Weight Loss With a Busy Schedule

You’re a busy career woman and you want to lose weight.

The thought of meal planning, tracking calories, and searching for healthy meals to cook doesn’t sound too appealing to you with a busy schedule.

What if I were to tell you that you can still lose weight with a busy schedule?

Without the elaborate meal planning, tracking calories, spending hours finding recipes and chopping endless vegetables.

In this post, I’m sharing how you can lose weight in a simple, sustainable way, even with a not-so-simple, busy schedule.

Start with a Small Weight Loss Goal

It’s easy to want to jump to a large weight loss goal, such as to lose 30 or more lbs. or 15 kg. in just a few months.

However, a goal that large is too much for your brain to handle.

Your brain is already overloaded, so adding on an aggressive goal like that right away, is only going to lead to overwhelm.

You’re of course allowed to have a really large goal in mind for the long-game, however it’s really important to start with a small weight loss goal.

When you start out small, the goal will be easier to hit.

This is advantageous because once your brain sees evidence that you can lose a little bit of weight, it’s going to increase your motivation, thereby increasing the likelihood you’ll be successful with weight loss going forward.

So start off by setting a smaller goal like losing 5 lbs. or 2-3 kg. in 1 month.

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Look at Your Eating Habits

Start off by asking yourself if you eat when you’re hungry and stop eating when you’re no longer hungry?

This allows you to see if you’re eating an appropriate amount of food.

You’re going to want to make sure you aren’t significantly restricting your calories already, because what happens is your metabolism is going to be slower.

Your body is going to naturally slow it down to preserve energy (for survival purposes).

If you’re at the other end of the spectrum and always eating until your belly feels overly full, then you’re probably overconsuming calories.

It’s really important to know where your baseline is regarding your eating habits, so that you can make the right changes.

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Decrease Flour and Sugar

Next you’re going to look at the particular foods you eat throughout the day. Do you eat a lot of sugar? Particularly, refined or added sugar.

What about foods that are made up of flour? Meaning, bread, pasta, crackers, wraps, pretzels, etc.

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Decreasing sugar and flour are going to be key eating habits for weight loss with a busy schedule.

You just need to work on decreasing both of these, which if you think about it, doesn’t add any time to your day. In fact, you’re saving a little time by not eating as many bites of these foods.

Start out small and leave just a few bites of bread or pasta on your plate, or eat a pack a few less crackers or pretzels than you normally would for your work snack.

That simple.

Drink More Water

Drinking more water can aid with weight loss, not just by making you feel “more full,” but also by increasing a process called ‘lipolysis.’

This was demonstrated in a study done by the Université de Lorraine in France. Lipolysis is the process of breaking down lipids, or fats.

It has also been shown in several other studies to contribute to weight loss for overweight females, independent of other lifestyle changes.

The current recommendation is 9 cups of water for the “average-sized female” a day, but increasing to 10-12 cups on hot days or with exercise.

Adding more water to your day takes minimal time and effort, so keep a water bottle nearby, add some lemon or lime to spruce it up, and keep sipping.

Don’t Exercise Obsessively

It’s important to move your body by exercising lightly or even moderately, but not obsessively.

The common misconception is that heavy exercise is the way to weight loss.

It’s not.

This should be a relief. You don’t have to exercise that strenuously or obsessively to lose weight. In fact, you don’t have to exercise at all to lose weight.

Exercise has many other wonderful benefits of course, however weight loss is not one of the main ones.

There are several reasons for this, but one of which is that you’re going to be likely to then overeat because you’ll be more hungry from the exercise.

Also, your calorie-counter, whether it be your watch or the exercise equipment can largely overestimate the calories burned.

So instead of trying to exercise heavily for the purpose of losing weight, save some time and exercise for enjoyment. Go for a long walk, a short jog, a bike ride, or do some yoga.

Whatever you choose, it should be enjoyable to you and not feel like something you need to do to lose weight.

Final Notes

Weight loss should be something that is enjoyable, because setting goals and moving closer to them is fun.

It shouldn’t feel like a chore, and it certainly should add more stress to your day.

If it is, then it’s time to re-evaluate or get some help.

Remember, for weight loss with a busy schedule, keep it simple.

Make that small goal, so that you can show your brain some proof that you can lose weight, evaluate your eating habits, drink plenty of water, and exercise for the enjoyment of it.

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