Have you tried everything to lose weight? Do you feel like you’ve tried every workout, diet, and gadget, yet you’re still not shedding the pounds? Well, just wait, you haven’t tried… Okay, enough with the infomercial voice, we get it.
How many times have you heard this before? The latest fat loss fad is trending, you try it out, and it doesn’t work. Even worse, it gives you the impression that it works because you drop weight, only to regain it back. Weight loss means nothing if it can’t be permanent.
In this article, I’m going to talk about healthy weight loss strategies that you can incorporate into your daily life.
Weight loss is an illusion
Okay, JT, this is serious! Enough with the woo woo nonsense. I know this sounds ridiculous and it should because an illusion, by definition, isn’t real.
Weight loss is an illusion. What I mean by that, is that weight loss (the act of losing weight) is by no means someone’s default state of being. Wanting to lose weight implies that you are someone who believes they are overweight. In which case, your mind believes that you are overweight.
Stay with me here. If your mind believes that you are overweight, then inevitably, it will keep finding a way to stay overweight. What you are holding in your mind is where the body’s actions stem from.
Diets never last long-term
Let me give you another example. Let’s say you have a wedding you have to go to and you’re in the bridal party. You decide you want to lose 15 pounds before the wedding so you can look your best. You decide to cut out carbs and, to your surprise, it actually starts to work!
You drop 1 pound, then 3 pounds, then 5 pounds. Before you know it, you’ve hit your goal of losing 15 pounds!
The day of the wedding arrives and everyone is commenting on how great you look saying, “Wow, you’ve really trimmed up. That suit (or dress) looks so good on you. Tell me your secret on how you lost weight!” You feel great, as you should.
However, after the bride and groom cut the cake, you can’t stop looking at it and the table of desserts. Your internal voice then says, “Go ahead and live a little, you’ve earned it. It’s just for one night. You’ll go back to your diet tomorrow.”
So, you indulge. And indulge. And indulge once more. The next day, you pour yourself some cereal, eat a couple slices of bread, have some soda, and feast on a big pasta dinner. You think, “Well the wedding is over, at least I reached my goal and got to be slim for that one night.”
Then you go back to your old habitual way of eating. Why is that? Why was change never permanently made? It is because the mind never changed. It only showed restraint for a period of time due to pure willpower. But, willpower alone will not make lasting change.
Begin with the mind
Now that you are open-minded to the idea that it is the mind that needs to change, let’s dive into that a little bit deeper.
When we want to make any change, it has always started within the mind, has it not? Even something as simple as saying, “I need to get a haircut.” Did the hair stylist drive to your home, tap you on the shoulder, and say, “Hey it’s about that time.” No. It started with a thought.
That thought came out of something even deeper. It’s as if there is something programmed within oneself that generated that thought. This is what’s known as karma. Little traumas, programs, feelings, energies within yourself essentially running every thought in your mind. A lot of the times they run on repeat.
To change the mind, we must transcend this karma within ourselves. I was even able to reverse my own poor posture by releasing past karma. As karma is released, the mind begins to change. When the mind begins to change, so do its thought patterns. As your thoughts turn from negative thought patterns (illusion) to positive thought patterns (reality), one then begins to experience physical changes.
Internal Weight loss strategies
So how do we get to these positive thought patterns if we want to lose weight? Do we just tell ourselves some positive affirmations and manifest it spiritually? No no no. That’s actually quite draining.
What we need to do is address anything that comes up in the mind about weight, weight loss, weight problems, etc., and see what we can do to change those negative thought patterns. It’s more about facing what we are afraid to face internally, rather than running away from it. Here are some strategies:
- Release and let go of every negative thought, feeling, energy about our weight.
- We forgive anyone who may have offended us about our weight.
- We forgive ourselves for shaming ourselves about our weight.
- We allow ourselves to love ourself again.
- We dig into our past to see where we may have hurt others about their weight.
- We pray to God/Higher Power to see the truth of the situation.
Before we address the physical domain, we must address the spiritual/internal domain.
You can’t Ignore Physical Effort if you have a body
It’s not that the physical domain is less important than the spiritual domain. Rather, the physical stems from the spiritual. In other words, the manifest stems from the un-manifest.
Like we mentioned in the wedding example, if you try to address the physical domain without doing anything about the spiritual domain, no permanent change will happen. Willpower will burn out, just like a car runs out of fuel.
However, the fact of the matter is you are not just a soul, but a body as well. The body lives in the physical domain and must play by the rules of the physical. I use to think I could just address the spiritual and I wouldn’t have to do any physical work (This is what’s known as spiritual bypassing; ignoring physical reality because you think you are only a soul).
