Authors: Abigail Cruise
Essential Oils: Essential Oils (The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Uncovering the Healing Benefits of Aromatherapy) (11 page)
Answer the questions to determine WHAT you want. I suggest using a pen and paper and writing the questions down for maximum effect
Do the same with the questions to determine WHY you want this. Writing your answers down.
Use the answers to the questions above to write specific goals that you want to achieve using the SMART template. Again write them down with pen and paper.
Any plan is only as good as its implementation. Meaning you must follow the plan to achieve the desired results. In this section I will lay out the key principles of success, explain exactly what the plan requires of you, what you will get in return, and set your expectations accurately.
Key Success Principles
Following is a list of success principles that, when applied, guarantee you will see excellent progress on your health and weight loss goals.
Follow the plan:
The plan will only work if you follow it as prescribed. A deviation here and a deviation there can soon add up to make what you are doing look completely different to the plan as it is written. Of course sometimes life gets in the way, which is understandable. What I ask is that you follow as closely as possible, as often as possible. This will ensure you get the best results possible.
Put in the work:
There is no magic pill unfortunately. You have to do the work to achieve the reward. This will make it all the more satisfying in the end when you do achieve your goals, but don’t waste your time looking for shortcuts, this plan is everything that you will need.
Give it time:
People tend to be very impatient with their weight loss goals. I often hear from people complaining that they want to lose 10 pounds, but have only lost 5! Everything that is a step forwards is positive and progress is progress. Stick with it and you
will
achieve your goals.
What the plan requires of you and what you will get out of it in return
The plan requires a small commitment of time initially to set your goals and understand why you are doing this. From there 45 minutes to workout 3-4 times per week and a commitment to daily preparation of healthy meals is all that is required.
The plan is built in a way that it will become habitual. You will embed what you are doing as a habit in your normal routine and it will not require much effort to maintain, once it has become habit.
Expectations and measuring results
It is important to know what you are trying to change, and then to measure changes, to ensure progress. This will be tied in with the goals that you have set.
If your primary goal is to lose 2 dress sizes, you need to measure your dress size periodically. You might also find it useful to track weight on a weekly or even daily basis, body fat % weekly and girth measurements, with a tape measure, weekly, around key areas such as the stomach and hips.
Seeing positive progress is extremely motivating and will help to keep you feeling good and working toward your goals.
On the opposite side, it is good to know if you are not making the progress that you desire. This allows you to assess and potentially change something. Perhaps you have not been as compliant with the plan as you could have been, or maybe you just had a bad week and will knuckle down and put in the hard work next week.
Commit and follow the plan as written for optimum results
Put in the hard work and push yourself to achieve
Set realistic expectations and make sure you are regularly measuring what you want to change
A few principles should be understood, to ensure that you are doing the most important things that will lead to achieving your weight loss goals.
How Weight Loss Works
To lose weight one things needs to happen. You need to expend more calories than you intake. This can happen a number of different ways, but that is what it comes to, at the end of the day.
You can increase expenditure by exercising, moving more and increasing your metabolism (see more information below). You can decrease intake by eating less, eating lower calorie foods or following a targeted diet.
To see weight loss, you
will
be expending less calories than you intake. This doesn’t have to mean extreme dieting, or even eating less at all.
Metabolism
Metabolism basically means energy turnover. The amount of calories that your body burns in a given time period, such as a day.
By manipulating your metabolism, you can increase or decrease weight loss. Indeed, when you severely restrict calories, or heavily over-exercise, your metabolism will actually drop, making it harder to lose weight in the long term, or keep off what you do lose. This is where many popular diets fall down. They ruin your metabolism and while you will lose weight, it is near certain that you will gain it back.
On the other hand, by eating the right kinds of foods and doing the right kind of exercise, you can increase your daily metabolic rate. This means you will burn more calories every day and lose more weight. Not only now, but in the future too, making it easier to maintain your great results, forever.
In the next couple of steps we talk about how to eat and how to exercise, that will lead to the greatest spike in your metabolism and subsequently the best weight loss results. Before we get to that, I want to cover a couple of common mistakes that I see people make time and time again.
Common Mistakes That People Make
Failing to set effective goals.
We started step 1 with goal setting because it is so critical to achieving results, yet many people neglect to do it at all. Don’t make this mistake. Go back to step 1 and set your goals now if you haven’t done so already.
Not following the plan.
The plan will only work if you follow the plan. Modifying or otherwise not following the plan will not lead to optimal results, as mentioned in step 2.
Not eating enough food
. Under eating is a sure-fire way to slow your metabolism down and make it progressively harder to lose weight. It will work in the short term, but harm you in the long term.
