I lost 35 pounds (15.8 kg) in 2 months and have kept it off for a year and a half 
I learned quite a few valuable lessons while losing the extension on my physical being.
Here it is summed up for you:
Well first, I’ll tell you why crash diets don’t work…
1. Sustainability
So you want to lose 10 pounds in 5 days? Drink this liquid diet or take this pill.
You will lose the weight but here’s the thing you will gain it all back the next two – four weeks.
Why? Because there is no sustainability…You can’t stay eating an adrenal stressing metabolism booster or liquid diet your whole life!
Not if you want to live a healthy lifestyle anyway that is a recipe for an eating disorder.
Plus if you are eating the right foods you can have as many as you want! Who would EVER want to calorie restrict?
Therefore rule number one when approaching weight-less is this:
Could I eat this food for the rest of my life and it make me healthy?
Yup, it is that simple and that much of a commitment. Well if you want the change to last anyway…
Another great thing to look at is removing yourself from any stigmas to getting involved with diet/nutrition religion.
That’s right these days it seems if you want to be a healthy eater you automatically have to convert to some sort of eating religion!
Are you vegan, raw food, paleo, green juicer, whole food, vegetarian…and the list goes on….
I am part of a liberating new “sect” of nutrition I have deemed the name >>> No Name Nutrition.
I eat what is best for my body and what my body accelerates to. I am not strictly a part of any diet religion. I am eating what my body calls me to, what is provided by nature. Right now it is all mostly raw or steamed vegetables, no wheat-dairy or meat and lots of fresh fruits. BUT if your body calls you to have small portions of any animal products then do so to the call of your spirit (making sure that all of the practices with the animals are ethical of course which I’m sure I will get some sort of backlash for even calling eating animal products ethical). My point is nutrition is different for everyone, as long as it is Non-GMO and clean of pesticides, herbicides and artificial hormones to help ease the burden of toxins on your body-Then I say to each his own!
Which brings me to my next point…
2. Self Motivation
When you decide to change your outward physical appearance it has to be self-motivated.
You have to do it because you want to FEEL your best.
You have to do it because the person you want to undress for and look good naked for, is you and you alone.
You will want to get up and sweat, you will choose consciously the apple over the cookie. No diet or person told you to lose weight, you aren’t doing it because some sign, magazine model or advertisement told you to…you are choosing it for yourself.
AND for when motivation isn’t enough there is always education…
3. Know What Your Cravings are Actually Telling You
You may not be getting enough nutrients.
Many cravings you experience your body is simply nutrient deficient and is craving for foods that the tongue was trained to help you attain those exact key nutrients from.
For example:
A craving for salty food could be a nutritional need for more minerals. Add things like Himalayan salt, which is richer in every way comparatively to the nutrition devoid white, refined table salt, can boost your mineral reserves. Sea vegetables, kelp chips and nori are packed with minerals. Hemp and chia seeds are also tiny power house mineral-rich foods to put in smoothies. If you don’t have time for a smoothie drop a teaspoon of chia seeds in your water bottle with a squeeze of lemon or lime! Instant salty palate pleaser!
A craving for sugar is often your brain looking for energy, the brain uses sugar or glucose for energy. So do the most basic and fundamental parts of you such as your mitochondria which produces energy on a cellular level. When we starve the brain from carbohydrates and healthy fats we are starving our nervous system and body from running optimally! These carbohydrates I have mentioned are the healthy ones of course such as fresh fruits and vegetables like potatoes. As well the healthy fats in like in nuts seeds, coconuts and avocados.
As a side note I have also noticed that lack of sleep amplifies food cravings probably because your body has not had time to assimilate enough nutrients for the day. Another thing to check in on is craving food because of processing deep emotions….
4. How’s Your Emotional Health
I never realized how significant this one is.
So much of my past was released and realized through changing my vibration through food.
Food specially clean food from the earth offers it’s vibration to you. Keep this in mind, you may remember the saying “You are what you eat” (A little redundant but) let me put a crunchy hippie spiritual and scientific twist on it. Not only are you assimilating the nutrients but you are absorbing the energetic vibration. Which I will have to get into the scientific proponents to this one in another writing.
If you are bombarded by stress, anger, shame guilt, your body creates fat to protect you! Unresolved emotional stress is a significant cause of extra body fat. Your body fat is a slave to your emotional response system or stress hormones. By healing your emotional wounds you then give way to allowing the extra weight to finally be released. I will tell you why physiologically:
There are two hormone ques in your body:
Cortisol and Human Growth Hormone
Cortisol is released when you are stressed.
Cortisol tells your body to store fat and decrease muscle; whereas, Human Growth Hormone which is released when you are emotionally balanced, tells the body to let go off fat and increase muscle.
How are your stress coping skills? Have you learned to recognize certain destructive thought patterns that may be stemming from a belief that now longer serves you? Are you able to love yourself unconditionally?
5. Unconditional Love
Here is THE BIGGEST LESSON I learned about losing weight in a healthy way.
You have to love and accept the way you are right now.
Here’s the thing.
If you keep saying to yourself that happiness is in that other physically fit/thin version of you, it is not.
I have seen so many people lose all of the weight thinking that they would be happy with their new physical self but when they reach their goal weight still have some areas they are not happy about or self-conscious about.
The mind and soul are not altered in the weight losing process. You have to start loving yourself now.
Another reason to start loving yourself now is, if you’re eating right and exercising moderately or even a lot and not seeing the results.
I remember when I started this process I would take an expo dry erase pen and write on my mirror: You are beautiful! I love you right now, just the way you are!
Picture yourself happy and healthy now.
This was the alchemy that was the catalyst to true lasting change.
You are not this body.
You are not your skin.
You are the beautiful healthy shining soul that lay within.
Namaste, we are one.
~ Jocelyn
