Q&A

 A couple of weeks ago, I posted the question online, “What are some things that you (the readers) want to know about weight loss?” I got some really great responses so I thought it would be a good idea to set up this blog as a Q&A and answer some of the questions that I got.

Q: How much do you eat on cheat days without it being too much?

A: The good thing about cheat days is that there isn’t really a set limit on what you’re allowed to eat. With that being said, the best rule of thumb is to not overdo it. My diet plan consists of eating clean 6 days a week so I can have my one cheat day. If too much bad food is eaten on the cheat day, it can be way more difficult to come back to clean eating because you still want more of the bad stuff...or good stuff depending on how you look at it ;) What I usually do is snack throughout the day on things I like but make sure to give myself one big meal. As long as I get my cheat meal out of the way, the light snacking throughout the day helps carry me through without over-consuming junk.

Q: What kind of food did you eat during weight loss? How hard was it to drop junk food?

A: There are a few things that I really enjoyed eating during weight loss. One of the main things was brown rice and chicken. It’s so easy to make and tastes really good. Especially when you throw in some hot sauce and BBQ sauce. The main thing to look for in BBQ sauce is sugar free because most sauces are packed with sugar. The most consistent thing was always water, even now. Drinking only water does so much good for your body and, after a while, it just becomes the only thing you really crave. As far as dropping junk food goes, it was really hard to give it up. But, knowing why I was dropping it was enough motivation to keep me going because I knew what I wanted for myself. Plus, having the cheat day to look forward to helped because I knew I would still get SOMETHING, just not nearly like I had been used to before my diet began.

Q: How important is meal prep? Or how important is changing your diet?

A: I’m really happy someone asked this because it’s a good question. Basically, everyone is different. I think meal prep is fantastic if you’re the type of person that can slip if they’re not put on a schedule. For me, I had a general idea of what I was going to eat throughout the week, but I mainly decided what I wanted when I got home from work and would make it then. Most of my meals take around 20-30 minutes to make so it’s not so long that I don’t feel like doing it at all, but also not so short that I can’t give myself something else to do while I wait for it to cook. Since I bake most of my food, a lot of the times while it’s cooking is when I do my workout.

Changing your diet for the sake of weight loss is huge because about 70% of your results are going to be based off of your nutrition. If your workouts are on point but your diet is atrocious, it will eventually catch up with you. When your feeding your body good things on a regular basis as well as keeping up with it physically, you’re setting yourself up for success with much faster results as well as getting used to  life after you’ve lost the weight and are maintaining.

Q: How did you stick to the diet? What are tips to make it easier to keep up with?

A: Honestly, there are some days where I ask myself how I stuck with it in the beginning. I think I just knew what I wanted and I wanted to prove to myself that it could be done. Once I knew I wasn’t afraid of the process of losing weight, I just went for it. Over time, it didn’t feel like a process anymore. It just became my new way of doing life. A lot of people just like the idea of losing weight, but don’t want to go through the process. It’s once we’re willing to go through the process that we’ll see the results we crave.

One of the biggest tips I can give is drinking two glasses of room temperature water before you eat a meal (especially a cheat meal). It’s natural to want to eat more than you should because you don’t think about it in the moment. The water will help you realize that you don’t need to overly eat and will get you full faster.

Q: How do you avoid plateaus? Or, how do you get out of them faster?

A: During my weight loss journey, I hit quite a few plateaus. I don’t know if they’re avoidable or not. They occur because your body is adjusting to whatever routine you’re setting for yourself. Our bodies are incredible and they adapt naturally. The best way to get out of them in my experience is once you realize you’re in one, change up your routine. If you do arms on Mondays, chest on Tuesdays, and cardio on Wednesdays, then change it to chest on Mondays, cardio on Tuesdays, and arms on Wednesdays. Tricking my body by changing my workout schedule definitely helped me get out of the plateau quicker because it’s now trying to readjust to those areas being targeted at different times.

I hope this helps to all of you reading this and thank you to everyone for all of your great questions. I appreciate your input. My hope for whoever is reading this is to learn things about themselves that they didn’t know before.

Never be afraid of pushing through towards your goals. Like an arrow, remember to keep moving forward.