Having had a few weekends of over indulgence in both non clean foods and alcohol, I wasn’t surprised to notice that a few extra and unwanted pounds have crept back on. I was having a discussion with some clients that have done the Pilates Detox Club, they were saying the same thing ……..they had taken their focus off their clean eating for the last few weeks and were feeling disappointed with themselves for allowing some of their bad habits to creep back in.
It started me thinking about how eating just one extra chocolate biscuit per day could lead to quite a dramatic weight gain. Lets say the biscuit is 125 calories, now, I’m not a great fan of calorie counting, but using it in this instance really helps demonstrate the point. Each day you consume that one extra biscuit, after one week you have now consumed an extra 875 calories, but after just one month you’ve consumed around 3,762 extra calories!!! It takes 3500 on average to add a pound of weight on. So. in one month you’ve gained one pound in weight, at this stage you’re probably not that concerned – after all, one pound is nothing, its easy to lose isn’t it??
So, you continue with that extra biscuit, its a habit now, you’re looking forward to it, feeling the need for it with your mid morning cup of coffee, so you keep it going. At the end of the year, you’ve now put on a whopping 12lbs!!! Looks somewhat different now, seems a little unfair to you as all you’ve had is an extra biscuit!
That is the compound effect – you don’t immediately see the effect, it takes a while to notice, but if you keep doing the same thing the effect is very dramatic. Scary stuff when we put it like that.
So, lets flip it and turn it into a positive – if you cut down by only one biscuit a day, think what a dramatic difference that would make to your weight and your health. So lets develop some good habits and choose just one thing that we are going to do every day to improve our health???
If you want to lose weight it could be cut out the biscuit, chocolate, junk food, gluten – you decide, but you need to be able to stick to it, so make it a small achievable step! You could choose to increase your water intake by just one glass a day for 2 weeks and then perhaps 2 glasses a day for 2 weeks and so on.
How about doing just 2 stretches and 2 strength exercises in the morning, might take all of 5 minutes, walk outside for 20 mins per day, turn the TV off and read a book, don’t watch the news for 3 weeks, think of all the time you would save, whatever you decide write it down and pin it up somewhere you will see it every day, consistency is the key.
We live in a society of quick fixes, but the real rewards come with consistency!
Research says that it takes 3 weeks for us to develop a habit, once we’ve developed a habit its really easy for us to stick to it 🙂
What small achievable step are you going to add to your routine to improve your life?