These 6 Cheat Codes Made My 40-Pound Weight Loss Simple
Chelsea Mae is a "vegan mom" based out of New Zealand who was "vegan for years but never got lean until I learnt about calorie density and the science of weight loss," she says in her YouTube bio. In her viral videos she shares the tips and tricks that helped her lose 40 pounds. In one of them she reveals that it all "boiled down to a few mindset shifts and then cheat codes to make progress easier."
She Was a Yo-Yo Dieter
"For over a decade, I was stuck in the cycle of yo-yo dieting. Every New Year, I'd make a resolution to finally reach my goal weight, but by mid-year, I'd be back to square one. I felt like a failure and began to lose hope," she writes in the video description.
Then, She Shifted Her Mindset
"But then, everything changed. I finally lost 40 pounds, got stronger, fitter, and became the healthiest version of myself I've ever been, even after having 2 kids!. How did I do it? It all came down to a few mindset shifts and these 6 cheat codes that made all the difference."
First, She Had to Take Baby Steps
Change doesn't happen overnight, explains Chelsea. "If we have big goals like losing a hundred pounds or doing a pull-up or running a marathon, then there's a big gap between who we are today and who we need to become and what we need to learn and how we need to grow in order to achieve the goal," she says. "It doesn't matter how much effort or willpower you have. You're simply not the person that you need to be in order to complete that goal."
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And Become "The Kind of Person" Who Takes Steps
"You don't need to have all the knowledge and all of the behaviors and all of the habits to lose a hundred pounds and then stay there. All you need to do to predictably achieve that goal is to become the kind of person that can continually make steps," she points out.
1. Make the Steps Small
"Number one is to make those steps easy and smaller," she recommends. If you aren't someone who takes large steps, you are less likely to follow through, even if you say you are going to do something. "How do you get your word to start meaning something? How do you build that identity within yourself that if you say you're going to do something, you actually follow through? You have to make that smaller in the beginning so that you can follow through and do it," she says. "For myself, I have goals, but I also have minimum targets. So a goal might be that I want to work out five days a week, but I also have a minimum target where that workout could look like me just coming in and walking on the treadmill.
2. Habit Stacking
Number two is habit stacking. "In order to take a step, we can't just build that out of nowhere. We can't just say, 'Hey, I'm gonna go to the gym,' or 'I'm gonna start eating vegetables' or 'I'm gonna prep.' It's very hard to add that if we don't attach it to something that we already do, which is the momentum. So habit stacking allows you to do this," she says.
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3. Punish Yourself If You Don't Take the Steps
"Number three is to add some pain and a bit of consequence to not taking the steps," she says. "If you don't have deadlines when you take your steps, then you're probably gonna pause for too long," she says. "Or you're not actually going to be motivated to continue making them in order to achieve your goal in a timely manner. You don't wanna spend the next 40 years of your life trying to lose 40 pounds."
4. Celebrate Progress
Number four is to celebrate progress. "We typically celebrate successes, which are the milestones that the steps that we've taken have led to. But if we wanna become a step taker, then we need to shift that to the steps themselves because you're not going to get all the milestones all the time," she says.
5. Understand the Difference Between How You Feel, Think, and Act
"Number five is to start to understand that there's a gap between how you feel and what you think and the way that you can act because a lot of us are just acting on autopilot," she says. "When we feel sad, we act out of that. When we feel like we're hungry, we put the cookie in our mouths. When we feel like we don't want to go to the gym, then we don't go. But between how you feel about something and the response that you have, you do have a choice in there as to how to respond."
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6. Eat More Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes
Number six is "very practical," she says, "a very physical hack that you can use to make your life easier, and it is to eat a whole lot more potatoes, especially sweet potatoes," she says. "They're the most satiating food on the planet. That means that when you eat them, you feel full and satisfied. You're not going to be thinking about food as much. You're not going to wanna binge as much. You can eat a lot of them, and they're going to be low in calories. They're going to help you to lose weight. They're going to give you a ton of energy. They are the best pre-workout. I'll add them to all the meals that I'm making because I know it's going to help me to feel more full." And if you enjoyed this article, take advantage of these 15 Quick Ways to Lose Body Fat Percentage in a Week.
