End the cycle of yo-yo dieting with these successful lifestyle hacks. Here are 10 simple habits to help you lose weight for good. You can even start today.

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Losing weight and following a fat loss program can be brutally hard. It takes a long time. It takes patience. It takes consistency. And let’s be honest, our existing lifestyles and culture aren’t exactly framed in a way that allows for an easy journey to realize a full body transformation.

But here’s the good news: It can be done. It has been done. 

There are countless stories of successful dieters who have overcome their seemingly unstoppable struggle with weight to conquer this endless cycle of weight gain and yo-yo dieting:

• Busy moms have shed the excess pounds even with kids wrecking their sleep and questioning their sanity.
• Entrepreneurs have stepped up to lose weight despite their hectic schedules.
• Men and women who’ve been overweight their entire lives have found the systems and practices they need to finally realize a full body transformation.

You can do this, too.

Oftentimes, we get caught in this ]feedback loop which leads to this on-demand need for instant success. We see the incredible weight loss stories on magazines and social media and get frustrated because our 90-day journey didn’t lead to six pack abs.

I’m here to tell you that this is possible. Probably not in 90 days. Or even 120 days. But, it is possible.

In this article, I’m going to share some of the most important fat loss habits to lose weight for good. The most successful dieters follow these tips and tricks and they should be a healthy part of your arsenal, too.

Let’s get into it.

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How to Build Successful and Sustainable Habits to Lose Weight for Good

First thing’s first, in order to actually maintain a healthy habit, you need to first realize how to even pick up a healthy habit to start. 

It’s all about taking small bites of the apple so you can find something sustainable.

Start small

No need to try and save the world in your first day of trying to lose a few pounds. We’ve devolved into a society that needs everything right away from our TV shows to dinner to weight loss. Unfortunately, body transformations take time. A long time. So, scrap the idea of these random deadlines of 90-120 day transformations. 

Once you get rid of thais false premise that you only need three months to get lean, it’ll be much easier to appreciate the lengthy journey at hand.

And then you can start to apply the idea of small baby steps to building a path to success. 

If eating better is your goal, no need to dive in by scrapping all carbs from your diet or by restricting food altogether. Just start by adding some protein to each meal.

If working out is your goal, no need to jump face first into a rigorous CrossFit program. Instead, make a commitment to just walking more every day and performing some push ups and air squats in your living room.

Start slow

Stick to one habit at a time. Too often, we get into this race to jump head first into a fat loss plan and end up trying to save the world, lose weight and solve the meaning of life all in one week’s time.

In the past, you’ve likely decided to lace up the tennis shoes and start running, while drastically cutting your carbs and avoiding all sugar. Not only were you probably miserable, but this approach is simply not attainable.

Instead, the key is to pick one habit. Let that new routine marinate for a few days or even weeks. Then you can add another habit into the rotation.

A few simple habits that can help kickstart a fat loss lifestyle include:

• Adding a serving of protein to each meal
• Committing to walking for 20 minutes before or after a meal
• Replacing 1-2 carb sources per day with a half plate of leafy vegetables
• Performing a quick 5-10 minute workout every single morning upon waking up

Start now

Motivation is fleeting. Yet we are constantly in search for some inspirational post from some random stranger on Instagram that will move us into action to change our lives forever.

It’s a never-ending search. Largely because this type of motivation simply does not exist. At least not in the sense that it will inspire you to change your life for good.

That quick dose of want-to typically fades quickly because the words that inspired your movement are not intrinsically tied to your own well-being. They’re someone else’s words.

Instead, you need to take action. Action breeds results. Results breed motivation to continue the action. It’s an ongoing cycle that is far more effective in the long run than constantly searching for the next quick hit of mental fortitude.

As long as you are starting small, the idea of taking action should never be too daunting a task.

Stay consistent

Setting up a weekly habit is an easy way to procrastinate. Instead, I want you to establish habits that you can apply daily. 

