When you work to achieve consistent weight loss over 5 months, you may wonder what type of outcomes you will be able to expect. Is that enough time for you to reach your goal? Will you look like an entirely different person? How will you feel? Will you somehow come to like eating that much kale?
Consistent Changes for Weight Loss Over 5 Months
Remember that consistent weight loss over 5 months isn’t about making drastic moves that you won’t be able to maintain. This strategy means you will take on lifestyle habits in a gradual way. You will regularly and consistently tweak your routine and stick to the changes until they become habits. Once they’re habits, you’ll do them much more naturally. They’ll be a part of your day instead of something that requires a lot of your energy and focus.
The key to getting the most out of weight loss over 5 months is to avoid any drastic, sweeping changes all at once. Altering your behaviors in a consistent but gentle way will help you to avoid becoming overwhelmed. This attitude will allow you to keep progress steadily moving while avoiding the pitfall of thinking short-term. When we make drastic moves, it’s for the purpose of faster results or a short term goal.
I’ll skip breakfast and lunch to lose more weight today. I’ll push myself way harder at the gym to burn more fat. These aren’t moves that will help you lose weight and keep it off over time. Those are efforts to try to reach a set goal as fast as possible. Moreover, they’re not efforts that work very well and certainly won’t provide you with a behavior that will stop any lost fat from coming right back just as quickly.
Choosing Your Strategy for Weight Loss over 5 Months
It’s up to you to decide how fast you can make changes for weight loss over 5 months. However, for many people, consistently adding a new beneficial step on a regular basis seems to work the most powerfully.
For example, on Monday morning, you may choose to swap your breakfast bagel with cream cheese for a boiled egg with fresh fruit and some Greek yogurt or cottage cheese. You might find that overnight oats made with nuts, seeds and fruit are more to your taste. Anything you can prepare the night before – or that you can prepare in batches for several breakfasts at once – can help you stay on track. Keep up that healthy breakfast strategy for a week.
Next Monday, it’s time to start working on taking a daily walk at least five times per week. The week after that, come up with a lunch strategy. After that, start tracking your dietary fat requirements and intake. The idea is to make it easy, nutritious, calorie conscious, and something you’ll want to keep up over time. Just because you’ve started your daily walks, it doesn’t mean that you can let those breakfasts slide. When you make the choice to build a new habit, it’s meant for the long haul. If you feel you’re not comfortable with the effort yet after a week, give yourself a bit more time to adjust before you make your next change. The key is your commitment to progress steadily as an ongoing purpose. It will help you make the changes more naturally, will make sure you don’t get bored of it, and will mean you’re steadily improving. Your results will only get better.
