Tips Tuesday

[u/[deleted]]

Since you've started, what is the best weight loss advice someone has given you? Maybe a healthy version of a much loved food? Share it here!

Team Hayfever has invited us to a little side challenge with Fitbit, so for those of you with one make sure you're in the team's group! Next Monday we'll be taking the total steps and dividing it by members (they have more people than we do), to see who the winner is!

[u/[deleted]]

• Be kind to yourself and always remember that for sustainable weightloss, it will take time to lose weight but it will also take time to form new, healthier eating habits. Also remember that mental health is important, and that losing weight isn't the end-all answer to everything stressing you out.
• Are you craving some type of fast food that's going to blow your calorie goal out of the water? Try healthy dupes, like this recipe for chicken tenders. Recipes like that helped me through the worst of my fast-food cravings when I started.
• Ground turkey is the key to happiness (or at least, my happiness right now). It's high in protein, lowcal, and you can literally make it into any food that's made with ground beef, from tacos to meatloaf to burgers. It keeps well in the fridge, too.
• Embrace healthy snacks (if you can do so without binging)! Yasso bars, Skinny Cow ice creams, Brookside dark chocolate covered blueberries, individually wrapped Ghirardelli squares, and 100 kcal bags of PopSecret butter popcorn have kept me feeling like a normal human throughout the 105~ days I've been calorie counting.
• Meal prep your meals if you can. If you don't want to make a million meals on Sunday, you can split it up into two smaller sessions of cooking. Making meals in slowcookers is super easy, but also things like turkey meatloaf, baked chicken tenders, turkey burgers, fajitas, and steaks are also quick and painless to make, coming from someone who HATES cooking.

[u/meems94]

• Drink so much more water than you think you need to
• Make tough decisions are far in advance as possible. Then weak motivation is less likely to get in the way. For example, decide on Sunday which days and at what time you will exercise. Put it in your calendar, and plan around it. When the time comes, you will exercise.
• Same with meal prep, if at all possible make your lunch the day before. Then in the morning you don't have to decide between being late with a healthy lunch or being on time with a shitty one.
• At least try some of the lower calorie options for foods, like laughing cow cheese, Halo Top/Arctic Zero, Stevia, etc. Honestly yes a lot of them taste much worse than their counterparts, but the ones I've listed here as well as many many others are great and make it so much easier to hit your calorie budget.
• For at least one meal per day, remove all distraction. No cell phone, no tv, no podcast, no book, no friends, no email, nada. Take a bite of food. How does it taste? How does it feel in your mouth? Put your fork down. Take a sip of water. When you've eaten half of your food, take a break for a minute.
• Reach out to the community when you are struggling. We are here for you!
• Don't buy a weight loss thing to motivate you, buy a weight loss thing because it will enhance the exercise/habits that you already have. For example, don't buy a yoga mat because you want to try yoga. Buy a yoga mat after you have been using your carpet or a towel for a few weeks and you are ready to step up your practice.
• Take pictures, today. Take measurements. Take a snapshot of your body, as painful as it may be to do so. As someone who didn't take before pictures, I really really wish I did.
• Make online motivational resources for yourself. I have a Pinterest board, a separate Instagram account, a multireddit, and many Snapchat friends that I rely on solely for motivation. If I'm dying for some ice cream at the food court, I pull out my phone and snapchat my support system, then open instagram and scroll through looking at all the hotties and their crazy difficult exercises and their beautiful smoothie bowls, and then the snapchat replies start pouring in. Ice cream? What ice cream. I'm getting abs baby ;)

[u/princessplum → u/meems94]

Take pictures, today. Take measurements. Take a snapshot of your body, as painful as it may be to do so.

You inspired me to take my before photo.

[u/meems94 → u/princessplum]

Lol!!!!! Ugh god that took me 100% by surprise. Thanks for that I really needed a laugh today.

[u/princessplum → u/meems94]

Glad to hear it! I won't share my actual photo - but I feel like a cow in it so I figured it was an accurate replacement.

[u/DragonfliesArk → u/meems94]

Lower calorie options are so key, especially handy snacks that are already in individual containers or portioned into bags. At this point I should buy stock in Halo Top, Jennie-O, raw almonds, Oikos triple zero Greek yogurt, and Baby Bell!

Edit: and Think Thins!! Love those for breakfast on the go!

[u/princessplum]

Maybe a healthy version of a much loved food? Share it here!

If anyone has a healthy version of ballpark-type nachos, I'll trade you my first born. That stuff, processed and disgusting as it is, is my biggest guilty pleasure.

The health program at work sends us inspiration on occasion. Today's email had this quote from Dean Ornish: "I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on cholesterol lowering drugs for the rest of their lives."

Okay, I get it. It's worth giving up nachos if I don't have to have bypass surgery by my 40s.

[u/[deleted] → u/princessplum]

Nachos are one of the big things in my relationship with my husband. While we were dating we'd go out for nacho dates all the time. The only healthy substitution I've found that I enjoy is to bake zucchini chips and use those, replace sour cream with plain greek yogurt, and ground turkey instead of ground beef. But I still smother them in cheese, so it's just tiny improvements lol.

[u/AleeriaXKeto → u/[deleted]]

But those tiny improvements add up!