This helps bake the new approach into your life in a much more sustainable way. Your mindset and routine is ingrained in this new habit and it is much easier to continue if it’s something you simply have to cross off of your daily list.

For example: Schedule your workouts in your calendar and treat it like an important call or meeting you cannot break.

Here are the 10 Habits to Lose Weight for Good and avoid yo-yo dieting forever

1. Eat Similar Foods 

This does not mean you need to restrict yourself to a life of chicken and broccoli. Rather the goal here is to create a go-to list of staple meals and food choices that are convenient to prepare, taste good and fit nicely in your fat loss diet plan.

When we are presented with an abundance of options for food, it’s too easy to fall off the wagon and end up finding the highly palatable stuff instead of opting for the more nutritious choice.

2. Eat your fruits and veggies

Mom and Dad were right. It’s all about the fruits and veggies, my friend. No one ever got fat from a diet that consisted of mostly whole, natural leafy greens with the occasional serving of fruit as a powerful carb source.

Oh and while we’re on this subject, fruit does not make you fat.

The myth that some magical unicorn dust in the fruit sugar affects your body any differently than any other carb is pure wackiness. And any health coach that recommends avoiding fruit because it “makes you fat due to the sugars” should be throat punched, fired and then shunned to North of the Wall.

All kidding aside, one of the easiest shifts you can make today is to up your vegetable and fruit every single day.

Aim for about five good servings of vegetables and replace one starchy carb source (like bread or pasta) with some fruit. It’ll make a ton of difference.

Fruits and vegetables are low in calories and packed with fiber. They help keep you fuller for longer, which is a huge factor when struggling through the usual hunger pangs associated with dieting in a caloric deficit.

3. Pick up some more protein

Of the three major macros (carbs, fats and protein), protein is the most important. It’s the only macro that your body cannot compensate for without physically consuming it in your diet––when carbs or fats are lower food sources, your body can naturally recreate the energy from those two macros, it cannot do that with protein.

It’s a big reason why protein is so emphasized by many coaches.

This does not mean you need to pound a protein shake every 30 minutes like some weird bodybuilding broski. But, the most successful dieters find ways to incorporate a nice dose of protein at each major meal.

This will go a long way to preserve your lean muscle tissue when calories are low. Which is just fancy coach-speak for saying that when you are dieting, your body is basically eating itself and by delivering adequate protein to your system, you’re signaling to the body to eat the fat stores and save the muscle. Which in turn leads to the sexy, lean and toned results that many of us are looking for when we start a fat loss plan.

Looking for a guide on why protein is important and how to add more protein in your diet? I’ve got you covered with a comprehensive and easy to implement set of guidelines here.

4. Don’t drink your calories

The occasional sip of soda is fine. I even wrote about how to include your favorite alcohol while dieting so you can still see results. But, the majority of your beverages should be of the zero calorie, or at least low-calorie, variety.

When you’re trying to lose weight by applying a caloric deficit, you need to be judicious about where those limited calories are coming from. By taking on a ton of calories from drinks, or even loaded-up lattes and extra flavor coffees, you’re taking away from the calories you can enjoy from real foods.

I’ve talked about this one in my article about the Calorie Creep and how liquid calories (things like sodas and the extra add-ons in coffees) can lead to your weight sneaking up on you without you even realizing it.

5. Watch your portions

You don’t need to count calories in order to lose weight. But, you must understand that those calories will still count.

The science is undefeated and in order to lose weight, you must be in a calorie deficit-–which is fancy for eating fewer calories than your body burns.

If you need a primer on setting up your calories for a fat loss diet, check out this post here.

But, if you simply refuse to count calories and do all of the weighing and measuring of your foods, that’s okay. You will at least need to manage the portion sizes of your food.

6. Never miss twice

Falling off of that proverbial wagon happens. None of us are perfect. But, instead of letting one crazy event where you devoured an entire pizza on your own turn into an entire weekend of gluttony, it’s important to get right back to work with your very next meal.

