25 Health Mistakes This Ex-College Athlete Made in Her 20s "So You Don't Have To"

Have you tried everything to lose weight but can’t seem to get in shape? Richa Prasad, along with her partner Lucy, is a nutritionist and ex-engineer with a psychology degree turned weight loss coach who helps people get into their best shape ever. In a viral YouTube video, she discusses her own weight loss struggles. “The one habit that got me to my dream body when I had failed for seven years before then was sticking to a system that bridged the journey from past me to dream me,” she says in the clip. “And I have taught the same system to hundreds of my successful weight loss students. So I know the system will work for you if you use it correctly.” Here is everything you need to know about the game-changing habit.

Her “Flawed Ideas, Thoughts, and Beliefs” Kept Her From Losing Weight

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She starts off by explaining the background of the habit. “The problem is when I just straight up explain the system, people always end up using it wrong. I want to save you my seven painful trial and error years by sharing my cautionary tale of flawed ideas, thoughts, and beliefs so that when I reveal the system, you grasp how to use it correctly and can do so immediately after this video ends,” she says.

She Grew Up Believing That “Adulthood and Being Overweight” Was Synonymous

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“I grew up believing that adulthood and being overweight are synonymous,” she admits. “As kids, we look at the world around us and without a doubt believe that what we're seeing is all there is to life,” she said, adding that “every adult around me was overweight. So that's what would happen to me too. I made peace with that inevitability.”

However, She Was Shocked When It Happened

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“And yet when it happened, I wasn't ready,” she says, recalling a time when she was shopping and noticed that a shirt didn’t fit right. “I made my way home and googled how to lose weight, and the first thing that popped up was something called the GM Diet. I lasted one and a half days on it. Looking back, this makes sense because it's essentially a starvation diet, but I did not know that back then.”

She Concluded That Weight Loss Had to Be a “Painful Process”

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She concluded that “losing weight must be a painful process. So naturally, when I saw weight loss programs that called for replacing all of my current eating habits in one go or working out for six days a week when currently my main workout was making it to the kitchen and back, ‘Oh, hey, could you bring me some popcorn too?’ sometimes I didn't question it. I figured weight loss is painful, so this is how it must be.”

She “Bought Into the Dream” of Marketing Programs Used by the Diet and Health Industry

“It also didn't help that I bought into the dream sold by the marketing of these programs. They featured chiseled abs and mesmerizing body weight stunts. I figured this is what ultimate health and fitness look like, so of course, I want that. All of these beliefs kept me committed to program after program, all of which felt unsustainable, but I figured that's the sacrifice needed for being healthy and fit.”

She Had the Best Intentions But Would Always Fail

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She explained that she would start her weeks “with the intention to prep all my breakfast and lunches,” but by day three, she would be eating junk food. She would also spend lots of money on expensive, rigorous workouts, “only to find myself so sore by day eight that my hamstrings groaned with every step.”

She Thought Accountability Was the Issue

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She thought maybe her problem was accountability. “I just need to find a trainer, nutritionist, or a group fitness class to keep me consistent,” was something she believed. “It turns out spending thousands of dollars is still not enough to keep me consistent. I think I showed up to my trainer sessions maybe half the time.”

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Her 50 Percent Consistency Would Leave Her Vowing to Be More Consistent

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“This 50% consistency would lead me to two types of reactions,” she says. When her weight was up, she would “acknowledge that I was only half consistent” and “vowed to be more consistent, which I would be for two weeks until I fell back to my old patterns,” she says.

She Also Experienced “Distorted Reality” and Would Chase One Weight Loss Program After Another

“The second was the fun house mirror type where I'd fall into a distorted reality because my mind could remember all the uncomfortable soreness after workouts and the times I exhausted my willpower,” she explains. “I would see my weight go up and think, ‘I'm doing so much. Why am I not losing weight?’ This would spiral me into chasing new weight loss programs one after another.”

