Five Simple Rules for Weightloss

Let’s be honest with each other here… five years ago I was 250 pounds and had no idea how where I had gone wrong.  I’m sure that’s not a unique feeling. I also had no idea what to change.  The good news was I didn’t have to start changing much, I just had to start changing something.

Over the past five years I’ve lost weight and kept it off. I’ve fluctuated 5 or 10 pounds when I got lax and didn’t want to do what I knew I needed to keep doing. I think this happens to everyone.  That’s when you need to step back and develop some simple rules you can live by and that will help you get where you need to go.

2015 me on the left and 2011 me on the right.  I look a bit different one might say.

So here’s my 5 Simple Rules for Weightloss (or weight maintenance).

1. Every time you want pasta, have a vegetable.  That could mean having a snack of vegetables to pass a craving or substituting vegetables into your dish to replace pasta.  Either way you are getting more healthy fiber and minerals and nixing at least some of the low quality carbs that plague most peoples diets.
2. Never add sugar or salt to your meal. This may be controversial. If you baked bread or something, that’s different. Do not season or flavor anything with sugar. For starters, you are already getting enough in your normal food. In the case of sugar, you probably get too much already. So if you drink coffee, stop adding sugar to it. If you make eggs, do not salt them.  There are plenty of other spices and seasonings with more flavor and less unpleasant side effects to your health.
3. Make 7-8 hours of sleep a priority.  I know life is busy and sometimes we can get too caught up to pull ourselves away to get a decent amount of sleep every night.  The problem is I know you have time to sleep. I know you can prioritize your life and activities to fit in enough sleep, I’ve done it myself.  You have to make sacrifices and stop going to late movies or playing video games till 3 am. That’s the thing, you HAVE to. Don’t make it something you know you should do because you honestly HAVE to.  Not getting enough sleep actually heightens your stress hormones and makes you hold onto weight.
4. Always choose water.  At one point I didn’t much like the taste of water and guess what? I got over it.  Every time I go out to eat I don’t even look at the beverage list. I’m having water. It saves money and calories!  I may have a coffee if I really need it and that’s rare.  I carry water bottles with me everywhere so I do not get thirsty and go for vending machines.  The bottom shelf on the door of my fridge is reserved for water bottles so I always have one ready. Before I go to bed there is a bottle on my nightstand AND one on my bathroom sink.  The goal is to avoid getting thirsty and to always have water.
5. Cook 95% of your meals at home from real ingredients.  I’m not talking soup out of a can or hamburger helper.  5% is reserved for special occasions, dates, meetings, etc.  The rest of your meals should be made by you with ingredients you know are real.  Just cooking at home makes you more mindful of what you are eating.  If you are busy, hard boil a dozen eggs on the weekend and put them on salads on weeknights.  Have oatmeal when you are in a real rush.  When you are not rushed make my turkey fried brown rice meal I posted last year. It’s not as hard as we make it out to be.

The reality of these rules is that you simply have to make yourself do them.  It’s not hard to make meals at home and they do not have to be fancy at all. In fact the less fancy they are can make them way better.  It takes more work to drink soda (buying it, carrying it, disposing of the bottle, etc) than it does to drink water.  And water really isn’t disgusting. I cannot believe I used to hate the taste… who the hell doesn’t like the taste of water!? That’s literally what the rest of the animal world drinks all the time.  It’s more than a little weird that so many people don’t anymore.

These are the basic guidelines that helped me lose weight and keep it off. And trust me when I say these took some time to get down.  About five years to be exact.  It takes patience, devotion and some sacrifice.  I almost don’t miss Sonic’s cheddar peppers anymore… almost.