5 Secrets to Maintain a healthy Weight
Please first note that everyone’s body is different, so your healthy weight will be different from mine, and from your co-worker.
A healthy weight simply means that you feel good in your body, you’re not struggling with bloating constantly or feeling sluggish. You are energized, happy, and you can eat guilt-free.
It took me years, I struggled with numerous eating disorders, fell victim to diet-culture, and I destroyed my gut health. Finally, I am at a point in my life where I love the way I look, I feel great and I look great, I‘ve healed my gut and I am able to enjoy delicious foods without feeling like I need to earn it.
How I lost 30 lbs in 2 years and kept it off.
Listening to your body
How hormones affect your health
How stress affects your health
Balancing your plate and enjoying yourself
Having access to healthy food: how your environment can affect how you eat
So if you’re struggling to maintain a healthy weight and you just want to feel good, sick of the diet-culture and society and the media feeding you false information and you don’t know where to begin? Then you are in the right place! All of that is about to change for good!
How I lost 30 lbs in 2 years and kept it off:
My whole life I had always been naturally smaller and lighter than most people. I had a fast metabolism, I hit puberty later in life and I was actually bullied for it. Being thin caused my first eating disorder and at a very young age I began to constantly overeat even if I wasn't hungry. I ate the worst foods imaginable, and as a dancer and an athlete, I was not fueling my body properly.
Eventually I had another eating disorder, only this time I had gained weight and I now struggled with starving myself, and anorexia. I deprived myself of food, purposely sleeping in late to skip meals. I would force myself to do insanely high intensity workouts and I would not eat until I was on the brink of passing out. Even then it would only be a piece of fruit and maybe a coffee to stimulate my appetite. I also struggled with overdosing on medications that would get rid of my appetite and help me lose weight, at the time I also had a bulimia eating disorder, and so even though I was barely eating anything, I still tried to throw up anything I thought I “didn’t deserve.”
When I first moved out on my own I struggled with what every young adult does. Buying anything I wanted, overeating, not listening to my hunger cues and I was young, I was also partying all the time. I gained a ton of weight, I was bloated after drinking water in the morning, I had no energy, I was sluggish and I was treating my body terribly.
I went through all the stages of eating disorders again, starving myself, feeling I needed to “deserve food,” and restricting food from myself until I eventually had binge sessions. I knew that I could not live like this. How could everyone around me seem like they had it all figured out while I was depressed and struggling everyday, food was a constant fear, I skipped out on quality time with the people I love in fear that I might pig out or I won’t be able to control my cravings.
That’s when I learned about gut health, and all the different factors that can affect our health. I will go into more details about gut health soon; but a happy ending to the story: I healed my gut, I eat when I am hungry and stop when I am not. I eat a very healthy lifestyle, and I know how to have a balance and treat myself. I workout because I want to and it makes me feel good, not because I feel like I have to in order to fuel my body with the nutrients it needs. I am now confident in myself, it took time, but I lost the unnecessary weight, I don’t bloat constantly, I feel my best!
Secret #1: Listening to your body
Your body is yours, no one else's. WE forget that we are in control of our own bodies and that we hold so much power in our choices. Our body speaks to us through so many ways, one of the biggest ways is through how we feel. Is our stomach grumbling? We must be hungry. Are we yawning? We must be tired. The list goes on. When it comes to listening to our body, I am mainly talking about listening to our hunger cues. Children have no problem saying yes or no to food, they know when they want to eat and we honor that, and when they are full, they vocalize it and listen to how their bodies feel.
Then what changes as we grow older?
Many things:
Puberty can affect it, we become hungrier than usual, we are stressed, our hormones are changing and we need to eat to keep up with our growing body.
Our environment has a big effect, who we live with: what they eat, where we live can determine what foods are readily available to us.
Society: we may feel pressured to eat differently to fit in, we may not eat or we may eat more depending on what is going on in our lives.
Listening to our hunger cues, respecting our body and fueling it when it needs to be fed is key to finding a healthy weight and a stable balance.
I dive deeper into hunger cues and balancing your life in my course Happy, Healthy, Eating Habits!
Secret #2: How hormones can affect your health
Hormones are chemicals that carry messages through our blood to organs, muscles, and other tissues. These signals tell your body what to do and when to do it.
Our hormones affect many things in our body: hair growth, skin repair, nail strength, period, weight management, fertility, etc.
Our hormones can become imbalanced by unhealthy eating habits. For example: a huge calorie restriction or calorie deficit can lead to hair loss, loss of period, low energy..
Hormones are important for daily life functions, if our hormones are not properly balanced then our body’s natural functions will be thrown off course and can cause serious issues, depending on the severity, they could be life threatening.
Secret #3: How stress affects your health
In today’s world it is impossible to not be stressed about at least 1 thing. Stress can sneak up on us in many different forms.
Work can cause stress, social media, people, etc. It is all around us, it’s impossible to escape, but not impossible to relieve some of it.
I go into ways to relieve stress in another post, for now I am going to talk about how stress affects our health.
Stress can cause us to feel anxious
Stress can lead to even bigger problems such as: anxiety attacks, low energy, depression. Those then spiral into even worse problems and have negative effects of their own.
