In true Basically A Mess fashion, I shot these photos last summer and never posted them.
We took these photos when I was at my heaviest quarantine weight. It was a number on the scale I had never hit before. I was eating so poorly, barely getting any sleep, I constantly felt bloated and uncomfortable in my body. It just wasn’t good. And honestly, you may not even be able to tell from these photos. I’ve been blogging since 2014 so I’ve learned my angles over the years. Plus for every 10 photos you see on the blog, there are 100s of double chin moments that didn’t make the cut.
I started my weight loss journey last August and there have been a ton of ups and downs. I still have 30lbs to go to reach my goal weight, but I’ve learned so much through this journey and I’ve developed much healthier habits so I wanted to share a few weight loss tips that have helped me.
Weight Loss Tips I Learned From Noom
No Bad Foods
I joined Noom at the beginning of my weight loss journey because I genuinely did not know where to start or what to do. One thing I really liked about the program was how they tried to help you change your mentality around weight loss and healthy eating. The most helpful weight loss tip I learned is that there are no such thing as “bad foods.” When we categorize a food as being bad and off limits, it actually makes us want it more. If we categorize a cookie as being bad, we are going to want to eat that cookie because it’s seen as an off limit treat or we may feel bad if we eat that cookie since it’s a “bad food” and end up overeating.
Everything in Moderation
So since there are no “bad foods,” you can eat everything… in moderation. A helpful weight loss tip I learned from Noom is to meal-prep and that way you can build that cookie into your calorie count for the day. And honestly, at the end of the day, if you want that cookie, eat that cookie because it’s better for you to address that craving and eat that one cookie in moderation than to limit yourself and eat the whole container two days from now. I even lost weight on days where I would eat a Krispy Kreme donut because I built it into my daily calorie intake and I worked on getting my steps in. Changing my mindset on “bad foods” and what I can and can not eat really helped. When I stopped limiting myself, I was able to make healthier choices and stick with them.
Treat Yo Self
One thing that Noom really encouraged was treating yourself, rewarding yourself and basically celebrating the small wins. But, learning how to treat yourself outside of food since we tend to rely on food when we are happy, sad, stressed, etc. The app actually had us write down different ways we could treat ourselves so we could reference back to it anytime we celebrated a small win like hitting our step goal for the week or losing 5lbs towards our goal. A few ways I like to treat myself is through retail therapy. It doesn’t have to be big, but just something small as a reward for myself or giving myself extra me time to read or watch my K-dramas.
Get On The Scale
One of the key foundations of the program and an incredibly helpful weight loss tip is weighing yourself daily. Ah! I know. Awful. But, I found this helpful for three reasons. The first being, getting on the scale helps you get over your fear of the scale. The second reason is so that you can see and get used to the daily ups and downs. When I weighed myself everyday, I was able to see what made the biggest difference in my routine. So if the scale went up one day, it helped me realize that I didn’t gain a pound, I just maybe didn’t hit my water goal or my step goal or maybe had too much sodium. And the third reason is that it held me accountable. If I fell off the wagon and over indulged one day and neglected my water, the scale would reflect that and it would encourage me to stay focused to get back on track. A lot of times, we over indulge because we think “I already messed up, I’ll start again on Monday,” but actually seeing the outcome of my choices was a motivation for me.
Small Goals. Big Picture
Starting a weight loss journey is hard. When you start, you’re fully motivated and ready to work out 5x a week and eat all the lettuce available. But, as time goes on, you make excuses not to go to the gym and you don’t want to eat anything green. So I appreciated that Noom started you off with small goals. It’s been proved that 10,000 steps a day help with weight loss, but they know you’re not going to get that right away so the program starts you off with 2,000 steps. If you hit that goal, they increase it by 500 and if you don’t they decrease it by 500. I loved this approach because it gave me something to work towards everyday and if I ever fell off the wagon and had to start again, it gave me a starting point. And to go hand in hand with that, the first thing you do when you start Noom is set a big picture, basically your reason for wanting to lose weight or get healthy. They actually had you enter it into the app so they could always remind you of your big picture. Basically, every time you hit a small goal, it’s a step towards your big picture.
