1. Eat at Home: First thing I changed was I went back to eating at home at least 85 – 90% of the time. While there are a ton of great options on there, I noticed when I purchase a meal, I tend to overeat. I go past the point of satisfaction and move into the realm of super stuffed because I feel that I paid for it so I better eat it. I didn’t do it every time but I did it enough to make a difference. It’s also soooo easy to get something you normally don’t buy for home when you are out and about. Another reason I started doing this was it really hit me how skewed even the healthy meals at good places are when I was creating the December Meal Plan. It was a real challenge to get a balanced day in terms of macros when each meal was from a restaurant. Is it doable? Of course? Do I want to be constantly checking it? Nope. So the solution was to eat at home. I have complete control over what’s in my food and the portion sizes. 

2. Eat almost all whole foods: Over the last few years, I started adding back in a lot of processed foods. Now they are healthier and have better ingredients than most packaged foods but they are still processed. Don’t get me wrong…I still LOVE that so many companies are creating great products. But when I took a step back and looked at my overall food consumption, I wasn’t too pleased with my whole foods to processed foods ratio. So over the past two months, I have been finishing the foods I already have ( eating at home!) and depending on the product either not replacing them OR buying it less often. Because I still need to get enough food, I automatically started eating more whole foods. Here’s the important part: I do NOT count calories or track macros. Even though I have the ability to map out my calories and macros and follow a strict plan, I hate doing it and it honestly makes me not enjoy eating. I do however journal my food. Now before you start thinking, “Well you know what to look for…blah blah blah”, I will tell you exactly what I actually look at and how easy it is for anyone to do. First, I use an actual book to journal in. I just write in it at the end of each day. And at the end of each week, I observe the following:

How many times did I eat out? I eat about 5 times a day so by the end of the week, my goal is to have only 4 – 5 meals from a restaurant.

• How many drinks with calories? I aim for 2 alcoholic drinks a week. I count any drink like Saxby’s Hot Chocolate as a meal from a restaurant. It’s 400 calories...it ain’t just a drink!
• How many snack or treats did I have? This would be any treats I made like homemade cookies or ones that I bought. If I got dessert at a restaurant, I count it as a meal from a restaurant separate from the actual meal.

That’s it. This takes me a grand total of 5 minutes to do each week. Depending on what I did, I either continue to maintain it or set a goal to do one less treat or one less bought meal. It may not sound like much but trust me…it’s very eye opening.

Another things you might want to add depending on where you stand with your diet are:

• How many veggie servings?
• How much bread/processed carbs?
• How much water?
• How much fruit?

3. Stay consistent: This is the one that will make or break your results. You can have all the right intentions, tools, resources, etc but if you don’t follow through with your workouts and diet CONSISTENTLY, it will NOT work. Each week I work out 5 times a week, rain or shine, busy or not, tired or energized, etc. There have been times where my performance was just crap. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s about creating a routine and sticking to it. I don’t need to hit PR’s every workout. But I DO need to create a habit of working out. Like anything else in life, if you don’t get into the routine of doing, you won’t do it. And if you don’t do it, you don’t get the benefits of it. Am I telling you you need to work out 5 days a week, absolutely not. That’s what works for me. I am telling you that if you made a commitment to yourself to workout 3 days a week, that you do that NO MATTER WHAT. Find a way to get it done. 

So that’s my list of how to get results. It’s not some fancy diet or a newly discovered supplement. It’s doing those THREE simple things day in and day out and trusting the process. It took me a while to gain that 30 pounds and I need to give myself permission to take the time to lose it.

My advice is to take a step back from trying to figure out this complicated formula for getting results and see if you are doing the simple things. Focus on them and watch what happens!