The best way to lose weight is a complete lifestyle change. When I was overweight I never really understood what a complete lifestyle change really meant. It turns out others don’t either.

So I was chatting to a social media follower, let’s call her Betty and we got to talking after she commented on one of my posts where the theme was ‘I walk because I hate running.’

She posted something encouraging like, “ you look great, keep it up.” So explained to her that it was just a complete lifestyle change now and it’s the best way to lose weight. I am at my goal weight, and it’s just what I do now. No effort required, no trying, no pushing, no fear of it all coming back. Just being in peace and harmony with myself, my health, the food I eat, the exercise I do, loving it all, accepting who I am, what I want and letting go of all the noise and rubbish that doesn’t work for me.

It’s a pretty blissful place to be. I wake up itching to go for my walk, I absolutely love the  chocolate treats and other food I make for myself. I love how it all makes me feel, which is why it could become a lifestyle  change – I don’t want to be doing anything else.

Pushing too hard

She explained that she wished she was at the same place, however a challenge group she was in to lose weight had her attempting 100 squats per day and as she hasn’t done much exercise – read none – in a very long time. This was proving to be a huge challenge to the point where she was dreading getting up in the morning.

Can you hear my mind screaming????!!!! Aaaaaahhh!!

What hope does she have of success if she hates it?

This is all so sad from so many angles.

Bad trainers

First of all, I have covered before my view on bad trainers see here, and I think this was a beach body coach, whatever that is. Once again slapping a one size fits all military style regime to the whole group, without considering anybody’s individual goals or needs. Doomed to fail and make the person feel bad in the process. Good job.

Second of all, here is a genuine person trying to make changes to her life.  Many overweight people are in the same boat, paddling the wrong way, making it harder for themselves, setting themselves up to fail, feeling bad and continuing to cop the ridicule of the ‘it’s not rocket science’ brigade. Just awful.

And thirdly, most importantly, what kind of lifestyle is that? Requiring you to do 100 squats a day??!! And I am sure there is more involved too like 100 sit-ups, 100 push ups etc.

I don’t want that kind of lifestyle. That holds zero appeal to me and I can perfectly understand why people drop out and don’t do it. And the crazy part is that it’s not even necessary!

At the same token there are many people who thrive on discipline, love a tough military style routine and that is perfectly fine too, we are all different. But if you look at the stats and 10% of the population may go to the gym and 80% who sign up don’t actually go, so that’s more like 2% actually do it, then 98% of us are hating it!

Do what suits you

So it puzzles me as to why they keep trying to apply this one method, over the top solution when it doesn’t stick? And just causes stress, which increases cortisol and makes it harder to lose weight.

So let’s think about the lifestyle we really want, that we would love to do. Then the transition to where you are now and where you want to be, is an awesome journey of fun and feeling good. You will wonder why you hadn’t thought of it before!

Happy discovering!

Kristy x

Update 2022 – I have now been following a Ray Peat Inspired lifestyle for about five years now and have successfully lost weight and kept it off without killing myself with exercise. I’ve written a guide for others too called One Ten Toned which shows you how to do just enough exercise without damaging your metabolism. It is available for immediate download worldwide and is under AU$10. Buy here.