TWO MAJOR WEIGHT LOSS MISTAKES YOU SHOULD AVOID!

As all of you know, I am on my umpteenth weight loss journey and I decided when creating this blog in January that it shall also be a place where I can have some accountability.

To ensure I stick to the plan and all that.

Five months have passed by and I am ready to share with you, my weight loss update which is…

NOTHING! THERE IS NO WEIGHTLOSS! My first five months into this weight loss journey were an absolute disaster! A DISASTER! 

Which is why today’s blog post is TWO MAJOR WEIGHT LOSS MISTAKES YOU SHOULD AVOID! 

Based on my own real-life experiences!

Let’s start.

The first major weight loss mistake that I did on this weight loss journey is…

1. NOT HAVING A PLAN

Not having a plan is akin to you planning for your failure. Not having a plan is you kissing success GOODBYE! 

I honestly thought I could just wing it and everything would fall into place because I mean this wasn’t my first rodeo or better still I would suddenly get amazing willpower. 

The many… MANY mistakes I did under the not having a plan umbrella was 

• Not meal prepping

I get it not everyone can afford to meal prep and not everybody likes to eat meal-prepped food. I am unfortunately one of those people. 

BUT, you have to meal prep to a point. This is so you can be in that sweet spot of just eating enough calories for the day. 

You don’t want to be under-eating one day then be crazy hungry the next day and over-eat. 

What we want to achieve are consistency and sustainability. 

Not to mention when you meal prep you also save money and stress because you have planned out what you want to eat or where you want to eat. 

A few things you can do in the meal prepping department are by starting small and that is by meal-prepping your breakfast. 

A go-to meal-prepped breakfast I did back in the day was…  OVERNIGHT OATS!  

By having one meal of the day prepped you have one less thing to worry about which lessens the burden of keeping within your caloric intake of the day. 

Remember we want to START SMALL so we can eventually graduate to having all our meals prepped. 

We do not want to do anything too crazy. Anything too crazy will always lead to disaster, trust me I am speaking from experience. 

Another mistake I made in the not having a plan was

• Not planning my workout

I truly was delusional enough to think I still had the discipline I once had, if I did I wouldn’t have gained 30kgs in 2 years now, would I. 

You need to plan your workouts as realistically as possible and SET THAT SHIT IN STONE! 

I mean you will work out come hell or high water! 

ONLY DEATH SHALL COME IN THE WAY OF YOUR WORKOUT! (Jokes…  jokes… or is it????) 

The reason why I couldn’t commit to my workout was that I wanted to do too much at once without taking into account my current responsibilities. 

To me, if I didn’t work out for at least 1 hour it just wasn’t worth the time but that’s the wrong mindset to have especially since I was already working two jobs whilst hustling on my blog. 

And not surprisingly I couldn’t make myself consistent and started to prioritize other things over my workouts. 

Hence, the lesson learned here was to not only plan your workouts but also be really realistic with them. 

Working out for 5-10 minutes a day CONSISTENTLY is better than hours upon hours of sweating it out in the gym but only being able to do it once a week and then bail on it. 

Again, I reiterate, that we want CONSISTENCY and SUSTAINABILITY. 

• Not planning for my emotional needs

I will be the first to admit I have a food addiction and that I over-rely on food for my emotional needs because it’s fast and easy. 

Knowing this, I still didn’t plan on a backup plan if something upset me or I was stressed or worse, I was PMS-ing.

Hell hath no fury like PMS cravings.

This was detrimental to my weight loss journey because when something went wrong I literally had no safety net. 

And the first place I ran to get comfort was food and when you’re supposedly on a weight loss journey and your first line of comfort, is fast food… that is a bad combination sis!

The second major mistake I made in this weight loss journey is 

2. Not being realistic

When I say realistic, I mean REALISTIC. You have to take into account the you as you are today making all these plans. 

Please DO NOT BE DELUSIONAL LIKE ME! DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME BEING DELUSIONAL! 

I was completely delusional! 

I genuinely thought that JUST BECAUSE I set out to lose weight I would miraculously change all these bad habits I had overnight. Just magically turn over a new leaf OVERNIGHT! 

I broke down the list into 4 corners which you have to be absolutely realistic about. 

When you are realistic about your weaknesses and strengths and your own capabilities, setting out to achieve a goal will be a breeze. 

Here are the 4 aspects.

• Finances

Can you afford a gym membership? Can you afford groceries focusing more on non-fast food options? 

If you can for both aspects that’s great but the question arises when you can’t. What will you do then? 

I made the mistake of thinking I could afford a gym when I knew I was already stretching my money very very thin and by doing so it just added more stress to me. 

As I had to work even more to be able to be on top of my bills. 

This lead me to be not only exhausted but stressed out of my mind which then lead me to comfort eating and then it became a really bad loop of feeling like shit but too exhausted to work out but comfort eating to make myself feel better momentarily.

It is imperative that you understand your finances so you can again PLAN for success.

What I mean by that is, exercise-wise you can walk at the park after work or follow workout videos on Youtube to keep yourself within your financial budget.

Food-wise on the other hand you can swap a few of your daily junk food with whole foods that are affordable and more filling such as bananas or tofu or tempeh.

You don’t have to spring clean your whole fridge, just a few items is a good start.

I cannot emphasize enough that we want SUSTAINABILITY and CONSISTENCY.

• Time

This is very important for us working folks. When can you dedicate the time to exercise and prepare meals. 

You must also take into account spending time with family and friends, and how tired you are from work. Transportation time and all that. 

To be quite honest, I thought I could handle a packed schedule and I almost could. At least until I was burnt out and fell sick. 

Now with a busted toe and an infected ear (it’s a long story), I really don’t want you to suffer the way I did. 

Be kind to yourself. 

As I said earlier, exercising 5-10 mins a day but with consistency whether the workouts are hard or easy is far better than going absolute ham for hours for just one day only for you to relapse to inactivity for the next month. 

• Fitness level

This one hurt me. It hurt to realize I was not as fit as I once was. 

I can’t even do the BJJ warmups without feeling like dying when previously I could do 3 fitness classes back to back. THREE! Each class was an hour and a half!

Hence, it’s very important to realize and fully acknowledge what or where your fitness level is at so the proper exercise routines and food planning can be enacted. 

So, you won’t feel the devastation I felt when I legit almost passed out during BJJ class.

And there it is folks. The mistakes I did in my current weight loss journey. 

• Not having a plan
• Not being realistic

These mistakes seem simple and arbitrary but trust me when you don’t have these two things on a solid foundation, your fitness/weight loss journey will be a long and tough road ahead. 

I hope you stay tuned for my next blog post to read about how I will fix these issues! 

Disclaimer: I am not a fitness professional and neither am I a trained dietitian or nutritionist. All advice provided within this post or my blog is STRICTLY from personal experience only. Before starting on any diet, fitness/weight loss journey, taking any supplements, and more PLEASE CONSULT WITH A PROFESSIONAL.

If you enjoyed this post you can read my posts on book reviews (fitness posts are pending to be written LOL)

• Book Review: The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
• 4 Books I Read With Juicy Plot Twists
• How to use Pustaka Book Bear services