Small Steps Equal Big Results

When you’ve decided that now is the time to lose weight and follow a healthy eating plan – such as the Lose Baby Weight plan, it can be very tempting to throw yourself head-first into a new lifestyle – to overhaul every aspect of your life.
But the problem with trying to overhaul your entire life is that it is very, very difficult. For some people, a complete overhaul works. But for most people, trying to overhaul your life becomes so difficult that it is almost impossible to stick to and then it becomes easy to fall off the healthy eating and weight loss wagon.
The changes can be too drastic – in fact, so drastic that it makes it very difficult to stick to every single aspect of your new regime.
Completely overhauling your diet and exercise regime can be tough, and often, if you find yourself slipping or if you have a bad day, it can be incredibly easy to slip back into your old unhealthy ways – ordering a takeaway and skipping exercise.
And once you’ve done this for a couple of days in a row, before you know it, you’re back to your old unhealthy ways.
For most people trying to lose pregnancy weight, taking small steps for weight loss – rather than giant leaps – will ensure a slow and steady weight loss. The smaller the steps, the more time you have to get used to each new aspect of your life, and the more each new aspect starts to feel like an old habit, rather than a new and annoying thing that you have to deal with until you reach your goal weight.
For example, making food switches is an excellent place to start, as you can eat the same foods, but make them with different ingredients. Switch cream for natural 0% fat yoghurt, white bread for brown bread, potato chips for vegetable chips etc., and you’ll eventually be eating much healthier than before but without it feeling like a huge and uncomfortable change.
Once you’re used to eating a little better, you can then move onto looking at your calorie intake. Work out your BMI by using our online calculator – information such as your age, sex, weight and height are taken into account. Once you know your BMI, you’ll know how much weight you need to lose to fall into the healthy category – between 18.5 and 25.
You can also work out your BMR on our calculator too, which is your basal metabolic rate. Knowing this means you can work out how many calories you need to take in to maintain your current weight, which will help you work out how many calories you need to take in to lose weight. Generally, guidelines state that you need a deficit of between 3,500 and 7,000 calories per week to lose between 500g of fat per week. You can either create this deficit by eating less, or by exercising more.
When you’re used to your new healthy eating habits, introduce exercise into the mix. Walk for 10 minutes here and there when you have the time, then increase that to 30-60 minutes 5 days a week. Try adding a gym class to your regime – or add something that you enjoy into your regime, such as dancing or swimming or even something adrenaline-fuelled like rock climbing. Find an exercise that you enjoy and that you love and you will keep doing it for years to come – and it will help to keep you slim in the future.
To continue losing weight, and to keep it off well into the future, it’s essential that every aspect of your weight loss regime starts to feel like second nature. And for it to feel like second nature, you need to take small steps – it’s the easiest way to change your life without feeling overwhelmed.
It’s important that you don’t view your weight loss plan as a hard core diet – you will inevitably come off the diet. However, if you just change your eating habits, it becomes something that you can keep to for life, which will help to keep the weight off. The same goes for your exercise regime – change it up and do something that you love, and you’ll want to keep doing it.
If you are ready to lose weight then the Lose Baby Weight plans offer a healthy and safe exercise and diet routine.

And don’t forget to check out our current promotions and discounts page to see what specials we have on this week on our Healthy Mummy product range