I even put this to the test by doing nothing but sitting on a couch for two weeks straight (I worked remote at the time which made it easier to do this). I was in a great place spiritually that I felt that I didn’t have to do a single thing with the body because I felt I was only a soul.
To my dismay, I started getting achey muscles and back sores from sitting on the couch. I felt like my body needed some sort of physical stimulation. I actually laid on the hardwood floor, which surprisingly gave me relief. I then decided to do a full-body workout and felt so much better. That was when I realized the body needs a balance of comfort and discomfort to remain in optimal condition.
This is due to physical adaptation. We are adaptive creatures, the more we subject ourselves to something difficult, the more resilient and capable we get at handling that thing. Of course, there are extremes. We don’t want to be extremely comfortable, nor extremely uncomfortable. We try to stay right in the middle. That’s where perfect health lies.
Healthy Weight Loss Strategies that You can do every day
As your internal thoughts begin to change from addressing your karma, you will naturally start to take action to give the body exactly what it needs to stay healthy and resilient. Here are some holistic weight loss strategies you can start to implement regularly.
1) Spend more time on the ground
Yes, I’m serious about this. Sit, squat, crawl, kneel, etc. You’ll be surprised at how rewarding this feels for the body.
In Japan, they have one of the highest life expectancies at 85 years old. Part of their culture includes the traditional practice of sitting and sleeping on the floor. I’m sure there is a list of factors as to why they have such a high life expectancy but it could be that this is one of the contributing factors.
You can even remember the time when you were a kid where you spent most of your time on the floor. You never complained about back aches or couch sores.
2) Do natural movements That encourage a lean body
Back to adaptation. This is how you should look at all physical movement. Body changes happen based on the physical demands you place on it. For example, if you want to get bigger, what do you do? You either sit on the couch all day and keep eating or you keep lifting heavier and heavier weight. In both examples, your body is going to want to adapt by getting larger.
To lose weight then, one must have the body adapt to situations that encourage the body to want to drop weight. Here’s a list of movements:
- All the ground movements I previously mentioned (sit, squat, crawl, kneel, roll)
- Hang from a bar, do pull-ups, monkey bars
- Calisthenics
- Spend more time balancing on one limb, foot, hand, tippy toes
- Yoga poses
- Climb ropes, trees, walls, poles
- Learn to do a handstand
- Do a martial art (Taekwondo, Karate, Tai Chi)
- Walk a lot
Don’t underestimate this. These are some of the easiest weight loss strategies you can implement regularly that doesn’t cost a dime to do. Sprinkle these throughout the day when you’re bored, you’ll start to see the movements get easier and your body change.
3) do some form of resistance training
Similar to the adaptation weight loss strategy, except, the focus here is to get good shape and proportion to your muscles. We’re not trying to get big and buff like a bodybuilder but rather look slim, lean, natural, and athletic (Think of a beach bod or martial artist look). It should be enough for people to notice that you are fit without screaming for attention.
With my background of doing all types of resistance training, the one I found to have the most ROI (return on investment) and bang for the buck is a resistance band. You don’t need a whole gym setup, weights, or machines. Rather, one cheap resistance band with handles that is a decent weight. Even better if you can attach it to a wall or door.
Next, you’ll want to focus on natural movements. I don’t want you to pay attention to reps and sets or even what the exercise is called. Focus more on what feels good for your body. Stimulate the muscles, don’t annihilate them. You should feel recharged after a workout and ready for the day, not wiped out and tired.
Every workout typically encompasses a push or pull movement. Tap into your intuition of what you think is a natural movement. Sometimes I like to imagine movements of what a caveman might do in the wild and mimic that with the resistance band. Strive to hit every muscle that you can at least once a week. It’s hard to not look good if every muscle has been hardened from resistance training.
4) Fix Your appetite
Everyone says that diet is the hardest part to figure out when it comes to losing weight. I’d argue that diet is the easiest part to figure out. Weight management is really an appetite battle. We have big appetites because we are either too inactive (storing mode) or we are too active (building mode). It also doesn’t help that we are surrounded by hyper palatable food all the time.
We do everything to trigger our appetites to increase, but we don’t do anything to trigger our appetites to decrease.
Once you encourage your body to adapt to losing weight, through the strategies I listed above, your appetite will actually adapt by getting smaller. With a smaller appetite, you naturally will eat less, resulting in weight loss.
