too exhausted after working out, and they continually remembered that even when I acted like I was working out to be hott, I was really working out to be free. Find these types of people and do everything you can to never lose them. These types of friends will help you be exactly who you want to be in every area of life.

6. Avoid the church potluck & tell people to shut up.

I hate to say this one, but until the culture changes, it has to be said. If you are serious about getting healthy and losing weight, it will be so hard at first. You will crave mass amounts of all things delicious. Because of these cravings you should avoid potlucks, buffets, and even parties where it’s socially acceptable for people overeat (aka every party in the South). When you first start going through AA, you don’t celebrate your first week sober at the bar. The same goes for food. Don’t put yourself on the battlefield unless you have really strong, warrior friends, like the ones I mentioned, right beside you. Seriously. They physically need to be within arm’s length so they can remove foods from your hands if necessary.

And tell people to shut up. There will be people who always question why you are missing out on tons of free food and why you are pushing yourself to exercise daily when “you don’t even need to lose weight”. If they are your friends & you’ve truly talked to them about this struggle and they still don’t support you, tell them to shut up! You have to distance yourself from the influence of those friends for a while- not forever- but definitely until your body, self-control, and inner voice are much stronger.

When I started losing weight, I had to avoid church potlucks and a lot of church events. It really hurt my heart because I wanted my involvement in church to help me through my weight loss because for me, it wasn’t just a physically struggle. I had felt spiritually defeated as well. But church didn’t help me-God helped, but church (as in going to the building for meetings) didn’t. At that time, it was really acceptable for my church group to overeat and have food at every single meeting. The group as a whole didn’t have the healthy habits that I so desperately needed and because I was at such a vulnerable place in my journey, I pulled out and placed myself in safer environments.

7. Be tech savvy.

Apps, technology, and the Internet can be just as useful as treadmills and workout plans. This is a step you will have to really personalize yourself because I don’t know what you’re in to.

For me, my favorites are the MyFitnessPal app, Charity Miles app, Run Trainer app, 7 minute workout app, and I wear a Fitbit Flex and use its app. For more info about how I used each of these, follow my blog and be on the lookout for a follow up post.

8. Drop the booze.

I’m sorry, party rockers. I’m sorry to those of you who like to wind down by pouring a glass of wine down your throat. If you want to get serious, drop the booze. As much as alcohol may make you feel turnt up, it’s actually making your body turn down. It’s slowing you down. It turns down your fat burners and makes this whole process take a lot longer. For me, I have never* been a heavy drinker, but I had to for real completely cut out drinking for a while to focus on hydrating my body and losing the weight. I have seen so many girls eat like birds, take diet pills, and run their butts off and never lose and keep off their excess weight. Wanna know why? 1 drink a night. For some reason, that one glass of wine that’s good for your health, can destroy your weight loss. My advice, wait until you lose your weight and keep it off for a month or two. Then, go back to winding down with a glass of wine each night. For some reason, skinny people can have this glass of wine and stay skinny, but until you reach your goal and stay there, it won’t work. Until then, if you want 1-2 drinks once a week, have it at your own risk and just know it’s setting you back.

9. Increase your snooze.

This one took me a while to embrace. At first, I had a hard time incorporating healthy habits into my days. So instead of merging my daily tasks with my fitness, I kept them separate and barely slept. This is a terrible idea. Get your sleep! Women especially, can’t lose weight without sleep. If you try, your hormones will go crazy and your body will hate you and hold on to everything you eat. The amount of time you sleep, like everything, should be tweaked to fit your lifestyle and your needs. Pay attention to your body. If it does best on 9 hours of sleep- make it happen. If it does best with 7 hours of sleep, do that. I personally prefer to be in bed 8 hours and asleep for around 7 of those hours. When I get more than 8 hours, I want to sleep for all eternity; when I get less, I get angry and cry intermittently and I’m scary to be around.

10. Merge and multitask.

I could go on about this f..o..r..e..v..e..r. You cannot be the exact same person, with the same habits and the new, healthier person at the same time. Losing the weight that you were never intended to carry doesn’t just happen by changing your diet and adding hours of exercise– because no one has time for that! Your ways of doing things have to fit your new, healthy schedule. This means, if you love to binge watch Netflix, you need to start doing exercises in your floor while you watch. If you want to spend a lot time with your friends, make that happen at a fitness class or while walking around your neighborhood together. If you like to read, learn to read on the treadmill or start listening to audiobooks while you exercise. Whatever is happening in your life, whatever your schedule is, you can find time to take care of yourself by multitasking and merging activities. Be thinking of things that you have to do or enjoy doing and how to tweak them and merge them with healthy practices.

And in all of these things…

Find balance & have fun!

I can’t stress enough about how necessary balance is in loosing weight. If you over-focus, make pinterest boards or goal boards, and creepily start obsessing over what you want to look like or which workouts you’d like to do, you will have zero time to actually do what you need to do to achieve your goals. So be passionate, not obsessive, and get moving!