People often get motivated by wanting to lose weight. They watch a video online, have a friend that lost weight, or maybe they had an eye-opening doctors visit. With this new motivation, they will often take a massive leap in the direction of their goal (losing the weight). They start going to the gym, 5 days per week, they start keto, or any other diet for weight loss, the go on walks every day, only to end up quitting after a couple weeks from burnout. Does this sound familiar to you?
The issue here lies with doing too much too soon. The motivation, which is a good thing takes over and you end up setting super high expectations for yourself. I'm not saying I'm not a fan of setting high expectations but I have seen the majority of people fail using this approach. Look at it in the way you may look at a kid learning how to ride a bike. You don't sign them up for a tour de France because you're motivated for them to ride a bike. You start with training wheels, then you might help them with their balance, then they start riding the bike slowly. You need to approach your weight-loss the same way. Weight-loss is a situation where "slow and steady wins the race" really comes into play.
So what do we do? First I need you to disassociate with anything you hear or see online about how quickly someone lost weight. Everyone is different and companies trying to sell things often use tactics to make it seem like people are losing a bunch of weight which is something for a separate blog post. Create a very practical plan that is easier than you think it is on paper. Spoiler alert, it probably wont be. An example here may be; "I'm going to go to the gym 2 days per week and eat 120 grams of protein and no processed foods on those same two days." Something stupid simple. If you decide to do extra, then do it! But don't miss your minimum standard. Let's call this your gold standard. No matter what, you're going to achieve this weekly goal you set for yourself. If you're on vacation, you're still going to do it! We care more about HABITS here, not about how quickly we can lose 20 lbs. Don't get me wrong, sprinting your way to lose 20 lbs, figuratively speaking, will help you get there faster but the VAST MAJORITY or the time people will gain the weight back. They do thins because they have not yet engrained the habits of someone who can keep of 20 lbs from a healthy life style. Make your easy gold standard plan and stick to it.
I've made my plan, now what? After you make your plan, stick to it for 1-2 months. If all is going well and you feel like you could comfortably add more, go for it, but just a little more. This could be an extra day, longer work-outs, doing more reps, another diet day, adding a walk. Remember, this is a marathon. Now we aren't expecting immediate scale results in these early stages. However, sometimes they happen, and when they do, thats just the cherry on top! You're going to reassess every month or two and by the time you are training 4-5 days per week and eating a healthy diet the majority of the time, you have been doing this for 6 months to a year! By this time you could more than likely see the results you sought after. If not, just know that your not a special case and its common. But if not, you may just have to adjust some variables wich will be much easier to do now because your are now officially a person who goes to the gym and can sustain a diet! Whoohoo!
The moral of the story here is to start small. Small enough to actually stick to and build on it over time. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither will you. But if you make it impossible for you to fail, then it really is only a matter of time. Now go do it! Good luck!