5 Lessons Learned from Losing 135 lbs

My journey wasn’t straight through. Nothing in my life has ever been straight through really. But can anybody say that about everything in their life?

My journey of losing 135 lbs has been since 2007. And the reason that I’m saying that is because honestly, that is the only record I have of a weight from when I was in a doctor’s office. And the picture that you see here in the main picture of this blog is from 2012, that is not the 265 that I was at my highest and when it comes to clear before, and after photos, that’s all I got.

The other problem is… I simply didn’t take pictures of myself or really allow myself to be in a lot of pictures before 2012.

This photo to the left is probably the closest. At this time in my life, I was wearing 2XL women’s shirts and size 22 or 24. This was the night that I sent to my husband now the very first picture of me that he has ever seen. So it feels fitting to start with this one.

When he and I first met, I was in a long arduous process of getting a divorce, and I had many excessive coping mechanisms including over-consuming food, under-consuming & smoking cigarettes and alcohol any given night and in large amounts.

Fast forward to 2012, we had three kids under the age of five, and I was no longer smoking. We were living in our fifth home since we had moved in with each other. I was battling with my mental health. Things were kind of hard.

It was in this season of life that I was attempting yet another diet and life was just… LIFING! Okay… okay… okay… It wasn’t. I just had no freaking idea what I was doing. And thankfully, in this season, I had moved to a place that brought me an opportunity with trying to figure out what had to change. Over the next few months, I am doing something a little scary to me. I am bringing back my old blog posts of when I actually lost the weight. I blogged weekly, if not biweekly, and I was raw. I actually read the first eight weeks worth just recently and had to have a conversation with some of my closest friends on whether or not I should really do this because I shared so much publicly and it was mortifying then and it feels, even more, mortifying now. Now that I know what I know…

My biggest takeaway… I was so damn mean to myself. But you were going to get everything. Exactly how it was originally written. To see what it looks like in the beginning… From somebody who actually made it through to the other side and has been maintaining since. So stay tuned and join me for the wild, nostalgic & vulnerable ride that is ahead.

As for now, I want to give you my perspective on some of the biggest lessons that I learned, and I’m hoping that these will help as you make your way through the journey that you’re on.

There will never be a good time to start.

You know this. I know this. This is nothing new. There’s never going to be a good time. Life is always going to keep on lifing. Never. You’re always going to have some thing. The best recommendation that I can give here is to know that you get to choose the processes that you put towards this and that is what decides the timeline that you will be on to accomplish your goal.

You can do everything and anything in a 12-week period and your body is going to give you the results of what you do in those 12 weeks. You may not like what it gives you. You may love what it gives you. But the fact is you have no way of deciding the outcome. You can only decide the processes and the consistency in those processes. Let’s keep going because I could definitely go on in this moment for a very long time and I want to get you through this.

Want to understand more about processes, timelines, and goals? Check this out The Scale, Fluctuations & A Goal Weight.

Be flexible in your approach, but consistent in your effort.

Kind of sounds like what I was starting to get to above, huh? Everything you do is about consistency, effort, and time. There’s never going to be a good time to start. But let’s not get it twisted… Starting does not mean that you need to learn how to immediately track everything you eat, weighing in grams, meal prepping for every meal, and every snack every week, maximizing your steps to 10 to 15,000 a day, and excellently performing your training sessions with perfect form. That’s not starting. Starting is saying that I need to be aware and here’s where I’m going to begin.

If you’re still not sure about that… Take a look at this work-through. Pay attention to the big rocks in your life. Those are the things that you start paying attention to. Healthy Habit Change: Big Rocks, Small Rocks & Sand

Work on your mind with your body or be forced to work on your mind to keep your body.

Our behaviors, habits, and mindset are exactly how we got to where we are. Those are the things that also keep us where we want to be. You can dive into some perfectly drawn-out program. Do everything it tells you. And then you come out on the other side… You are feeling good because you lost xyz weight. And then you jump right back into life. A couple of months later, you’re right back where you started. Why? Did you take the time to learn the why behind what you did and what you changed? Did you find things within that program that you want to incorporate for the rest of your life?

When you start to look into the research on maintaining weight loss long term, you see things like an awareness that was built through tracking your food in some manner; the use of food preferences or exercise preferences that are personal, and will be a part of their lifestyle; and understanding hunger management.

If you’re curious about different tracking methods, check this out Ways of Tracking Food Consumption & Its Effectiveness for Weight Loss.

I’m going to say something that many don’t understand but at the same time, many do. Meal plans work. They help you lose weight. They help you get to where you want to go. They make it plain and easy. They also make it very plain, and probably not satisfying to your normal tastes. They also probably don’t teach you about your hunger management, include your personal preferences, or give you awareness about your habits around consumption. So a meal plan might work temporarily, but if you don’t incorporate these other things to learn more about you and your specific needs and behaviors, in the long term, that meal plan will fail you.

Look relentlessly for your progress to be able to celebrate.

One of the hardest things that I went through in the beginning, was being able to tell myself that I was doing a good job. I would find all of the reasons that I could not celebrate one singular thing. I would see health markers come down and I would just brush it off. I would begin to have better coping mechanisms and tell myself that I shouldn’t reward myself for some thing that I should have been doing all along.

Not sure what some things to look for to celebrate might be? Check out Non-Scale Victories (NSVs).

The basics are the basics for a reason.

This goes back to what I mentioned above about the big rocks.

You know this. These things are not a surprise to you. There’s a likely chance that you don’t need some fancy program with tons of rules. You just need to take action on the basics. Find an area of your life we are things aren’t lining up well with the big rocks and change it. It can be as little as getting to bed five minutes faster. It can be as big as committing to walking 5 miles every morning or more. But either way, this is simply addressing the basics of sleep and the basics of activity. That is all. They are very very big umbrellas for many of the different rules that you find in different programs… But take a look at the basics and figure out what works for you right now and do it. That’s it.

Takeaway

Over the next few months, I’m gonna show you everything. I’m going to let you see where I messed up on all of these different things. I’m going to let you see the pain and the heartache. I’m going to let you see where I struggled to start and then keep going. I’m going to let you see the rigidity that I had in my approach sometimes. I’m going to let you see where I didn’t always work on my mind first and then struggled to keep what I had earned. I’m going to let you see how I quieted my winds, and felt like a failure, even though I was winning by other people’s standards. I’m going to let you see where I failed to pay attention to the basics and instead tried to double and triple down on efforts and then burned out.

I hope that this brings at least one person solace as they make their way through their own journey. It’s the whole reason that I’m here as a coach now. This was my journey from the very start all the way to becoming a coach myself.

With lots of love,

Coach Nik