Can disrupt and cause harmful eating patterns
Stress can cause us to experience a variety of emotions, and what do we do when we’re emotional? We eat! It’s comforting, it gives us a huge serotonin boost, so we ignore our hunger cues and we eat over our fullness, most of the time it tends to be unhealthy comfort foods.
On the contrary, there are some people that cannot eat when they are stressed. Unfortunately I fall victim to this, when I am overworked, overloaded, and over stressed, I forget to eat. The stressor has taken over my life and that is my only priority for the present moment. Undereating, or not eating at all has immensely negative effects on our body.
Stress affects our cortisol levels
Stress causes our body to enter the “fight or flight” mode, cortisol is released when our heart rate goes up and our blood pressure rises.
Too much cortisol releases stored blood sugar which inturn can lead to excess weight gain.
You may experience more physical symptoms: trouble sleeping/too much sleep, headaches, difficulty breathing, panic attacks…
The best thing we can do for ourselves is learn how to react, our response and recovery are what will help us grow.
Secret #4: The 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule has become quite popular in the hatch and fitness world. You may have heard of it or seen it around on a lot of social media platforms. The 80/20 rule is simply a balance of what we should be eating.
80% of the time we should be eating healthy, nutritious, well-planned meals.
20% of the time is when we can treat or spoil ourselves to more unhealthier foods.
The 80/20 rule is a good way to ensure that you are sticking to a routine diet of whole foods, this can be different for everyone based on allergies, diseases, and personal diet preferences(vegetarian, vegan, etc.) but we make sure that at every meal we are getting all of the macro and micro nutrients we need to properfly fuel our body.
The 80% is also most often homemade food. Making our own sandwiches, pasta, smoothies, etc. This ensures that we know the exact measurements and ingredients going into our bodies, a lot of store bought pre-made food contains preservatives and chemicals to induce a longer shelf-life. These preservatives can have many negative effects on our body in the long run, which is why buying whole food ingredients and making our own meals is how we can feel better about what we are eating.
For the 20%, again, that is going to be different for everyone. The 20% means that here and there, a couple times a week or maybe a month, you allow yourself to indulge in your favorite restaurant, get that burger with fries and extra onions, have a large milkshake, eat some oreos, you get where I’m going with this. Everyone’s 20% is unique to them. Personally for me, I don’t like oreos, but I love a good pizza, so I allow myself once in a while to get a pizza from Pizza hut or a restaurant that I like. And since I do not consume these types of foods all the time, having that balance is not going to affect my weight or how I feel.
Having a good balance and not eating the same thing in the same amounts all the time can also help boost your metabolism.
Secret #5 Having access to healthy food:
How your environment can affect how you eat
Where we live, who we live with, what is available and how easy we can access certain foods will determine and affect what we eat and a big part of our relationship with food.
For example: someone who lives in a busy city who may not have time to cook a lot of homemade food may eat a lot of pre-made frozen meals. Someone who grew up in a place where there is a lot of agriculture will have easier access to fresh Whole Foods, therefore there diet will consist more of them since they are easy and affordable to access.
There is a psychological study that says if there is food near us we will eventually eat it. This mainly relates to people who live with their family or who live with people who may not have a similar diet to them. For example, personally for me, I don’t consume a lot of sugar, but when I lived with my parents, if my mom made homemade cookies, brownies etc. I eventually ate at least one or more. Even though I may not eat sugar, the food was within my reach and I would pass it everyday. It was appealing and easily accessible.
Being able to purchase healthy and quality groceries is very beneficial to our relationship with food. We want to be able to find a quality and affordable grocery store that sells Whole Foods and good sources of macro and micronutrients. However, I understand that some people may not have the capabilities to go to a grocery store, they may not live near one, or they may not be able to travel to one. Some may not even have a grocery store they can go to or feel they don’t like what the grocery store offers.
Click here to get started with Thrive Market!
Once I learned these secrets to a healthier life, I was able to lose 30lbs, heal my gut, and restore my health to its fullest potential. I began to listen to my hunger cues and stopped depriving myself of food and beginning, I don’t struggle with constant bloating, I don’t try to earn my food, I enjoy my food guilt-free and I am able to treat myself without the lingering fear, knowing that I am worthy of delicious food and beautiful, fun memories. With these secrets, losing weight was easier than I thought it would be and I feel better than ever!
I want this for you too! If you are ready to ditch the diet drama, learn your hunger cues, work with your mind and body and stop fighting it, honor your cravings, create a balance, and live at a healthy weight that you can feel good about, I want you to get started now. Thrive market is an online store where you can buy food, bath, beauty, baby and home goods. Their mission is “to make healthy living easy and affordable for everyone.” When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was very busy, I lived in an apartment in the city and I was not near any grocery stores, there were also not a lot of places that I could afford to purchase healthy food. I began shopping with Thrive Market and it absolutely changed my life, this was a huge part of my health journey and I want the same for you!
You can lick the links I have provided here for you to get started, you will get 30% off your first order and you can now claim a free gift of $60 of FREE groceries!
Click here to get started with Thrive Market
