Weight loss can be a challenging journey especially when you've no help. Luckily, more and more individuals around the world seek the assistance of weight loss coaches for proven strategies that yield results. Here are some top tips from experienced coaches in Naperville and Chicago to help you achieve your weight loss goals.

Clients have followed diets and workout plans found online for years with only yo-yo results. As a health coach, I get to the roots of their weight loss difficulties and through nutrition, health and fitness coaching, find a lifestyle and plan that will ensure consistency, and therefore, long-lasting results. 

There is always a checklist I run through to find where they could have been going wrong in their health journey up until now.

If I could permanently eliminate one myth from your mind it would be this: 

less calorie-in and more calorie-out = successful weight loss

This is a strategy 9 out of 10 individuals I talk to have tried, initially with some success, but quickly finding their way back to the same weight (or more) than what they weighed before starting. There’s so many factors that need to be taken into account when losing weight, from lifestyle habits and movement, to sex hormones, cortisol and thyroid hormones. So, I want to provide you some knowledge surrounding this strategy and educate you.

Why? This myth can be so damaging.

I get a lot of women coming to me with what they call a ‘slow metabolism’. Usually this is due to desiring weight loss or fat loss. However, there are many roles your metabolism plays in your health that are important to know including: converting food and drink into energy to sustain life, and bodily functions like building and repairing the body and getting rid of waste (all of which are directly affected by hormone regulation playing a role in fat distribution, appetite and energy burning). 

No matter the efforts we make to be successful on our health and weight loss journeys, there will likely always be obstacles and speed bumps we hit along the way that are out of our control. I aim to teach my clients, and want to teach you how you can hold steady amidst the chaos, busy and out of control feeling moments, so in this blog, I’ll highlight three of the most common mistakes I find people make (including me!) and show you how to navigate them to help you stay consistent even when you can find every reason… not to.

Most clients come to weight loss coaches with a similar story:

They’ve been trying to lose and/or maintain their weight for years with unsuccessful sustainability.

They’re too busy to find time to focus on nutrition and fitness, they opt for quick fix diets and extreme exercise plans. The weight drops but the results don’t last.

Sound familiar? Thought so and girl, you’re not alone.

I talk a lot about “What TO do” to sustain your weight loss, however some minds think better in “What NOT to do” - this is for you. Most of us make the same health and weight loss mistakes, and most of us repeat them for years before seeking a nutrition or fitness coach. You might not quite be at that stage, (reach out if you are!) so for now, let’s discuss the top 4 dieting mistakes.

One of the principal components of holistic health coaching is mindset. It’s an area that is sometimes missed in general nutrition and fitness coaching. It includes things like thought patterns, self talk and motivation. I want to discuss the beliefs that might be standing in your way when it comes to weight loss and how to learn how to be successful in your health journey.

Many clients continue with fad diets that don’t work for YEARS before coming to a health coach. So we want to break down how to recognize when holistic health coaching is for you.

We help busy women (and men), like you, to build better thoughts, make better decisions and choose better actions in their nutrition, health and fitness. We teach you the how and help you create strategies and tools for long term support in your wellness and weight loss journey.

Time and time again I see women turn to diets where they: Restrict foods they love, eliminate entire food groups, eat as little as possible and follow diets without understanding IF it’s right for their body and situation.

I see it leaves those same women high and dry without results, a worse relationship with food and a harder struggle the next time they try to get their body to respond.

Is this you too?

You might think you have all bases covered, you’re exercising regularly and eating well (and tracking your nutrients, proteins, carbs etc) in a sustainable way but you’re just not hitting your weight loss goals. Why did the plan work for your colleague but not for you? Sound familiar? It does to our health coaches. No matter how strict your diet or how flawless your fitness routine, these 8 factors will be at the root of your results.

Do you look in the mirror every morning and scrutinize your body? Are you growing impatient at your (seeming) lack of results? You’re not alone, girl. I work with women through to re-think their progress and improve their process to change. A big part of what can be keeping you here is your mindset but we also coach you on diet, nutrition, health and fitness to help find measures beyond the mirror. Trust me, you’ll look at your reflection in a few weeks time and LOVE what you see and feel.

I know you just want to be there already.

An issue we all face on our weight loss journeys is impatience. It screws with our consistency and our motivation, ultimately elongating actually getting to the end goal. It’s one of the key foundations we work on as holistic health coaches; consistency with diet, fitness, healthy habits and solution oriented thought patterns. It’s tempting to skip steps and choose the fast track, yet it shouldn’t go without question, after all there’s a reason those who choose to do juice cleanses, restrict foods, and two a day workouts are recurring clients of other diet plans too.

The internet is flooded with weight loss coaches and nutrition gurus but how do you know who to trust? Something that frustrates me as a holistic health coach, is the phrase ‘weight loss nutrition’. This is a myth. Let me teach you why and what nutrition coaching really is.

Did you know that lack of sleep can lead to weight gain as well as other health problems?

When our schedules are busy, sleep tends to be the part of our routine that will suffer. You might get just enough sleep to be able to function, but find yourself reaching for caffeine and sugar in hopes of getting more energy to push through (or maybe you aren’t aware this is why you reach for those things).

Most likely, you’ve been told how important sleep is but there’s just not enough time to get enough!

Often women seek health coaching after they feel like they have exhausted all diet and fitness plans.

They tell me that nothing has worked: They are tired of chasing fat loss, want to see their muscle tone, can lose weight but always regain it, think they’re metabolism is broken and want to know if they can improve it and they REALLY want to lose the fat and be the best version of themselves.

So what if we rebranded dieting and weight loss, and thought of them in a different way? How would that affect your metabolism? How could you optimize it rather than blaming it?

When starting with a 1:1 coaching client I will often ask,

“what do you think it takes to get past a weight loss plateau?”

This client could have come to me for a variety of reasons, common ones are wedding weight loss, postpartum health, digestive issues or just being too busy with their career to dedicate time to their health and fitness. Regardless of their pain points and end goals, the answers I get are all pretty similar with versions of, “I need to: Eat less, eat more fruit and veggies, work out more and for longer, control myself around food and eat out less”

After our initial consultation, these answers change dramatically. Read on to find out how to get yourself out of the plateau (it’s NOT to eat less and do more)!

Self sabotage kills more results than lack of action does. Let that sink in for a moment.

As women, we are generally pretty guilty of self doubt and sabotage and this is a key factor I help clients to overcome as a health, fitness and nutrition coach. If you want to decrease self sabotage then you need to measure progress in a way that supports you in seeing all of the ways you might be progressing.

I’ll show you how and don’t just take my word for all this, I want to show you all this in a real-life client example of mine, Amanda.

One of the hardest health and fitness goals can be to get toned. As a coach, women often come to me after a yo-yo weightloss journey but they still don’t have the muscle definition they want to support that toned look they desire. To achieve a toned body one will need to cycle through multiple phases of building muscle (one phase) and losing fat (a separate phase).

As humans, we are really good at excusing ourselves from doing the things that feel hard. Our human nature, in combination with our current busy lifestyle, double team us to make a decision that feels more comfortable and in turn steers us away from things that make us feel uncomfortable or that seem difficult. How do we train ourselves to stop making excuses that prevent us from achieving our goals? That’s what I’m gonna dive into.