Tuesday Tip: Lose weight and keep it off 🙌🏼

This year, if your goal is to lose weight or reduce body fat for good, prioritize sustainability over speed. Quick-fix diets or extreme workout routines might promise rapid results, but they often lead to burnout and frustration. Instead of going all-out and risking mental and physical exhaustion, focus on making small, manageable changes that promote steady, consistent progress.

Think back to any restrictive approaches you’ve tried before – cutting out entire food groups (usually carbs), drastically slashing calories, or ridiculous workout routines. If those methods worked long-term, you wouldn’t still be searching for answers. Sustainable success isn’t about how quickly you can lose weight; it’s about creating habits that you can maintain for life. This journey isn’t just about reaching your goal; it’s about staying there without constant struggle or setbacks.

Life will inevitably throw challenges your way, whether it’s work stress, family commitments, or unexpected events. When you’re already stretched too thin mentally and emotionally, it becomes harder to stay consistent. That’s why overcommitting or aiming for perfection is counterproductive. Stop punishing yourself for slip-ups. Stop making decisions from a place of self-disgust or frustration, and start approaching your goals with self-compassion.

The answer isn’t to push harder or do more, it’s to stay patient and stick to what works. Focus on the ‘minimum effective dose’ – the smallest, most sustainable changes that still move you closer to your goals. Whether it’s walking for 20 minutes a day, swapping higher calorie drinks for water, or incorporating more vegetables into your meals, these small habits build momentum.

Ultimately, consistency beats intensity every time when it comes to long-term success. Practice patience, celebrate progress, and remember that steady, sustainable changes will always win over short-lived extremes..

Happy Tuesday 🤗xx

Tuesday Tip: Setting goals a different way🥅

With the new year comes the inevitable barrage of health and fitness programs and ‘resets’. Most of these will involve some goal setting and encourage you to visualise those goals. While this can get you excited and focused on what you want to achieve, there’s one massive issue with this approach. You can get so focused on the end goal, you forget about all the things that could go wrong. A more effective approach is anti-visualisation. Instead of visualising achieving your goal, do the opposite: visualise not achieving your goal.

I know that sounds very negative but trust me on this. Imagine failing and then write down all the all the potential reasons this could have happened. Essentially you now have a list of all the obstacles and setbacks you might face as you work toward your goal. Starting with the possibility of failure in mind makes you aware of the things that could potentially go wrong. Thinking about these things ahead of time allows you to come up with solutions to better handle them, instead of them cropping up unexpectedly and throwing you off. l’ve found anti-visualisation to have another benefit. It can spur action. If you don’t feel like doing something, reminding yourself of what could happen if you keep putting off the task is often a good way to encourage action.

The other thing to consider is making your goals flexible. The problem with a rigid goal is that you either hit the goal or you don’t. And if you didn’t, you ‘failed’. If you hit 7,000 steps instead of 10,000 or went to the gym 3 times a week instead of 4 is that a failure? No! So you want to set goals in a way that emphasizes action, not perfection. Instead of setting rigid goals, use flexible goal setting. Instead of a goal to go to the gym 4 times a week make it a goal 2-4 times. You’re less likely to ‘fail’ and it’s a good reminder that doing something is better than doing nothing; that consistency is more important than perfection.

Happy Tuesday 🤗xx

Tuesday Tip: Say No to ‘Detoxes’ 🥗

It’s January and predictably across social media people are peddling “detoxes” and “cleanses”. We’re told our bodies are full of toxins from overeating at Xmas, and if you follow plan X / buy the pill/tea/shake you’ll get rid of them and lose weight/ feel/look amazing. You don’t need it, your liver and kidneys do a great job of “detoxing” you, and these products can make your health worse. But we still fall for it.. why?

Post holiday detox

Over holidays we eat and drink more, so we crave simple, nutrient dense food like salads. Physically it feels good, and psychologically it feels good too; drawing a line under all the junk. This sort of “detox” isn’t silly, it’s just a word we use to say “lets get back to eating well”

Bloat

Over-indulging, or eating certain foods makes you bloated e.g. rich foods, alcohol, beans, or foods high in salt, certain starches and sugars. If it’s a chronic issue see a Dr. If you’ve been eating lots of salt you will retain water, making you look and feel bloated, reduce the salt for a few days and you’ll be fine. Overdo the food and drink? You don’t need to do anything just eat normally for a few days.

Constipation

If you’ve been eating badly you may be constipated. Most detoxes /cleanses are laxatives, which can permanently damage your intestines. So first of all, increase water, then increase fibre intake with fruits, veg, and whole grains, but do it gradually; a sudden fibre increase can make you feel worse. If that doesn’t help, see a Dr, not a Facebook ‘expert’.

Fat loss

No, just no. A juice/pill/shake won’t do that! Sometimes just buying something is a powerful psychological message that you’re making a change and acts as a kickstart; which is why we fall for it. Sadly it won’t last, and you’re left out of pocket and likely to rebound. The more radical approach to losing weight, the more likely it is to fail. Slow and steady wins the race; make small, sustainable habit changes and you’ll reap the rewards.

It’s normal to want to reset, feel better and make changes, but you don’t need a “detox”. Just try to get some sleep, drink more water, eat veg and get moving. You’ll look and feel far better for it!

Happy Tuesday 🤗xx