I used to think that the more I exercised, the more weight I would lose. I used to run with weights on my ankles in NYC and get frozen yogurt instead of ice cream. I was misguided and I was missing the point. I was coming from an empty place of weight loss for aesthetics instead of losing weight for my health and wellness and to be my best self.
At some point I realized that I was eating for emotional reasons. I was eating to fill the void of loneliness in my life. I was eating extra at night because I was bored. I was eating when I wasn’t hungry because I thought that that was self care. I was so frustrated. I decided I needed a new approach to my eating habits. I needed to forge a healthier relationship between me and food.
I ended up losing the weight I wanted after doing the program I later share, but these old habits can creep back in…such as when you are stuck in your house for months on end and the only thing you feel like you have for yourself after a day of homeschooling a 9 year old, toddler care-taking and marriage upholding (along with running a business that has been government-mandated closed) is two-7 squares too many of dark chocolate and almonds. One might fall back to old habits of emotional eating.
And this one did. And that’s okay. Because I know how to get back to my macronutrient basics; protein, complex carbohydrates and healthy fats.
And it starts with color. Going to Bauman College for Holistic Nutrition in Berkeley 10 years ago helped me more fully understand that. Eating healthy is simple: stay away from the whites, eat all the colors of the rainbow, add in whole grains, grass-fed beef, pastured chicken, orange eggs and wild fish. I say orange, because the really healthy eggs such as Vital Farms (you can even find it at Target in Emeryville) has eggs whose yolks are orange instead of yellow – providing Vitamin A! Here is a seasonal guide to eating healthy throughout the year https://www.seasonalfoodguide.org/
Eating healthy comes down to brightening up your eating habits. I use color as a visual way to measure the health of my plate. When it comes to losing weight, however, I need to be more precise. Are you a numbers person? Losing weight is challenging in general, because it is hard to know if the plan you are on is working or not. Diets like Paleo and Whole30 deliver fast results because they are a limited diet. If you cut out all inflammatory types of food such as; flour products, sugars, alcohol, dairy – you will see a difference. How long can this last? First you need to find healthy foods that you enjoy eating. Here are some of my favorite healthy foods that end up falling under the mediterranean diet – my fave!
ROOTS NUTRITION focuses on finding balance. The lasting way to eat healthy is making it part of your lifestyle. Getting to where you want to be is the hard part. If you have 5-50lbs of weight you’d like to lose, your journey will be shorter or longer 😉 Healthy weight loss is 1lb per week. Yet, you can’t stay on a “diet” or regimen of hardcore healthy eating ALL the time. So either you’re half-assing it or you are LASER FOCUSED on your goals 2 WEEKS AT A TIME. The 3rd week you take a break from logging your food, counting your daily caloric burn and weighing yourself (only once a week at the same time of day) for one week. Then you get right back on that wagon for another 2 weeks. You repeat until you get to where you want to be. Sometimes this takes 6 months.
You can change your body in 6 months! That might sound like a long time when you want what you want right now, but nothing worth having is easy to get.
If you have 5lbs you want to lose, you can realistically expect to lose it in 7 weeks. If you have 10lb you want to lose, you will lose it in about 15 weeks on my program. The ROOTS NUTRITION program comes with FREE personal training. Get an Initial Session (in-person or virtual) $80.
Email for a free 10 min consultation mindy@bkrootsfitness.com