22. Want to Lose 10–15lbs? Don't Make These 3 Mistakes

Okay, so just as a quick heads up, this is probably going to be very, very different advice than what you typically hear when it comes to weight loss.

The first thing that I would not do if I wanted to lose 10 to 15 pounds in the next three months is start with a calorie deficit.

And I know this is probably the number one thing you hear.

In order to lose weight, you have to be in a calorie deficit, which is true.

However, I find that for me personally, as well as my clients, that when we start with a calorie deficit and we don't work on our foundational habits first, we become very obsessed with calories and very obsessed with tracking our food and very overwhelmed with those too.

And it becomes too much about our story.

It becomes too much about why we're doing this and our overall goals.

And so I will say, I do firmly believe that tracking your food is such a great tool to help you lose weight in an efficient way.

And it's actually a really great way to teach you about the food that you're eating and actually how to build a healthy relationship with food and how to really eat the foods that you love and still lose weight.

So I do really believe that it's possible to do that.

I don't believe it's the only way to lose weight.

I always give my clients options, but I don't wanna start with that.

Instead, what I do is first work on our awareness.

We first start with awareness because in order to figure out how to get to our destination, we have to figure out a starting point.

So what I have my clients do is they start simply by writing down what they eat in a day, and not just writing down how many calories they're eating, but we really wanna be holistic and look at the full picture.

So we look at the emotions that they have when they're eating, their energy levels, their hunger, and that's such a key piece.

I always tell my clients, Give me the full picture of what you're eating and what led you to make that decision.

So were you scarfing down a Starbucks sandwich and coffee on the way to work because you had to wake up early because your child woke up and you didn't have time to make your regular high protein breakfast? Give me the full picture because That's what we want to work with.

We wanna figure out not just what food decisions you're making, but why you are making those decisions.

And from there, we can figure out, okay, how can we work on those things first? How can we build those foundational healthy habits so that way eating just feels a little bit easier? And we look at things like your protein intake, your fiber intake, because if we can work on those things first, separate of calories, it's going to make tracking your food so much easier because you're telling yourself that you have to be in the calorie deficit.

You're telling yourself you have to track your food, which again, those things are very helpful.

But if you're trying to do those on top of figuring out how to eat 100 grams of protein, how to make sure that you actually eat breakfast in the morning on your way to work, it just becomes really overwhelming and you start blaming tracking.

and you blame calories for why it's not working rather than just focusing on your lifestyle and how your body feels on a day-to-day basis and again when we focus on fat loss from okay how can i just overall feel better it's going to make that calorie deficit so much easier because again you're not just focusing on calories You're focusing on how your body feels.

And it's just a way, way less pressure on yourself as well when you approach fat loss in that way.