My main struggle is stress/emotional eating, as it turned out our usual standard education doesn't cover these at all, so when you get to be adult, you have to parent yourself and self-educate in psychology for this one.
ChatGPT is quite good in helping discover new topics for learning, so I asked what are the common struggles with weight loss? I will go through the list and give my 2 cents on them.
Adherence to a healthy diet
I have to admit I have not yet reached the state of eating healthy for a week. My previous 35 years of unhealthy eating has it's mark and it takes time to readjust.
For example by default I hated all vegetables that you see in a healthy meal picture: broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, I can't even name more, because I not even know them.
I have read that however we dislike a food, it is possible to readjust our taste. Handle yourself as a toddler or a 6 years old, you need to feed yourself these vegetables multiple times, probably with multiple ways of preparing it (best if it is unrecognizable 😅), try 10-20 times, eventually you will should experience a change, because you know it's healthy, you also adjust your mind about it, not just getting used to the taste.
So while these vegetables are still not the first on my "pick a vegetable" list, I can accept them and with some I found receipts that were good, like cauliflower-based pizza. 😁
I have also tried the green juice diet once with a slow juicer for a few weeks, that can also help with the adjustment, if you find the green vegetables too harsh, you can add fruits to it, which is of course hardly in that diet, but it can take the edge of and it's still a better middleway then just giving up right away.
Emotional eating
By definition "using food as a coping mechanism for stress, sadness, boredom, or other emotions".
I don't know the roots of my issue here, but that's it, eating when happy, eating when sad, eating when bored, eating for every reason, sometimes even for hunger... rarely.
For me stress is the biggest trigger. I read about being mindful about it, but even knowing the reason, telling myself that "you only want to eat because X happened", I still went to the fridge, open, eat... as per recommendation that's when you should snap the rubber band on your wrist, I still haven't tried.
Currently I'm keeping myself on track with my goals of becoming healthy and becoming an example for others that this could be done, I want to help others achieve the same, therefore I must not fail my own transformation, right?! 🙂
Lack of motivation
Staying motivated through the weight loss journey.
I know it's hard, I tried to find a partner for each of my dieting, in my young age it was my mother, in my ~60kg weight loss it was my brother, he also achieved and even went further than I did, then I tried other family members later.
The main goal here is to visualize what you want to become, you can search for body types or people who look like what you would like to look, you can even print these images and put them on your wall, so you see them daily to remind yourself of your goal.
If you can't find anyone around you doing also some weight loss to keep each other accountable, drop me a message on linkedin, email me at [email protected] or book a free appointment, I'm not charging anything currently as I'm looking for the first 10 people who I can work with and get more experience.
To be continued...
What's your main struggle when trying to lose weight? - Part 1/3