• Keep a record to manage your progress
• It’s a game of averages
• Don’t self-sabotage
• Stay positive
• Be consistent
Weight management is a chronic condition, it doesn’t matter if you are overweight, underweight, or right where you want to be. Keeping track of your weight can potentially help you quickly alert your attention to any underlying health concerns you may encounter down the road. Don’t fret over day-to-day fluctuations, weight management is a game of averages if you are consistent for a long enough period you will get results. Habits do not form overnight, it may take weeks or months to develop. [85] Start with small habits you can stick to and slowly build up, small wins will add up to big wins. That being said, we are human and we are bound to have days where we slide off the rails. This is where record-keeping becomes critical. Being able to track and manage your off days is the determining factor in whether you will sink or swim in this program. Cheat meals are going to happen but we need to define what a cheat meal is.
Our definition of a cheat meal is a meal that break one of three rules:
1. Is this meal outside of our eating window?
2. Is this meal going to be above my daily target Calories?
3. Is this meal going to be above any of my target Macros?
If you broke any of these three rules it’s a cheat meal. If you broke all three that would be considered an off day. To make up for it, try again tomorrow. Going out to a restaurant or for fast food doesn’t make it a cheat meal if it doesn’t break any of the three circuit breakers. Just don’t use it as an excuse to abandon the progress you are making. Success is a summation of cumulative progress over time, if you have one cheat meal a month, 97% of the time you are adhering to the program you set for yourself. That’s pretty good odds that you will see results a year from now. Stay positive and try to have some fun, eventually, you will turn the corner and have a mind shift from “you have to do this for the rest of your life” to “you get to do this for the rest of your life”.
