How I lost weight eating real food - more than ever! Find out the five easy lifestyle changes to lose weight that you can do, too.
Thank you for all your wonderful comments and feedback to my weighty issue! When I decided to do a series here on AOC about weight loss and real food, it was because of this - if I can help even one person get healthy and feel better by my story and tips, it's beyond worth sharing my struggles. As hard as those are sometimes to tell.
This series will consist of the real, doable steps I took that you can, too, to get to your healthy weight eating delicious whole foods. But first, the pants.
Before I go any further, I want to share about the pants I used for the "big pants" in the series banner. These are a sporty pair of pants from the Gap that I've had for a number of years. After my daughter saw these pictures she said, "Yeah, but those were loose on you before, weren't they?"
Um, no. When I bought these pants they were on the edge of my size, if you know what I mean. I should've bought a large, but was so happy to fit into a medium (hello, GAP, this is a medium?), that I bought them, even though they were snug.
Which became tight after washing. So I hung them to dry (classic technique to help your tight clothes fit looser), and then would have to do some deep knee bends after putting them on to stretch them a bit further. But I was always uncomfortable in them, because I knew they were tight.
We took a number of pictures to try and illustrate how baggy these pants are on me now, but it just doesn't show up very well. Take my word for it - there's a lot of fabric there. And realizing how big these pants are now confirmed to me that this time I've reached a new milestone - this is real weight loss, that works in real life, with real food.
Oh yeah, these fit much better. Except that pose is so.not.me. Brian just thinks "after" poses should look like this, ha!
This is more me. It shows off my "pear" shape more, but it is what it is. I think it also shows that I'm normal - nowhere near the realm of too skinny. Just right for me and where my body wants to be - when it's being fed real food.
Sure wish I had known that years ago!
How I Lost Weight Eating Real Food
Here are 5 lifestyle-changing things I did - and continue to do - to help me be at my best weight ever:
- Cut portions in half. Everything, even fruits and vegetables, in order to get out of that "all-you-can-eat" mentality. I will do another post with more detail and showing what these portions look like (which you can now read here), but suffice it to say that my portion sizes had crept up over the years and needed to be cut back. It just seemed the most simple for me to tell myself to halve everything. I'd already tried diets where you write things down, weigh, and measure your food. These things haven't been sustainable for me. But eating half a hamburger or only one slice of pizza? Easy. And it's still easy two years later. But I'm not going to lie - eating smaller portions is a lifestyle change that you have to be diligent about because TV, magazines, blogs, and restaurants constantly skew the portions to bigger amounts.
- Eat real, whole foods. I cook with butter, bacon, coconut oil and olive oil - a glance at AOC's recipe index will give you more of an idea how we eat. I've moved to more and more whole foods over the life of this blog, including whole milk and cream, cheeses, and eggs (of course, vegetables and fruits are part of this, too, but that's not the different part!) and I lost weight eating these foods. That didn't change. BUT- I was eating these foods a year ago when I was at a weight I wasn't comfortable with, so this alone won't help you lose weight. My point is, real food should be one part of a healthy, sustainable, weight loss plan. Weird, processed, fake, or nutritionally light "diet"foods should not.
- Limit carbs and focus on protein. Not Atkins, South Beach, or "paleo," but when a choice of food needs to be made, I go for a protein. Nuts have become my go-to snack instead of crackers or toast. Half an apple alone never satisfied me in the past, but one with a tablespoon of nut butter will. I don't care about the buns on hamburgers, so it's easy for me to use a lettuce leaf instead. We don't eat a lot of pasta, and when we do, I try to have more sauce than noodles. I make sure I eat the protein and vegetable in a meal first, so if I get full, it's the carb I'll leave. But when I do want the carb, I eat it (but just half!). I find that the protein and good fat fills and satisfies me, so I don't need to overload on carbs.
- Cut down on sweets. Well...duh. This one is typical, I guess. Except that I didn't cut sugar out altogether. We still end our meals with a piece of dark chocolate. Some nights we have a few chocolate chips (about 1/8 cup measured out) when we're watching TV and once a week we have ice cream (often homemade with real cream- and no machine). I've never gone to someone's house and refused dessert saying, "sorry, I'm dieting." I have a very small portion and then I'm satisfied. See what I mean about real life, real food, and really sustainable?
- Use easy "rules" and tricks. I've developed some habits that work for me- things I either really thought about or that have developed over the last year and work well towards losing weight and keeping it off.
In fact, I believe that adopting these techniques (or similar ones that work for you) are so important to making healthy lifestyle changes that are sustainable that I'm going into detail in the next installment of Losing Weight With Real, Whole Foods: Tips, Tricks, and Techniques to Help You Lose Weight.
In the meantime...thoughts? Do you agree with the five lifestyle changes that helped me lose weight with real food or disagree? What would you add to the list that has worked for you?
Read the other articles in the series on Losing Weight with Real, Whole Foods:
- A Weighty Issue - My history with weight and body image
- Tips, Tricks, and Techniques For Weight Loss
- More Tips, Tricks, and Techniques For Weight Loss
- Portion Control: Real Life, Real Food
- Is Exercise Necessary For Weight Loss?
- A Simple, Easy Workout {+ Printable}
