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How I Lost Weight Without Trying Hard

I was cleaning out some old files the other day when I saw a picture I had taken in 2008.

Seeing this picture made me remember that it was ten years ago this month that I got serious about my weight and my health.

At the end of 2007, I had hit a high of 222 pounds. In the previous five months before the picture on the left (May 2008) was first taken, I had lost about 40 pounds  – just eight to ten pounds a month, but I wasn’t doing anything other than cutting out Cokes and switching to lower/no fat processed foods.

In April of 2008, I had a total hysterectomy. Two weeks after my surgery I was cleared to “stroll” no more than fifteen minutes a day. When I got that clearance to begin ever so lightly working out, I decided it was game on. It was time for me to get serious and lose weight for good.

In the above picture on the left, I was around 175-180ish. That was when I decided to actually get serious and start dieting on purpose. I weighed around 150 in the picture on the right, which was taken 60 days later in August of 2008.

I knew myself well. I knew, at the time, there was no way I was going to make a huge lifestyle change and stick with it. Not at that point in my life anyway. At that time I was smoking two packs a day (I know – eww), and I was still eating nothing but pre-made processed and fast foods. If this lifestyle change was going to work for me, I needed to take baby steps.

You gotta crawl before you can walk, y’all. Having that mindset throughout this journey is the reason I believe I was successful.

How I Lost Weight Easily

I made a list of five easy lifestyle changes I could implement that would help me lose weight. They had to be easy to do, didn’t require me to join a gym, or go on any type of strict, restrictive diet.

I knew just cutting out the Cokes and actually cooking food at home that was lower/no fat rather than eating junk food all day would be about as much “diet” as I could handle. Instead, I focused on exercise, staying hydrated, and shrinking my stomach.

And it worked.

When I found that picture last week, I decided in honor of my tenth anniversary of losing the weight for good, I wanted to share my story. Off to Instagram, I went.

I love Insta-stories! Ever since Instagram added the stories feature, I find myself watching videos there more than even YouTube. Last week, my Insta-stories followers got the inside scoop on my diet tips.

I shudder to call the “diet tips” though because I promise you, I didn’t diet. I just cut out eating fast food and processed foods.

Maybe it was a diet, but I would have never told myself that at the time. The word “diet” is a four-letter word, and very often just knowing I’m attempting to be on one will cause me to self-sabotage. So – I just called it “Mama’s cooking more”.

95 pounds lost total and ten years later, here I am. Still a size 4. How? I continue to practice what I preach.

These tips work. While my diet isn’t as clean as it should be all the time, just doing these five things daily has been enough to keep me on track. I will occasionally over the holidays, or on vacation, put on five pounds here and there, but I never keep it on once I get back on my regular routine.

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Just sayin’.

Everyone gather around. It’s time for Insta-stories with Toni. Or as I’m calling it “How To Lose Weight Without Really Trying Too Hard“. These are my tried and true tips for not just losing the weight but keeping it off.

Without further ado, here are Insta-Stories with Toni:

5 Easy Ways To Lose Weight And Keep It Off For Good

For those of you who would rather not watch here are the main points:

1. Walk: At least 15-30 minutes a day. As I demonstrated, I lost 95 pounds just walking inside my house. Whenever I have 15 minutes throughout the day, I get up and take a walk around my living room/ dining room. I do this two or three times a day. According to my fitness tracker, that walk comes out to 0.92 miles, so if I walk twice a day that’s an easy almost two miles of walking I got in during the day. Those fifteen minutes can really add up to a lot of miles every day! You can do this while watching tv, on break at work, or even while watching Insta-stories. (Which I do a lot.) No excuses here for some easy exercise!
2. Drink your water: This is such an important part of weight loss, and if you do nothing else but make this one switch, you will see the scale move in the right direction. I made a promise to myself that after coffee in the morning, I would only drink water.I’m one of those weirdos who doesn’t like the taste of water (go ahead and roll your eyes at me and say, “But it’s water! It doesn’t have a taste!” It’s cool. I’m used to it.), so this drinking nothing but water all day was going to be an issue for me. Enter Trim Health Mama’s Good Girl Moonshine. You can read all about the health benefits of the drink by clicking on the link. I don’t include ginger in my recipe because ginger irritates my stomach, but if you have no issue with it you should absolutely include it. It’s got tons of good stuff going on for it. (Recipe below)
3. Stop eating early: This was actually the hardest rule for me to follow. I love me some popcorn at night, and wasn’t ice cream actually created to be enjoyed after 10 PM? But, the thing about weight loss is once you lose a few pounds it becomes motivating to lose more. I just kept my eyes on the prize and stayed focused. Try to stop eating at least 3-4 hours before bedtime. You don’t want to go to bed with a full stomach and lay there with all that food in your belly. Sleep is designed to help your body repair and renew itself. That can’t happen if the digestive system is taking up all the energy. (I somehow left out one part of my Instastory here. Sorry for any confusion.)
4. Sneak in exercise: At the beginning of my weight loss journey, I wasn’t near as jazzed for getting toned up as I am these days. In fact, most days that fifteen minute walk around my living room was more than I could handle. And, that’s ok, because at least I got up and did something. I knew if I wanted to see faster weight loss/ look better after the weight loss that I needed to add in regular exercise. But how? Because I legit hated to exercise. One day, while I was standing around waiting on the microwave, I decided to see how many squats I could do in the remaining 30 seconds left on the timer. To my surprise, I busted out 20 squats! That’s when it dawned on me – how many times a day am I just standing around doing nothing? Waiting on the microwave, waiting on the water to boil, waiting on the oven timer, heck – just standing there while I brush my teeth. I could squeeze in squats, counter push-ups, leg lifts/kicks, standing ab exercises, triceps dips… so many small and easy exercises can be accomplished just while standing in your kitchen and bathroom. When you find yourself staring at the microwave, just watching the countdown, why not try to squeeze in ten lunges? Or plank for twenty seconds? What can you do to make your fitness goals come true in just thirty seconds? It turns out more than you think!
5. Portion control: I think this rule is just as important as drinking your water. If you want to weigh less, you have to eat less. Pretty basic math, even for something as complicated as diets and health. One portion is about the size of your fist. If you want to lose weight don’t eat more than one portion at any given meal/ snack. Once I wanted to stop losing weight, I entered maintenance and moved up to two fistfuls of food on my plate. Before I began dieting I was eating easily 4 portions at a time. No wonder the scale wouldn’t budge! I ate enough for four people! Let me repeat: I ate enough for FOUR people. That’s why this tip is so important. I’m not saying starve yourself –  that is counterproductive. And I’m not saying you won’t feel hungry the first few weeks while your stomach shrinks back down. But, you can handle this! Once your stomach shrinks, eating less will be so much easier and you will be amazed at how quickly your stomach will fill full!

I hope you enjoyed these tips! Let me know in the comments what weight loss tips have worked for you. Also, am I the only weirdo that think water has a funky flavor? Thanks for stopping by! I would love it if you would share these tips with your friends on Pinterest! Maybe this will help?

Want to try those collagen peptides I mentioned? I add a little shake to every drink I have, all day long. This brand is my favorite because it dissolves cleanly with NO flavor. My nails and hair have never looked better!

THM’s Good Girl Moonshine