Weight Loss Strategies for Busy Weeks

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• Weight Loss That Fits Your Lifestyle
• 8 Time-Saving Tips for Healthier Eating Habits
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Full Episode Transcript:

Weight Loss Strategies for Busy Weeks

Hi there, welcome to the eating habits for life podcast. Thanks for listening in today as I talk to you about weight loss strategies for busy weeks.

Sometimes your weeks can just feel so jam-packed and it can feel like there’s just no time to do the ”extra” things for yourself and for your health.

But I want to share with you that you can have both. You can continue with weight loss progress AND you can have a busy week.

I’m going to give you some weight loss strategies for busy weeks that you can keep in your back pocket for whenever those busy weeks do come up, because I know they will.

Or, you might even currently be in the midst of a busy week and be able to utilize these immediately.

Before I completely dive in, to help you form the habits that will help you lose weight and keep it off, I have a weight loss habits free video class plus workbook just for you.

It will help you with simple changes that you can make in all several different areas that benefit weight loss.

Plus, when you make changes in these areas, your physical, emotional, and mental health will all improve.

Your energy will improve. Your quality of life will improve drastically and I can tell you this from personal experience.

I have implemented these weight loss habits into my own life and because of that, I lost weight about 10 years ago and have kept it off since. And in fact, it’s been easy to keep it off, and I like and eat a fair amount of snacks.

So get that free weight loss habits class plus workbook with the link in the episode description if you’re listening from your podcast listening app like apple or Spotify.

Or, with the link right on the episode page if you are currently on my website, https://katemjohnston.com if you’re listening from there.

And, just to give you some fun news, I am coming out with a new free course with workbook on crushing bad eating habits with some simple strategies for career women.

It’s in podcast format, so you can listen on the go. There will also be some videos for those who love watching video.

That will be coming out in the next couple of weeks, so be on the lookout for that.

This particular course is going to be even better than all of my previous free classes, so I’m excited to bring that to you.

Alright, the first of the weight loss strategies for busy weeks is a mindset strategy because this will help you with how you feel…

And how you feel will then greatly affect what actions or inactions that you take, which will then of course cause some sort of results.

So, if you think about it, during those busy weeks, we want to either maintain weight or lose weight. That would be ideal, right?

So, a less desired result, would be to gain weight during a busy week. Because if you’re trying to lose weight, of course you don’t want to gain weight. Especially if you’re someone who has a lot of busy weeks.

Therefore, if the desired result is to not gain weight, then you’re going to have to take certain actions or inactions to not gain weight.

That means you’re going to want to feel a certain way to be able to take the actions or not do certain things that will help you to either maintain weight or lose weight, but not gain weight.

So, feelings that will help to do the actions that you need to do, are generally going to be positive feelings.

Feelings that won’t help you to get the result that you want, would be feelings/emotions such as overwhelm, discouragement, frustration, annoyance.

So, if you’re looking at a busy week in a way that’s making you feel overwhelmed or annoyed or discouraged, that’s not going to be helpful.

Therefore, you’re going to want a mindset, you’re going to want to think about your busy week in a way that won’t cause those unhelpful feelings, those negative feelings or emotions.

You’re going to want to think about your busy week in a way that will help to keep you feeling good and motivated.

So that may be looking at your week and thinking something like, “I have things on my schedule and it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Or maybe something like “I may have a busy week, but I always have time for myself and my future.”

Now think about it for a moment. If you thought one of those thoughts to yourself, how would that make you feel?

As opposed to if you thought something like “Ugh, I have such a busy week there’s no way I’m going to get everything done.”

Or if you thought something like “I’m never going to be able to lose weight if my schedule keeps looking like this.”

Or it can even be more simple and sneaky, like “I have no time.”

That simple sentence can seem innocent enough because you’ve probably said it to yourself multiple times or set it to someone else, but because of that, the thought “I have no time” can become a thought habit which can make you feel like you’re in time scarcity.

