Have you ever heard the question, how do you eat an elephant? Keep reading for the answer. Have you ever decided you were going to lose the extra weight you gained? I did. You see, I had lost it before, gained it back, lost some, gained some. Eventually I gave up because it was too hard to do. I thought I must be doing something wrong for this to be so difficult. Actually, I was doing something wrong. What I always did when I was ready to lose the weight was make changes- a lot of changes. This is what I planned to do-wake up at 5 a.m. to read my bible and pray, 6:00 a.m. exercise for an hour and then have a healthy breakfast, go to work for 8 hours and plan on eating my healthy lunch and snacks I brought with me, come home have a healthy dinner, do something productive like practice the piano or read. What really happened- I woke up 30 minutes before I was supposed to be at work and had only enough time to shower and leave, I didn’t bring my snacks and lunch. I ended up eating the cupcakes in the break room and went to Burger King for lunch. I got home from work and said I would exercise after eating dinner. I feel asleep in the chair and woke up and went to bed. Wow, talk about not getting anything done!
I know I’m not the only one that has had good intentions and then it didn’t work out. I tried to take too many steps to reach my goal. When I look back at my past attempts at trying to accomplish anything that I failed at, I was trying to change too much at one time. If I had taken just taken a small step of waking up with enough time to do 10 minutes of some type of exercise, that would have been enough. Then the next step could have been to plan one meal a day that was healthier for me. Small steps. On December 7, 2011 I took a small step to lose the weight in a way that was doable for the rest of my life. I started logging what I was eating in a small tablet. I didn’t even change what I was eating. The goal was to become conscious of what I was putting into my mouth. That was it. That eventually led to the step of logging my calories, fat, and carbohydrates. The next step was adding physical activity in my life. That meant walking or doing an exercise DVD. Now, my schedule looks like I wanted it to look. I get up early, I exercise, my meals are planned and I go out and enjoy trying new things. All of this happened one step at a time. Oh, and the answer to the question at the beginning, you eat an elephant one bite at a time. Small Steps = Big Results.
Check out the information for my online weight management program, Losing Weight to Gain Control Maintenance Mindset Program. It's the steps I guide others through and continue to do today to maintain my weight loss.