How to Build a Healthy Weight Loss Plan

New year, new you, right?

You’re starting out this brand new year with the best of intentions. Setting goals to help you achieve your desired weight loss. Vowing to yourself that this year will be different. You’ll definitely stick to your diet and exercise routine, surely making it past the first month when everyone else gives up.

But life gets in the way, and that routine you set for yourself seems too complicated and demanding now. And slowly it goes by the wayside.

The problem is not that you’re not disciplined enough. Or that you don’t know how to eat healthy without a diet.

It’s that you haven’t taken the time to build the right foundation for healthy weight loss.

If you’re thinking, “Great, Danielle. I’m struggling already. How the heck am I supposed to build this foundation?”

Lucky for you, I have three key steps to help you build the right foundation for creating a healthy weight loss plan. These three steps were the exact ones I used to lose weight (and keep it off) without a diet, and do it post baby.

Three steps to help you build a healthy weight loss foundation

Step 1: Create a sustainable plan (that doesn’t include dieting)

You’ve probably heard this before, but the reasons so many weight loss plans fail is because you’re trying to do too much all at once.

Like I said, you’re not bad at it, or don’t know how to accomplish it, it’s just that you’re trying to pack a huge punch right out of the gate.

If this is your first time getting into living a healthier lifestyle, or even if you’re “starting over” you need to start slower than you think you should.

Start by writing a goal that isn’t weight loss (numbers) related. Getting fixated on the number on the scale is honestly a recipe for disaster. You’ll likely become frustrated that the number isn’t going down fast enough, and then inevitably give up.

Instead, focus on a goal or intention like:

• I want to feel more confident from the inside out
• I want to be able to play with my kids for more than five minutes without being out of breath
• I want to walk up the stairs rather than taking the elevator
• I want to look in the mirror and like what I see (this is both mental and physical)

With your goal in mind, come up with three ways you’re going to focus on getting closer to that goal each month.

Let’s take wanting to walk up the stairs as your goal. Here are three ways that could help you get closer to that goal:

1. Two days a week I will walk up one flight of stairs and then take the elevator the rest of the way.
2. Three days a week I’ll replace one soda with a flavored water.
3. One day a week I’ll go for a 10-20 minute walk with a friend/co-worker.

See how setting these manageable steps can help you start to build each month to help you get closer to that goal? Also, no where in here did I mention starting a new diet.

Diets are often too restrictive and not sustainable. They don’t take into account YOU as a whole person. Your mindset and what works best for your body.

Intuitive eating can help you get started with building that sustainable and healthy weight loss foundation.

2. Practice makes progress

I initially titled this step ‘practice makes perfect’, but I don’t actually like that saying. Perfect just doesn’t exist. Trying to be perfect sets standards that are unlikely to be met. Which also creates unhealthy obsession.

When I was on Weight Watchers, I wanted to be perfect. I wanted to never go over my points limit. Often times this caused a lot of stress and feelings of failure when I wasn’t perfect on the plan.

So when we flip the script and instead say that practice makes progress, it frees our minds up. It helps us focus on creating a practice that’s sustainable and one we actually feel good about staying with.

Creating a sustainable practice by starting small and working towards those initial goals of how we want to feel rather than how we want to look externally.

Knowing that this is a continuous process is something that’s helped me to really create a healthy and sustainable weight loss plan for myself and others. It’s also helped me to create a better relationship with my body and food.

I know that it’s not a sprint, and it’s not something that’s going to happen overnight. Which is the issue with a lot of diets. They make us think that there’s some magic pill out there. That it can make us lose 10 pounds in 10 days, and that’s just not realistic (or healthy).

So as you start to create this progress plan, think back to your initial intention of how you want to feel. Doing so will help you show up continuously in a way that feels good to you.

3. Invest in yourself with a coach

Sure, trying to do this all on your own is completely possible. However, it can take so much longer to reach the goal you’ve been trying to hit without support.

It’s why they always say having a gym buddy will make you so much more likely to actually go to the gym. It’s having that accountability to put your words into action.

Having a coach to help you not only create a plan that will work for you, but who will be there to touch base with you to ensure the plan is working. This is a necessary step in creating a healthy weight loss plan.

You can do all the reading and Googling you want, but a coach is going to help you fast track to that intention, that goal.

They can see what you can’t see. A coach can call you out on your BS. But they’re also there to support and help you see where your mindset is maybe holding you back.

Another reason why diets don’t actually work. There’s never enough support or accountability. There’s not someone there to listen to you and see the gaps and how to fix them.

For a really long time I thought I could do it all on my own. But having support changed the game for me. I now had someone in my corner to help me see what I wasn’t seeing. They helped me flip the script on my plan and create something that works for me.

In doing so, I knew that I had to create a coaching space where I could support you with this plan. To help you shed not only physical weight, but also the emotional weight. Weight you’ve been holding on to from years of dieting.

It can be so easy to get in our own heads and sabotage our own goals. I want to be there to support you. To help you create a healthy weight loss plan that you feel good about. A plan that doesn’t include dieting or super crazy exercise.

We focus more on what’s underneath first to help you create the healthy lifestyle you’ve been wanting for so long.

As your coach, I’ll be able to see what you can’t see. To help you reach your goal so much faster than if you were to do it on your own.

Creating that healthy weight loss plan can be fun again. So let’s do it together!

Join Eat for Life Collective coaching to help create a sustainable and healthy weight loss plan that works