And if you feel like you’re in time scarcity, what do you think is going to end up happening?

You’re probably going to be less likely to make time for the things that will help you to lose weight.

So, you may end up getting take out more often than you want to. You may end up going to bed late and not getting enough sleep. You may end up forgetting to drink water because you’re rushing around doing other things.

You may end up feeling really stressed, which doesn’t help with weight loss. You may also skip your long walk or your workout, because you feel like you don’t have time.

If you’re thinking something more neutral or even positive such as “I have things on my schedule and I have enough time to do them and take care of myself,” you’re going to feel probably a little bit more relaxed, productive, motivated.

These are all feelings that will help you to do the things that you need to do and that you want to do for yourself and for your weight loss progress.

So just improving that mindset about your busy week will drastically improve how you feel, and also substantially increase the likelihood that you will do the actions that you need to do to get the results you want.

And this universally agreed upon concept of thoughts causing your feelings causing your actions and results, this is all part of coaching. This is one of the tools that I use to help my clients.

 You can essentially feel anything that you want to feel, by thinking what you want to think.

Sometimes, we need to break some thought habits or question thoughts or maybe shift them around a little bit to feel a certain way.

Also, you can increase the likelihood that you’ll do actions that you want to be taking to get the results you want, by changing the way you feel.

 And of course doing the right actions will always help you with the results, but doing them with thoughts and feelings that align with those actions will make it way easier.

Also, what coaching is all about too is if you’re not doing the actions that you need to be doing to get the results you want, figuring out why.

What thoughts and feelings are you experiencing that are causing you to not do the actions that you either know you should be doing or want to be doing to get the results that you desire.

So, this whole thoughts, feelings, actions, results is a super helpful tool with eating habit and weight loss coaching, and even just with coaching on anything.

This helps with stress. It helps with time management, it helps with your perception of time as I just showed you. It helps with your relationships with other people even.

So, I can use this coaching tool on just about anything to help you with all the things that are affecting your eating habits and weight loss.

Alright, so the next of the weight loss strategies for busy weeks is managing your expectations and changing your goals a little bit for that week specifically.

So, what I mean by this is, if you are someone who has the occasional really busy week here and there, it can be very beneficial for you to just set a little bit of a different goal or expectation for yourself for that week.

That way, you don’t feel like a failure if you don’t lose weight that week. You’re also meeting yourself where you are, by accepting that that week is just going to be a little bit of an exception to the rest of the weeks.

So, if you normally get in five days of cooking a healthy meal and you normally get in three days of exercising for an hour each time, you might have to just lower the expectation a little bit to give yourself a little bit of grace for that super busy week.

You’re meeting yourself where you are. You’re not expecting yourself to have all the additional things on your schedule and still keep up with 100% of what you were keeping up with before as far as weight loss habits.

And again, this is just one of the strategies, it may not be one that you necessarily choose for yourself, but I’m just putting this out there, because I’ve seen this be really helpful for people.

And especially helpful for a perfectionists. Perfectionists have a tendency of having all or nothing thinking. Which just means that if you didn’t get it 100% perfect, then it’s a failure (oftentimes leading to giving up).

So if you’re having a busy week and you’re thinking that you need to do it all, but then you can’t do it all, then you might do none of it. You might just stop completely.

I’d rather you change your “all” that week to maybe 70-80%.

Meaning, if you normally get in five days of cooking a healthy meal and you normally get in three days of exercising for an hour each time and that’s in a routine not-so-crazy busy week, then maybe for the crazy busy week, shoot for 70-80% of that and if you meet, that then that’s a really big success.

So basically I’m saying, 70-80% would be your 100% for that particular week. Anything beyond that would just be extra credit, a bonus.

So maybe plan on just doing four days of cooking a healthy meal and three days of exercising but only for 1/2 an hour each time.

And when I say exercising, that includes going for a walk. Exercising doesn’t have to be going for a run, or doing a heavy weight lifting session, or going mountain biking.

