Week 2- DON'T GIVE UP!!!

So, you decided to change your life and you are starting with your food and exercise. Week 1, you take my advice and get a phone app or website to help you know how many calories you should be eating and help you track your calories consumed and calories burned. You start eating fresh or frozen whole foods with no preservatives or chemicals and you are closely watching your sodium and sugar intake. You also start moving your body more than you ever have and you are 7 days into your new "exercise" routine. You weigh yourself and notice... I lost 8 pounds!!!! YIPPEE!!! Celebrate! (I am sure at some point I will blog about "celebrating the small stuff," but for now, just know that we celebrate everything around here!!) You are off and running into week 2! At this point, you become one of two types of people. One eats a lot less calories than the app or website tells you to because you think "if I lost 8 pounds eating 1300 calories a day, I will lose 15 pounds eating 800 calories a day." We will call you Person A. The other continues to follow the recommended caloric intake and continues on the same exercise plan. We will call you Person B. At the end of the week, Person A weighs in and gained 1 lb! Person B weighs in and loses 1 lb. They are both very upset and return to me to let me know that the "Kristy plan" is not working. After asking Person A how many calories they ate and how many calories they burned each day, I explain to Person A that they have put their body into starvation mode. The 1300 calories, that the app or website told you to eat based on the questions that you answered about your lifestyle, are the calories that your body burns going about your regular day, without any additional activity. Your body NEEDS these calories. When your body does not get the amount of calories that it needs, it begins to believe that some type of tragedy has happened and you are starving. At that point, your body does not trust that it will receive the food it needs to survive and it will hold on to all of the fat that it possibly can. I explain to Person A that week 2 is always lower in the losing category than week 1, but you need to bulk up your calories and continue on your path. Week 3 will be better! Then I turn to Person B. I explain to Person B that the difference between week 1 and week 2 is that in week 1, because you are watching your sodium and sugar, you are losing a lot of initial water weight that the sodium has made you retain all of these years. If you were a big soda drinker, even diet sodas, and you cut them out in week 1, you have also lost what I call "soda weight." Soda weight is the beginning of the excess weight that you have put on from either the high amount of sugar in the regular soda or from eating the food that the artificial sugars in the diet sodas makes you crave. Once the initial water weight and any "soda weight" is gone in week 1, you are beginning to work on your body and actual fat cells. Week 2 is always lower than week 1. It is expected! So many people tend to get excited about week 1 and run into the end of week 2 with a huge disappointment. Don't get down on yourself and do not give up! Just continue on your path, Person B. Weeks 3 and 4 will be better! Keep up your hard work and the benefits will begin to show!