Under or over exercising.
Of course, not doing any exercise is not ideal when you want to lose weight, get fit and tone up. If you have not been working out before, I will tell you how in step 5. It is also important that you don’t do too much exercise, or the wrong kind of exercise. Doing too much exercise is not ideal either, it will cause too much stress for your body and lead to you eating more.
Manipulating your metabolism is the most important thing to achieve weight loss. Follow the plan in steps 4 & 5 to do this
Avoid the common mistakes that many people make by following this plan as it is written
Ensure that you lose weight in a healthy way, to protect your metabolism by not over exercising or under eating. Follow the plans in steps 4 & 5 and you will be fine.
Diet is the most important thing for your weight loss results, so read this step carefully.
Types of Foods
Losing weight to the detriment of your health is not a good idea, it will come back to bite you with low energy, illness and bad mood. All of which will cause you to crave unhealthy foods and likely regain the weight.
To successfully lose weight, you want to also build your health. This means eating healthy foods that will increase your energy, mental focus and well-being; as well as lead to weight loss and increased fitness.
Lean proteins, lots of fruit and vegetables, healthy fats from nuts and seeds should be the basis of your diet. Avoiding obviously unhealthy foods that you know will make you gain weight. See the table below for recommendations of foods to eat and foods to avoid.
| Foods to include | Foods to exclude |
Fruits | All fresh whole fruits | Dried fruit, fruit juice, smoothies |
Vegetables | All fresh raw, steamed, boiled, sautéed, or roasted | |
Starch | Sweet potato, all root veg (squash , pumpkin, swede etc), quinoa, bulgar | Wheat, white potatoes, rice and other grain based products included breads, pasta, pastry and cakes |
Legumes | Kidney, butter, & black beans etc, chickpeas, lentils, tempeh, miso | Soybeans, tofu, soy milk, baked beans, soy ‘fake’ meat |
Nuts and seeds | All raw nuts | Roasted or salted nuts, seeds |
Proteins, meat and fish | Chicken, beef, pork, turkey, wild game and all types of fish | hotdogs, canned meat, sausages, meat substitutes made from soy |
Dairy products and milk substitutes | cheese, thick cream (double, clotted), butter, yoghurt | Milk, ice cream, non-dairy creamers, low fat anything, soy milk, almond milk |
Fats | Extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, butter, goose/duck fat, olives, avocado, ghee | Margarine, seed oils such as sunflower, soybean and safflower oil |
Drinks | Water is priority and should be consumed regularly. Tea (all kinds) is good and small amount of coffee – green tea is better. | Alcohol, sodas, fizzy drinks (including diet drinks), fruit juice, smoothies, veg juices |
Herbs, spices and sauces | Salt, pepper and all herbs and spices | ketchup, barbecue sauce, mayonnaise and oil based dressings, other sauces |
Sweeteners | Honey | White or brown sugar, maple syrup, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, desserts |
Calories
You have probably heard contradicting information about whether calories are important, or whether you can eat as much as you want, as long as it is the right food. The fact is, you
have
to have a calorie deficit to lose weight.
This may not mean eating less calories, it could mean eating certain foods and working out, to increase your metabolism. The fact is, you still have a calorie deficit.
If you are eating too much food, you will not lose weight. Be careful about eating foods that are healthy and recommended, but high in calories. Foods like nuts are good for your health, but very high calorie and you can easily over eat them if you are not aware.
I suggest you aim to eat 14 calories, per pound of bodyweight, per day, if you are very active. That means if you weigh 150lbs you should aim to eat 2100 calories per day.
If you are not very active, drop it to 13 or even 12 calories per pound of bodyweight.
Timing and Meals
Another area of contention among different authors and fitness professionals is meal timing and the number of meals you should eat per day.
In this author’s opinion, the research shows little difference between different meal frequencies. The primary determinant of when and how often you eat should be a combination of your lifestyle (what works for you) and hunger. If you struggle to eat more than twice a day, trying to force in six meals is probably not going to work for you.
Equally, if you find that you are hungry every couple of hours, you should eat many smaller meals every 3-4 hours to keep hunger at bay.
Find a plan that works for you, and stick with that. Being able to follow your plan over the long term is more important than any 2% difference in effectiveness. It won’t be effective if you cannot follow it!
Follow the dietary guidelines for foods to eat and foods to avoid, to ensure you have a healthy diet rich in nutrients
Work out your goal calories for the day and eat the recommended amount depending on your activity level. This can be tweaked as you go along based on how much progress you are making
Eat in a way that works with your lifestyle and habits, ensure that you are not overly hungry, nor eating all of the time
