Are you looking to lose 50 pounds or more? I have 4 really great tips that are targeted specifically for you. 

First though, I’m curious if any of the following things sound familiar to you? 

1- you skip breakfast in order to save calories for later

2- you eat tiny meals every few hours to keep your metabolism “revved”

3- you run on the treadmill until you’ve burned a certain number of calories

4- you put “food rules” on yourself to keep you from snacking

5- you tried popular weight loss drugs, which worked at first…until they didn’t anymore

6- you started a new diet plan which was great at the beginning – but then life got busy and it fizzled out

7- tried intermittent fasting, beachbody, optavia, or weight watchers

If any of these hold true to you (especially if several of them do) then you are currently stuck in a diet mentality and it’s the first thing we need to kick to the curb to help with your 50+ pound weight loss goal. 

This diet mentality that a lot of us women find ourselves stuck in (oftentimes without even knowing it) is a huge issue. Why??

*Because it biologically sets us up for failure. It sets you up to overeat. It sets you up to SUCK at consistency. It makes you think that if you just had better willpower, you could finally lose the weight.

The other thing is that if you’ve been doing one or more of these things, then you’ve also conditioned your body to hold on to weight. It doesn’t feel safe. Weight loss is not going to happen successfully long term until you shift out of this diet mindset.

To set you up for the most success, I need to put everything you think you know about nutrition, exercise, wellness…and just set it aside somewhere else. I want you to listen to these 4 tips with a fresh and open mind. Deep breath. Here we go:

#1. Learn how your body works

So the first thing you HAVE to do to be able to lose 50+ pounds for the long term, is to truly know how your body works. How your metabolism actually works.

Let me walk you through a common scenario: let’s say you are not eating enough or eating lower calorie in general. This could be because you are trying to eat in a calorie deficit, you are intermittent fasting, or you simply just don’t really know how much your body needs to thrive. 

Whatever the reason, if you are not eating enough, your blood sugar is going to get too low. Eventually, your body has systems in place to tell your brain that you need more sugar. 

AKA: cravings and increased hunger hormones enter the chat. It’s a battle between your brain and your body. Your brain wants you to keep eating how you’ve been eating (especially if you’re trying to lose weight) but your body is demanding that you bring your blood sugar back up. 

In this battle – your body (or your physiology) is always going to win….so then you think your willpower sucks and you think you can’t lose weight because of this.

**stick with me here because this is the kicker: if you really knew how your metabolism worked and that you need to help your body maintain stable blood sugar levels, you wouldn’t be battling yourself so much and find yourself struggling like this.

This is what I mean when I say that you absolutely need to know how your body works. Stop fighting your biology when you could just work with it instead of against.

If you know how to balance your blood sugar and fuel your body right, your cravings will virtually disappear. 

So how do you begin to do this? Join us at myDietitian or read Megan’s book. These are the back-to-basics information nobody taught us growing up and it’s the foundations you need for the journey ahead. 

#2: Eat PHFF at every meal

What is PHFF? Protein, healthy fat, and fiber. 

Eating all 3 of these food groups at every single meal is essential for your weight loss goal. 

The benefits of eating PHFF:

• Protein, healthy fat, and fiber all work together to decrease your hunger hormones, which means you stay fuller wayyyy longer and experience much fewer cravings
• PHFF works together to balance your blood sugar. Having steady blood sugar levels is amazing at helping your body burn fat more efficiently. 

Here is a quick and dirty guide to the major protein, healthy fat, and fiber sources:

What’s great about PHFF is that it is extremely flexible! You can eat PHFF at any meal just by making sure you have a solid source of (you guessed it), protein, healthy fat, and fiber on your plate. 

Here are a few simple PHFF meal ideas!

Rotisserie chicken, baked potato, green beans, butter

Cottage cheese, tomato, avocado, sea salt

Turkey burgers, avocado, sweet potato fries

Greek Yogurt, berries, almond butter

Kevin’s Natural Foods Garlic Chicken, rice, broccoli

PHFF is underrated for weight loss – especially with the current hype for the weight loss medications like Ozempic and Wegovy. Think of PHFF as a natural way to regulate your appetite and manage your blood sugars without relying on a medication. 

You can learn more about the power of PHFF with these previous posts as well:

• Cutting calories doesn’t work
• Healthy eating is stupid easy

#3: Simplify your meals

Meal prepping and planning is often one the most overwhelming parts of weight loss. That being said – it doesn’t have to be! Here are some ways to simplify your meals when trying to lose weight:

• meal prep twice a week instead trying to do everything one day on the weekend
• Meal delivery services 
• Easy protein sources: rotisserie chicken, frozen burgers, frozen shrimp/seafood, chicken sausages, yogurt, cottage cheese, deli meat, pre-made hard boiled eggs, tuna pouches
• Pre chopped fruits and veggies
• Doubling your recipes when you do cook
• Frozen fruits + veggies
• Steamable bags of veggies

The more you can uncomplicate this part of your life, the more consistent you will be able to be, even when life gets crazy!

#4: Strength train

I know you know that exercising is important, but I want you to shift your mindset away from doing it to just burning calories to doing it to increase muscle mass instead. 

Increasing your muscle mass is really the secret sauce to fat burn and if you have the goal of losing more than 50 pounds, you NEED to focus on this instead of just decreasing your calories. 

Eating less calories will work at first (it always does) but your body is extremely smart and it adapts. It learns that this is the new normal and your metabolic rate sort of dies down to match the lower amount of energy you’re feeding it. 

Instead of doing this and running into a weight loss plateau, I want you to focus on building your muscle! And that also means eating enough to be able to build new muscle. The more muscle we have on our body, the higher our metabolic rate is able to be. This means that you will be able to continue to efficiently burn fat, be able to eat more food, and prevent your metabolism from slowing down.

Cardio has a time and a place, but if you’re solely focusing on it for the calorie burn and not doing anything for strength training, you’re not doing yourself any favors to increase your metabolic rate for weight loss. Cardio is great at burning calories JUST doing the workout, but pretty much no other time. Strength training on the other hand directly increases your metabolic rate all day long! This means you burn calories while doing nothing and just watching Netflix. This is a much better strategy long term for your goals. 

A side note about strength training: this doesn’t mean just picking up some light dumbbells here and there. This means using a weight that truly challenges your muscles and is heavy enough so that you reach the point of failure at a maximum of 15 reps. Lift heavy! Encourage your body to build more muscle and get stronger. 

If you’re still with me, you’re amazing. I can tell you want this and you want to do it the right way. You’re sick of doing this with only temporary success or not being able to see any success at all. These 4 recommendations will definitely help you hit the ground running and avoid some very common pitfalls. 

You got this!

Coach Elle