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Find freedom and rid yourself of guilt and shame

For far too long the fitness industry, media and so-called experts have pumped out diet after diet, telling us we need to go to extremes to lose weight or be healthy. The number of clients over the years I have had who embrace disordered eating as a way of life is staggering. Despite all my best efforts to steer them away, their old belief system is hard to let go of.

Have a healthy approach to fat loss – rewrite your belief system when it comes to losing weight. It won’t be easy, but you may finally get the breakthrough you have been looking for, rid yourself of the guilt and start to feel more positive and free. 

The need for cheat meals only increases your likelihood of binging. Labelling foods as bad or junk, again leads to negative emotions around eating them. We need to start redefining how we perceive food and work on having a healthy relationship with all food and being more realistic and sensible in our food choices.

You can do it

It’s hard work but there is a freedom that you get when you can eat in a healthy, normal way that removes guilt and shame. If you want to drop some weight, tighten the belt around your normal eating. Look at the things you enjoy and want to keep in your diet, then set boundaries around them and adjust your other meals to allow for it while still maintaining a calorie deficit. 

It does require more planning, being diligent to stick to what you planned (as you still want to lose weight) but the result is enjoying your food more, not feeling bad about having a drink or takeaway meal and feeling less stress about the whole situation.

Start small, start where you’re at, take it one meal or day at a time. 

It’s a learning process and you will make mistakes as you improve. 

Give yourself permission to have things you enjoy.

Set boundaries to keep you on track.

Don’t listen to what friends and family are saying about how this diet is the best or that you are doing it wrong. (Who made them experts in the first place)

Speak to a qualified and experienced personal trainer or nutritionist for support

Take it one day at a time, and if you mess up, don’t feel bad, just do better for the next meal.

Remove the extreme beliefs and find a happy medium.

What works for you won’t work for everyone, that’s the beauty of being human and one of a kind. 

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Eating normal for better results and a happier life.

After being overweight, losing weight and then spending 5 years in physique competitions my eating was very disordered. I took quite an extreme approach to look good and picked up some bad beliefs and habits about eating and nutrition along the way. It took me at least 2-3 years to regain normal eating habits and still to this day that old belief system rears its ugly head when I decide I want to drop a few kgs. Times have changed and I have a new more balanced way of looking at food, a new belief system, but the old one is still there, I just choose to ignore it as it only leads to stress, shame, guilt, and me being unhappy.

Disordered eating is rampant and socially accepted as normal from the person looking to lose weight to professional sports people. 

There has been a shift to promote and educate us on eating a balanced diet to lose weight and stay healthy, looking to shift our beliefs on what is healthy eating or normal eating; however, we have yet to embrace these habits and still hold old beliefs about what you need to eat to lose weight and idea of health is often ignored. 

We are led to believe by the media, books, friends, family, and so-called experts that we must eat all the junk in the house before we start our diet, it tells us carbs are bad, sugar is bad, fat is bad and eating chocolate or a biscuit or even a piece of fruit will set us back. We are told to cut out whole food groups, to try to exist on 800 kcals a day. We are told we must be perfect and abstain from the things we love. We are told bad food is a sin or a cheat, even if it’s healthy. No wonder we are all messed up and don’t know what is right or wrong. 

What is Normal Eating?

It depends on who you speak to and how they normally eat. Everyone has a different view on normal eating which is shaped by our family, our culture, race, environment, and social influences to name a few. 

So, let’s look at what normal eating is not… and some things may surprise you because they are just accepted as normal. They aren’t. 

It’s not takeaways every day

It’s not extra-large meals

It’s not eating entire packets of crisps, a whole cake, a whole block of chocolate. 

It’s not eating massive portions every meal 

It’s not drinking daily. 

It’s not eating so much we feel sick

It’s not eating so little we starve

It’s not eating so clean you’re boring

It’s not living off diet bars or powdered food devoid of any nutrition

It’s not being scared to eat fruit because of the sugar content. 

It’s not taking your meals to a friends’ house because you’re keto

It’s not only eating low fat

It’s not only eating low carbs

It’s not only eating high protein

It’s not living on processed meals and snacks

It’s not eating gluten free because you think it’s healthier (unless you have a gluten intolerance) 

It’s not avoiding going out for dinner because that one meal will make you fat. 

It’s not eating like a child even though you’re an adult

It’s not tracking and weighing your food 52 weeks a year

It’s not eating to extremes

We must be sensible and find a way of eating that improves our health, helps us lose weight if that’s the goal and stops us feeling guilt, shame, and other negative emotions when we over-indulge. 

Yes, if you want to lose weight you need to cut back in some areas, you have to be more attentive to what you eat, you have to re-evaluate and negotiate with yourself what you will and won’t eat. You have to sacrifice BUT you don’t have to demonise food, cut out whole food groups, never drink alcohol again, decide never to eat sugar again or carbs, or fats or sweets or chocolate. THAT’S NOT NORMAL.

Normal eating is not bingeing on the whole chocolate bar today, so you finish it to start your diet tomorrow – there is no difference between eating the whole chocolate bar over a week than eating the entire bar in a day, except for the fact that you labelled it as bad so felt the need to binge on it.

Normal eating is having days where you eat more and days where you eat less – you don’t have to stick to a set number of calories a day to lose weight. I like to look at calories over a week and eat to how I feel over that week. This may mean some days I eat less and save more calories for the weekend to allow me to eat more – without the guilt and shame.

Normal eating isn’t tracking your calories all the time, if you eat normally, you are less inclined to binge, and less inclined to over consume calories as again the guilt and shame is removed.

Normal eating is eating a wide range of fruit and veg, a variety of good quality fats. It includes eating all the food you enjoy without labelling it as good or bad. Its finding a balance that gives you the outcomes of fat loss and improving your health.

If you aren’t losing weight, adjust what you eat, decrease portions, cut back on a few of the finer things in life but you don’t have to cut them out altogether. 

You can still enjoy food and lose weight, you must set your boundaries and stick to them – see how that goes, readjust, and keep going.

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HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT THE RIGHT WAY

Are you really on track when it comes to losing weight and being healthy???

To often we strive to lose weight and stay fit, you join a gym and get some results but are never truly happy with what you achieve. You try every new diet there is and train everyday but for all your effort you seem to be going nowhere.

We are told to eat less and train more as a way of losing weight, but in actual fact this theory is flawed and in the long run you cant maintain eating less and will ultimately deprive your body of essential nutrients and enter into the realms of overtraining.

I know from experience that training smarter and eating more of the right foods is easier to maintain long term and will get you leaner much faster. You will also be happier, healthier and have more energy.

But what do i eat? how should i train?

Train 3-4 times a week on a structured weights program, limit your cardio training to intervals only like sprints

Eat every 2-3 hours – good quality protein, smart fats such as avocado, seeds, nuts, coconut oil and olive oil, and eat low Glycemic index carbs

Eliminate all processed food, breads, cereals, white potatoes, white rice, wheat and other grains, soy, juice, soft drinks, skim milk and any other low fat products

You have to eat yourself leaner, starving the body of food and then training like crazy is not a long term solution for good health and fat loss

Contact, personal trainer Lisa Cunningham for more information on how you can transform your body today.