She Was Stuck in the Cycle for Years

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“All of this made my first two beliefs stronger and stronger. I was stuck in the cycle for years until a fateful flight from Seattle to Boston. I remember trying to down a ham bagel sandwich while running for the gate. I got onto the flight, and suddenly, I felt like I couldn't breathe. I called for the air host, who put it down to flying anxiety. Now, I've flown since I was four and been skydiving, so flying anxiety is not a problem I have. When I landed in Boston, still miraculously alive, I figured that was a one-off look, but then it happened again,” she says.

She Couldn’t Breathe and Went to Doctors

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“I visited cardiologists who hooked me up to a 24/7 heart monitor. The results were that there was nothing wrong, and yet I can't breathe. Episodes kept happening again and again and again. I felt helpless.”

She Decided to Change Her Way of Looking at the Cycle

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“I looked at the cycle with new somber eyes, and the first thing I decided was that I was not going to tell myself stories that didn't serve me. How does it benefit me to think that adulthood is synonymous with being overweight? What do I gain from believing that being healthy and fit means sacrificing taste, a social life, and joyful movement? Instead, I detached myself from these stories,” she explains.

She Decided to Focus on “Systems Over Goals”

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She decided to trend “toward habits I believe are healthy,’ she says. “Essentially, I decided to focus on systems over goals. Detaching from timelines naturally led me to question my goal as well. I didn't care anymore for 21 pounds in 21 days, toned in 30 days, or how she lost 50 pounds in three months.”

She Shied Away From “Get Fit Quick” Programs

She shied away from “get fit quick” programs. She focused on health and fitness, “and if I continue on the path to word it en route, my breathing problems would get solved,” she says.

But Her Motivation Kept Dying

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“However, my motivation kept dying every few weeks despite using that very same system that eventually worked for me. It was only months later I realized that bodyweight skills don't compel me in my soul kind of way. I realized I had been blindly trying to achieve goals laid out by society and media.”

She Started Lifting Her Own Bodyweight

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“When my goal was to do mad bodyweight skills, the targets boil down to better nutrition to lose excess fat. So lifting my own body weight is easier resistance training that's focused on calisthenics and mobility.”

She Started Focusing on Fueling Her Dream Life

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“And then, once I realized my actual dream life, my targets changed to better nutrition with choices geared toward fueling my travels work and adventures resistance training, but the mix focused on endurance building for long walks, bikes, and swims cardio because my dream life involves a lot of hiking, biking, and swimming and make time for hobbies, sleep and rest. Without them, I would burn out and probably won't be as prolific in my old age as my inspirations.”

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After Achieving Her Targets She Narrowed Them Into Keystone Habits

Once she had her targets, she “further narrowed them into habits,” she explains. “The most important thing is to prioritize one to two new keystone habits for a month. A keystone habit is one in which if you don't get it right, the chances of other habits happening drops drastically.”

Her First Keystone Habit Was Sleeping and Waking at the Same Time Daily, and Second, Not Checking Her Phone After Work

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“During some honest self-interrogating, I admitted to my tendency to cancel everything if I feel I'm falling behind at work. Accordingly, my first keystone habits were sleeping and waking up at the same time daily,” she continues. “If I don't do this, I start off my day feeling behind, which makes doing my habits difficult. Second, I will not check my phone until after work. This stops me from procrastinating and falling behind on my tasks, which in turn stems from my tendency to cancel exercise and meal plans in order to catch up on work.”

While Unrelated to Weight Loss, It Helped Her Lose Weight

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“My starting keystone habits weren't even directly related to weight loss. No wonder my chasing weight loss programs wasn't working because the problem was how my life around my nutrition and exercise habits squeezed out any possibility of being consistent at any weight loss habit,” she points out.

She Broke the Habits Into Smaller Chucnks

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“Then, in my habit sheet, I further broke down these two keystone habits into smaller chunks: retired to bed by 8:30 PM, left phone outside bedroom for proper rest, got out of bed by 6:30 AM. didn't check phone until after work.”