Exercise looks different for everyone. As long as you’re moving your body and getting that blood flowing.

Okay so the third of the weight loss strategies for busy weeks is to plan ahead of time. When you know you have a busy week coming up, set aside 15 minutes to plan ahead for the week.

This means planning as many of your meals as you can, you don’t have to get very specific, but at least plan on if you are cooking, eating leftovers, eating a frozen dinner, et cetera.

Plan in your days that you would like to exercise. Plan ahead of time how you will be sure to get all of your hydration in. Sometimes when we’re busy, we can forget about drinking water.

Also, plan ahead of time what time you’ll be going to bed and sticking to that. When we have busy weeks, we can tend to get to bed a lot later then we want to.

 And then we feel fatigued, and then are not as productive or efficient the next day and that can end up wasting time.

So plan as much as you can ahead of time and write it down. Planning it ahead of time and writing it down will make it more likely that you’ll stick with the plan, rather than not planning, or planning and just keeping it in your head.

Planning ahead of time not only saves you some time and makes the week easier, but also makes it more likely that you’ll stick with the actions that will help you to continue losing weight even during a busy week. Or maintaining your weight during a busy week and not going backwards.

For this reason, I use lots of planning strategies with my clients to help them follow through on actions more easily and feel like their weeks are more organized and less messy.

Because when things are less organized, they can feel a little bit more stressful and it’s also less likely that you’ll get done what you want to get done.

Alright, so the next of the weight loss strategies for busy weeks along with planning ahead and that is to double or triple what you’re making for a meal.

I cannot tell you how helpful this is for my husband Paul and I. Lots of nights, we are running around doing different things and going different places, so we don’t have time to cook.

So instead of getting any sort of take out, what we do is batch cook one or two meals for the week. That just means we’ll double or triple whatever it is that we’re making, so we have enough for at least one more meal, sometimes two or three.

It only adds like 10 minutes or so to the prep and cooking duration. And if you don’t feel like leftovers all week, you can freeze some, after a couple of weeks of doing this you should have a good selection of some dinners in the freezer that you can pull out.

Or, if you’re like me and like leftovers, but prefer not to eat them like three days in a row, then don’t have the leftovers the next day, skip a day or two and then have the leftovers.

And the 5^th of the weight loss strategies for busy weeks that I want to share with you in this podcast episode is to use the alarm on your phone, set reminders, and even write post it notes to help yourself out.

Because you’re busy that week, there’s probably going to be more on your brain. That means you’re going to be more likely to forget to do the things that you need to do to either maintain or continue losing weight for that week.

So do yourself a favor and make it easier for yourself by setting alerts, alarms, reminders on your phone to assist you.

 Think of your phone as being your little assistant with weight loss. Or, if you’re a paper kind of a person, write post it notes and leave them in strategic places.

Because believe me, you’re not going to remember everything on your own. I’ve seen it time and time again with myself and also with my clients.

I am constantly reminding myself and reminding some of my clients that need assistance with this to help themselves out by writing those post it notes and setting those alerts and reminders.

This is especially important for establishing new habits and doing things that are new to you, but also very important for those busy or even stressful weeks.

Even if it’s not something new and you feel like you’re pretty confident you’ll remember to do it. On those weeks that are busy, it will be more likely that you will forget.

So just take that extra 5 seconds or 10 seconds to utilize your phone or a post it note to help you out.

Now, if you want even more on this, check out my blog post on 9 time savvy tips for healthy weight loss. Yes, I also have a blog.

So, if you’re someone who also enjoys short reads, then visit my website and check out my blog post. They are on the same page as the podcast episodes.

You will find a very large selection of blog posts and also every single podcast episode I’ve ever done. All of that is right in that one place on my website, which again is https://katemjohnston.com.

And to get that weight loss habits free class plus workbook with the link in the episode description or with the link right on the episode page on my website.

Alright, thanks so much for listening, take care and I’ll talk with you next week.