5 Unique Lessons I’ve Learned On My Weight Loss Journey As A Christian Woman!
Last Updated on 10/25/2024 by Nicky
5 Unique Lessons I’ve Learned On My Weight Loss Journey As A Christian Woman!
Starting your weight loss journey as a beginner can be so overwhelming. You want to reach your weight loss goals but you don’t know where to start.
I know exactly what you mean.
I’ve lost over 60 poundsn (and unfortunately gained some back :() but I still have a lot more to lose and it can get so frustrating especially when you reach a plateau.
It’s like you take one step forward and then take about 50 steps back.
So today I’m going to give you some advice on where to start in your weight loss journey.
I will warn you though that this won’t be the typical eat healthily and exercise kind of advice.
There are some things that you need to do before you start with the healthy eating and exercise part of weight loss.
I believe once you jump over these hurdles, the nutrition and exercise part won’t really be all that difficult.
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1. Yes, You Really Need To Know Why You’re Trying To Lose Weight
I can’t lie, I really hate it when I see this kind of advice. It just seems so played out and so cliche. It’s like “Yeah yeah yeah, know your why, got it”.
But hear me out guys because it really does matter.
Let me tell you why. When you don’t know why you’re doing something more than likely you will stop.
For example, I used to drink acv (apple cider vinegar) before every meal because it not only helped me with my PMS issues but it helps with weight loss.
But I kind of forgot why I was doing it and it started to become a chore and it doesn’t taste good so eventually, I stopped because I focused more on the drawbacks and not the benefits.
I forgot the benefits of the action and I stopped doing the action. The same thing goes for drinking more water.
You need to know why drinking water benefits you, otherwise you may stop doing it.
Educate yourself on why these healthy habits matter and you’re likely to keep doing them.
2. Also, You Need To Know Why You’re Trying To Lose Weight.
Ok, you may be like ” Is this chick crazy? She just said that? “
But I mean something different.
You need to have a deeper reason why you are trying to lose weight.
It might just be because of your health but it also might be because you want to treat your body like a holy temple which is one of my personal “whys”.
I often think “God has blessed me with a body that can move so how dare I not exercise”.
Or how dare I not put healthy foods in my body to nourish? Sometimes I have to speak a little harshly to myself because I’m a bit hard-headed but hey, it works!
These mental nudges remind me of how God has blessed me and I shouldn’t take my health for granted.
And what’s touched me on an even deeper level is the recent death of one of my dear friends from cancer and another friend being diagnosed with ALS.
It hurts my heart when I think about all that they have or are going through physically.
My friend with cancer wasn’t able to eat solid foods near the end of her life. And my other friend can no longer walk.
So as long as God blesses me with the ability to move and eat healthy foods that nourish my body, I’m going to do that with gratitude because I know everyone can’t do these things.
Another reason you want to lose weight might be so you can be around to watch your kids or grandkids grow up. It may be to prevent a disease that runs in your family.
Like diabetes runs in my family so I started losing weight when I became pre-diabetic. I didn’t want to become full-blown diabetic so I got really motivated to start losing weight so that didn’t happen.
Luckily I was able to reverse my prediabetes and get off of Metformin, praise God!
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3. Start With The Healthy Foods You Like
At Healthy As You Can, we are all about making changes that you can sustain for the rest of your life.
It’s not about crash diets and junk like that.
You’re just going to gain all that weight back so those diets are utterly pointless.
What you need to do is make a list of all the healthy foods you like and then start making meal plans based on those healthy foods.
Now I know I’m making this sound easy but I know it’s not. It’s simple but hard to make those lasting changes.
I have a hard time sticking with my meal plans for some reason but when I do, I see results.
4. Have The Right Mindset
You might read 100 articles on Pinterest about weight loss but so many of them will just talk about nutrition or exercise but it’s deeper than that.
It’s about your mindset.
I don’t know how many times I had declared to myself that this time would be different.
I was going to lose 100 pounds in a year.
But they were empty promises that I never kept.
My mind was not ready for that kind of commitment.
Funnily enough, I lose the most weight when I don’t make grandiose statements but just when I start making a change here and there and before I know it I’ve lost 20 pounds.
What I did was commit to small changes and once I make those small changes in my health routine, I rarely go back to how I was before.
5. Have The Right Mindset
Ok ok, I know I sound like a broken record. But this is a different kind of mindset. See, this mindset is not about determination or willpower.
It’s about dealing with your demons.
It’s about dealing with the issues that cause you to overeat. ( As an aside, one of the best ways to deal with your demons and weight loss struggles is by journaling which I talk here).
Again this is another “tip” that you probably won’t see in a thousand articles on Pinterest because it’s not fun to talk about.
But here’s the thing.
We don’t overeat just because we like eating.
We don’t gorge ourselves just cuz the food tastes so good.
There is usually an underlying emotional issue that causes it.
Until that is dealt with, weight loss will be very difficult.
Or what might happen is that you trade one addiction for another.
For instance, you lose weight but then you start drinking or partying too hard (because you’re so cute now and guys are paying more attention to you… I’ve seen this happen personally).
So try to get to the root cause of why you are overeating.
It may have been something traumatic in your childhood or a divorce or death in your family.
Pray about it to see what it is that is making you an emotional eater.
I talk about this more in my book Steadfast, which you can get on Amazon.
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![Steadfast: A Weight Loss Guide to Banish Yo-Yo Dieting in 5 Steps by [Angela Johnson]](data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIHZpZXdCb3g9IjAgMCAxIDEiIHdpZHRoPSIxIiBoZWlnaHQ9IjEiIGRhdGEtdT0iaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZtLm1lZGlhLWFtYXpvbi5jb20lMkZpbWFnZXMlMkZJJTJGNTF1V0h4dmZ4a0wuanBnIiBkYXRhLXc9IjEiIGRhdGEtaD0iMSIgZGF0YS1iaXA9IiI+PC9zdmc+)
Conclusion On Starting Your Weight Loss Journey
I know some of these points may have seemed redundant at first but I’m hoping you can see the difference in what I was trying to say.
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If you have any questions at all please don’t hesitate to ask either in the comments.
I hope that you have been blessed by this post. I’ll talk to you later.