5) Eat a Variety
I remember asking my grandpa what his diet was when I was little. He laughed and said, “I eat everything!” He is still alive today and in great, lean shape. The older I got, the more his wisdom really started to make sense.
I experimented with so many diets the last 10+ years (carnivore, keto, high carb, low carb, low fat, only whole foods, only processed foods, one meal a day, etc.). You know what I found to be the one diet I always came back to that was sustainable? Eating everything.
I don’t worry about food. I let it come to me. I let my intuition guide me on what to eat based on what I’m feeling. Hell, today I ate a bagel with butter, eggs, rice, chocolate, chips, beef, cereal, milk, broccoli, yogurt, pickles. I eat it all and don’t eat any of one type of food in mass quantity.
The point is that I don’t demonize any specific food group. I eat whatever I feel like eating and I don’t go overboard. I eat until I’m satisfied and content. It’s when eating mixes with negative emotions, do we go overboard. Eating stress and guilt free is more important for weight loss than it is to only eat whole foods because you’re scared of cheeseburgers.
6) Lower Protein Intake
I know I said not to demonize any specific food group, and I’m not. Rather, what I’m saying here is that we have a culture obsessed with protein. We’ve pointed fingers at every known food group except one, protein! You know, the thing that’s supposed to make us muscular and be good for us all the time.
I believe we need to go back to a lower protein intake, which is actually just a moderate approach, given that we are constantly in a protein surplus because of the amount of food options we have today.
If you actually track what you eat in a day, you’ll see that protein is in practically everything. So much so that even if you didn’t worry about protein, you’d probably still get enough.
But why is this so important when it comes to weight loss? Well, from experiments ran on myself, this is how I understand it. As humans, we are made of proteins. Proteins come from other sources of proteins (meat: beef, fish, chicken, pork). If you eat more protein than your body needs, you begin to store those excess proteins. In other words, gain weight.
On the flip side, if you remove proteins from your diet, the body begins to shrink because it’s using proteins from your body. Fats and carbs, on the other hand, are sources of energy for the body. Remove those and you will start to feel drained and the body cannot function well.
All I do is control how much or little protein I need. Carbs and fats I hardly worry about and add it to all my foods to make the meal taste good and have some substance. If I am trying to lose weight, I decrease protein. If I am trying to gain weight, I increase it. That simple.
7) Watch the Mirror, not the scale
Take your scale and throw it out. I see it cause more harm than good because everyone obsesses over trying to hit a number and they get demoralized when they can’t stay there. One thing you must understand is your body fluctuates in weight constantly. You can wake up at 118 pounds and by evening be at 125.
Instead, focus on what you see in the mirror. If you have some slight pudge on your waist, you know to keep going with weight loss. If you see a six pack, definition, and even veins crawling all over your body mixed with a ravenous appetite, you might want to stop with the weight loss and focus on packing on the pounds.
Implement intermittent fasting to speed up weight loss results. Humans are funny, we’ve gotten so obsessed with eating in our culture that we have to create a term for not eating.
Give yourself permission not to eat if you are trying to lose weight. That’s all it is, we don’t need to be dramatic and scream to the high heavens that we’re starving! It takes the average human body 1-2 months to starve. As long as you aren’t going to extremes, you’re more than likely going to stop losing weight when you are happy with what you see in the mirror.
8) Get proper rest, don’t overdo it
Another thing our culture is obsessed with is fitness. Even to the point where people suffer injuries or even death by overtraining. It takes so little effort to lose weight and get in shape. Yet, we have a culture stuck in the “no pain, no gain” mentality.
You don’t have to run a marathon, lift crazy amounts of weights, or crash diet to get and maintain your ideal physique. It happens from small consistent daily efforts and staying balanced without going to any extremes.
If you’re rebounding, ie. you worked out too hard and now you’re really sore and can barely walk, you overdid it. Or you ate a ton of sweets and junk food because you’ve been eating only whole foods for two weeks straight, you overdid it. Find a balance with both your fitness and diet using your intuition.
The weight loss Mystery is debunked
I say debunked rather than solved because these are all things we intuitively know. There was no mystery to solve. If you read this and think, “Ah, makes sense.” it’s because you knew this all along. You just needed to hear someone else who has lived it for confirmation.
It is your natural state to have a healthy body and it should not be a mystery. Maybe we’ve been misled to believe we are something that we are not, but I can assure you, there is a potential within yourself that knows who and what you are and you don’t have to settle for good enough.
As you begin to work on yourself, remember that by looking within, the answer already lies there. It’s just been waiting patiently for you to check in.