Don’t try to punish yourself by overcompensating for the calories with a crazy fast. Don’t try to punish yourself with an excessive amount of exercise (as I’ve pointed out here, exercise is actually a very small part of your metabolism anyway).

Instead, you need to just get right back on track with your next bite of food. That’s it.

Adopt an attitude that misfires will happen, but commit to never missing twice in a row and you’ll be totally fine.

That one meal, or even one day, really won’t matter in the long run 10-12 weeks from now.

7. Track your weight and measurements properly

The scale is an evil hunk of plastic that trolls your every bit of existence by staring back at you and spitting out these random numbers of bullshit. That’s why I always encourage my online coaching clients to take control of their weigh ins, by actually weighing in every single day.

It provides more data and allows you to see through the many fluctuations that occur in your scale weight, largely as a result of water gain and loss. 

But the scale is not the only measurement tool in the toolbox. You should be measuring your waist and your hips weekly. Take progress pictures every 2-4 weeks. Check how the clothes are fitting. 

Treat your fat loss journey like a science project.

And the best science projects are the ones that collect a bunch of relevant data. The good news is that outside of the scale, there are several additional markers that you should be tracking consistently in order to properly measure progress.

8. Focus on strength training

Find something heavy. Pick it up. Put it down. Repeat that a few times. Then make sure to do this a couple of times per week.

Look, the calorie deficit is the only thing you need to lose weight. Seriously. You could sit on your couch and just catch up on The Good Place and as long as you are in a deficit, you’d lose weight. 

But you wouldn’t look or feel great. That’s where an exercise program rooted in strength training comes into play.

Working our muscles on a consistent basis is the closest thing to the Fountain of Youth that we actually have. If you’re unsure of where to start with a strength training program, I’ve got you covered with this comprehensive guide to lifting for beginners.

9. Daily movement is optimal

Hopefully the last point convinced you to pick up something heavy a few times per week. That’s fantastic and will go a long way to improving body composition and long-term health. But, unfortunately, it’s still not enough.

Those CrossFit and OrangeTheory workouts aren’t burning nearly as many calories you think. But, because many of those higher intensity workouts leave you a sweaty breathless mess, the perception is that you’ve burned approximately 16 Million calories.

In reality it was probably more like 200 calories total.

This is a big reason why movement throughout our day is so key to losing weight sustainably. Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) makes up almost 20-percent of our daily calorie burn. That’s when we fidget and bob our head and bounce around for no reason. 

The best way to increase your NEAT calories, and thereby increase your metabolism, is to get up and walk more. Walk early. Walk often. Walk as much as possible.

10. Plan ahead for pitfalls and obstacles

That birthday or wedding or vacation is coming. And that’s 100-percent okay. It’s just important to have a plan for how you’ll tackle those planned obstacles. My biggest advice for those occasions is to just enjoy yourself in moderation and get back on plan when it’s done.

But, to take your newfound fat loss powers to boss level, you’ve got to have a plan for the unplanned pitfalls. 

There will be nights when you planned on eating a large chicken salad for lunch, but Suzy brought in pizza and you’re slammed and can’t leave your desk. What’s your plan?

The key here is to think ahead of time. Take a few minutes on a Sunday and try to anticipate the challenges to your eating plan throughout your week.

Can you bring in a prepared meal for lunch on what looks like your busiest work day of the week?

Pack your desk with a ton of fruit and other low-cal options.

Find a local restaurant that can deliver a better option (there are plenty of food delivery services available now, you just need to be resourceful).

Have a plan. Understand the best plans still get messed up from time to time. So have a backup plan, too. And if the backup plan fails, then you know what? At least you tried. And it’s so important for you to know that you are never more than one bite of food from getting right back on track again with your next meal.

That’s how you develop long-term habits to lose weight for good.

Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash.

Let me help you learn to create the simple habits to help you lose weight for good … 

I’m here to help you out. 

If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “Habits to Lose Weight for Good” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

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