Take the indirect route.
Jun 28·4 min read
Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash
Are you experiencing weight loss fatigue?
If you’d like to set down thinking about diet and exercise for a bit but not abandon your end goal, this article is for you.
Sometimes the best approach is sideways.
There’s a tremendous benefit to having clear goals and going for them. That’s not particularly true in weight loss. There are simply too many factors to contend with to give one objective all the focus.
Instead, work on various aspects of your life that allow you to take care of yourself with ease. After all, weight loss is an outcome of consistent, healthful practices. To do that day-in and day-out, you need a life structured to assist you.
Here are some of the most impactful ways to make progress on a healthy weight that don’t focus on workouts or diet.
Go To Therapy
One way talk therapy can help you with your weight: Most of us live with or are in relationships with people who aren’t on board with healthful living. As you begin to form healthy weight practices you’ll need to make requests of or ask for adjustments from the people in your lives.
- Please don’t bring home sweets
- Let’s go for a walk instead of brunch
- I’d rather not happy hour
You get the idea. If you’re a person who can’t communicate what you need for fear of losing relationships that’s reason enough to go to therapy. Our past traumas really do stop us from building the lives we most want.
Withdraw From A Time Consuming Commitment
I can’t say this any more clearly: achieving and keeping a healthy weight takes time. It’s not something you do on the margins, it’s the defining principle by which you organize your life.
Yep.
An easy route to getting more movement is fewer things to do (and leave the time open). What did people do in record numbers during the pandemic? They went outside to bike and hike. That was the natural inclination once everyone wasn’t so busy.
Examine Your Finances
This video below makes a compelling case for tracking your money (beyond saving for retirement or rainy day expenses). Where you spend reveals your emotional state, or how you self-soothe.
Sometimes, awareness is what’s needed as a catalyst for change. This accountant brilliantly breaks down the connection between spending, emotions, and the power of observation.
Work On Your Sleep
Sleep is vital to weight loss, and losing sleep is directly associated with weight gain. Working on your sleep is working on your weight.
The good news is that there’s a lot you can do about it. Right now, tonight. I wrote this recent piece on creating good sleep environments with excellent resources at the end.
Declutter Your Home
This one hadn’t occurred to me until I started doing discussions with Kristen of Minima Organizing & Redesign. She has one of my favorite Instagram accounts that is both smart and gorgeous. We also share many similar life principles and have become business buddies.
She told me that reigning in clutter often spurred her clients on to lose weight. It makes complete sense that tackling one pressing challenge would then make space for addressing another. Plus, you don’t have so much stuff to attend to, so, more free time.
Learn To Make A Dish
Yes, this is about food but really the focus is on developing an important skill, learning to make your own meals with ease.
Knowing your way around the kitchen is essential for long-term weight loss. You have better control over your intake and it allows you to make things you get genuine pleasure from eating. That’s right, enjoying your food is an important part of living at a healthy weight.
Cooking is how you move from using food as an indulgence to one of pleasure. It creates reverence. It’s as intentional as it gets.
Take a mental health walk.
If you struggle with anxiety or depression, a daily walk needs to be part of your toolkit. It’s powerful medicine.
My fitness needs have changed over the years but my walking practice never has. It’s fundamental to my well-being as a person. I walk for joy, always outside, and along routes with plenty of visual pleasure. Sometimes that’s architecture, sometimes it’s nature.
The easiest way to get going is to embrace simplicity.
Forget workout clothes or complicated trackers. Put on a pair of comfortable shoes and go.
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I teach permanent weight loss. Founder @ notanotherdiet.co
An anti-diet, pro-weight loss publication and program. We dismantle culture’s awful ideas about weight and give you useful ones.