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She Also Added an Optional Habit, Walking 6,000 Steps Three Times a Week

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“Since my keystone habits turned out to not be weight loss specific, I decided to also add an optional habit that I felt 10 out of 10 confident about meeting: Walk 6,000 steps three times a week. Note that this is optional, meaning that if I'm unable to meet it, I will drop this one without mental fuss or guilt,” she explains.

She Then Set Up Her Environment Accordingly

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“Next is setting up my environment to maximize my chances of meeting the habits to help me retire to bed,” she says. “By 8:30 PM, I set up an alarm on my Amazon Echo for 8:15 PM, and then again at 8:30 PM, I left my phone charger in the living room instead of my bedroom. I also throw my phone under the couch since out-of-sight, out-of-mind really works for me. I set an alarm at 6:15 AM and 6:30 AM and bought a lamp that mimics sunrise,” she says.

She Also Made It Impossible to Make Excuses

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“And finally, I plotted a route around my neighborhood that adds up to 6,000 steps. This may sound ridiculous because I could just go out for a walk and get 6,000 steps, but I'm gonna be straight with you. My ability to find excuses to not start something is astounding, and the only way to combat it is to plan so that when it is time to do my habit, I can be mindless.”

She Set Up a Tracking Habit Sheet

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“Next comes tracking in the habit sheet. At the end of every day, I enter one. If I made the habit, I would enter a zero. The gray blocks are where I'm not targeting to make that habit for that day. If I don't meet all my targets for that day, I enter a note with a reflection for the day on what happened and what I'll do tomorrow. For example, there were times when I didn't make it to bed by 8:30 PM, so I installed a Chrome extension that blocks all of the internet at 8:30 PM, no matter what I was doing. This brought me right back on track. Next day onward to meeting my goals, and finally, at the end of every month, I reflect on what happened last month and what to do next month to start.”

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She Reaccesses Her Goals and Dream Life

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She then reaccesses her goals and her dream life, deciding if she wants to “add, remove, or edit anything.” If there isn't a change “in a way that changes my targets, I look at my habits from last month with less than 80% completion rate. That's right. I don't expect a hundred percent completion on any habit because that's impossible,” she says.

She Aims for 80 Percent Completion

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“I'm not a machine, but I do expect a completion of more than 80% on each habit. As an example, here's my reflection from October: five out of 11 of my targeted habits had less than an 80% completion rate. Resistance training was 44%, but that was because I injured myself, so I kept the same targets for November, but for walks, I didn't see a good reason for the lack of consistency, so I decided to reduce the frequency to four times a week instead of seven times a week in October, and it goes on for my other habits.”

She Continued Improving It

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“All of that time in the past, I spent chasing the best workout or meal plan, and that wasn't even the issue. It was the rest of my life I needed to change, and here is proof,” she says. “In November, you can see strength completion rate went up to a hundred percent, walks to 88%, and even the habits that are less than 80% are still way closer to the 80% threshold. And since I'm doing well on most of my habits in November, I could choose to add a new habit or I could continue to first get all my habits to over 80% completion rate for the next month.”

The System “Changed” Her Life

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“The system has changed my life. Some examples of how, after seven years of being stuck, I reached my dream body within a year and have maintained it without tracking for eight years now, I used to burn out all the time from overworking. I haven't crashed into burnout in a long time. My addiction to mindlessly consuming media has reduced drastically, making room for hobbies and creative projects,” she says.

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Start By Figuring Out Targets

“The steps in the system can take some time, like identifying the right targets toward your dream life, but it's so worth it,” she says. “The first thing to figure out is where to start with your targets. Hint: nutrition is 80% of weight loss,” she says. “In fact, my co-coach Lucy took it to the next level, where she lost a hundred percent through nutrition alone. So that's right, zero exercise.” And if you enjoyed this article, take advantage of these 15 Quick Ways to Lose Body Fat Percentage in a Week.