10 Daily Weight Loss Habits that Will Help You Lose 30lbs
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Hello everyone, welcome to DreamBodyAlchemy. I'm Melissa Valentine. We are going to be talking about 10 daily weight loss habits that can help you release 30 pounds. If you don't have a lot of these, the rest of it doesn't matter. So, number one, I'm going to talk about sleep. I know you've probably heard it a ton, but I want you to realize how important it is. And [00:01:00] it's even more important for women.
Women require eight to nine hours of sleep. I know you maybe heard seven to eight guys can handle less women need more for our hormones. And so that would be my number one question. When working with a client is how much sleep are you getting? Is it consistent and some things to help you get better?
foundation with your sleep, sleep is going to affect your hormones. Sleep is going to affect your cravings. Sleep is going to affect your ability to focus, how much energy you have. It's going to affect the cortisol, whether your body is going to store fat or not. It has a lot of. Touch points in our body that it is affecting.
So that was going to be number one. I saw a tip from Mel Robbins. It's called the three to one tip. And I think this is a good place to start. So three means no [00:02:00] eating three hours before bed. Two is no work two hours before bed and then one is no screen time one hour before bed Just to help you get get into a healthy place and rhythm for sleep another tip I would say on top of this tip is having no caffeine eight hours before you go to sleep.
I need to work on this a lot just because I tend to work out in the evenings and I will do a pre workout and I'll take caffeine. So right now going into 2024, one of my resolutions is prioritizing my sleep and re evaluating the importance of my actual workouts and getting in that pre workout.
Another thing that I would say is going off of sleep, but isn't directly related, is not hitting the snooze.
I used to talk about this all the time. I don't use a snooze because my body naturally wakes up really early. But I [00:03:00] do know people who are not getting enough sleep, who might not be morning people. Do everything you can. Actually, Don't do everything you can. Make it a non negotiable to get up when you need to get up and not give yourself that leeway because one thing that happens when you hit snooze is you do get a surge of cortisol and if you're hitting snooze more than once you are getting surges of cortisol and you're not able to get back into REM sleep anyway so you're not getting any benefit.
You're actually you're Reducing the amount of sleep you're getting, you're putting yourself into like a fight or flight, and you're probably going to wake up or feel more tired, because if you can get into a place where you naturally wake up, you will wake up with more clarity, you'll wake up with more aliveness, because if you are hitting the [00:04:00] snooze and then waking yourself up In a unnatural state, you're going to wake up in a place where you, no matter what, are going to feel groggy.
So if you just allow yourself to either wake up with your alarm and allow yourself to naturally get out of that grogginess, or if you can get to a place where you set up your Habits where you can naturally wake up without an alarm. That's probably the best case scenario But if you can't do that, just don't hit the snooze get up with your alarm Get up with the exact amount of time you need So that you get the absolute most sleep that you can and just realize if you're in the middle of a sleep cycle No matter how many times you hit snooze, you're not going to wake up feeling more refreshed So you might as well wake up now and just set your alarm for when you actually have to wake up.
number two habit cut sugar. Sugar is It's going to be the, probably the leading cause of gaining weight. It's going to make you feel like you have less [00:05:00] energy. And it's addictive. So getting sugar out of your diet as best as you can. And now, with one caveat, during that time of the month, PMS, our bodies are actually searching for certain nutrients, and you might crave chocolate, and if you are And again, whenever I'm telling you guys a tip, I am also talking to myself, is dark chocolate.
If you are someone who has cravings for chocolate during that time of the month, I would definitely say switch to a darker chocolate.
Give yourself that indulgence, but train yourself to appreciate more of the chocolate with less of the sugar. And milk because it's not we're not necessarily craving the sugar and milk what we might be But what our body is craving is going to be the chocolate so cut out sugar Leave yourself little treats You'll enjoy natural sugars more and you'll find that your energy is up higher.
It's better for your [00:06:00] skin It is better for your mood. So cut out that sugar and it's better for your waistline number three is going to be incorporating high intensity interval training.
And this is not something that I do on a regular basis. I'm kind of someone who focuses on it and then I kind of fall out of it. You don't want to actually be doing high intensity interval training every day. Having a daily workout routine that is more in align with your hormones is going to benefit you in the long run, but incorporating high intensity interval training,
The week before your period and the week after your period is going to be the best time to incorporate high intensity interval training. The reason why we want to incorporate it And if you don't know what it means, it means having intervals of higher intensity followed by intervals of slower intensity.
And what this allows you to do is it allows you to get your heart rate up. It allows you to tap into growth hormone. So high intensity interval training has been shown to [00:07:00] increase our growth hormone, which we want because it's going to allow us to put on more muscle. And as we get older, that is one of the main.
cursors to slowing our metabolism down and overall aging. So muscle is one of the best indicators of youth, of health, of vitality. And so we want to make sure that we are preserving our muscle to the best of our ability. \
Losing weight can sometimes feel a little. Vanity driven, which there's nothing wrong with that, especially if it is improving your self confidence and it's improving your health, but also having like understanding those other things those other benefits and for myself.
Having more youthful skin, just not necessarily trying to be younger. While I'm recording this podcast, I am 42. So I'm not trying to go back to my 20s, but I also want to look and feel my absolute best. I [00:08:00] want to incorporate habits that make me feel good in my body that give me more energy, but the benefit of also looking my best is something that's going to keep me Consistent and that's our main goal when you do high intensity interval training, it is going to help you increase your growth hormone, which is going to help you Increase your collagen maintain the collagen that you already have in Your skin and obviously collagen is one of the things that makes our skin more youthful Keeps it more vibrant and bouncy.
I think most of us want to hold on to that as long as possible. So high intensity interval training can help with that. It can also help with insulin, If we have insulin resistance, it's going to make us put on weight. It's going to make us more tired.
We're going to have cravings. It does affect the fat around our midsection. High intensity interval training, having shorter bursts, anywhere from 30 seconds, 45 seconds [00:09:00] of.
going all in and then resting or taking down that intensity. I like to do the elliptical. So I'll go as hard as I can on elliptical for 30 seconds and then rest for a minute. And when I mean rest, I mean just lowering the intensity so that my, I can breathe normally again. And then I have the energy, you know, you're doing it right if you're going as hard as you can and you can't really go any harder if you're going at an intensity that you can continue to do it for 10, 15 minutes, then you're no longer doing high intensity interval training.
You're just doing steady state and it's not going to give you the same results because even if you're working out hard and you're sweating, if you can do it for 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes straight, then it's not. High enough intensity you want a high enough intensity that you can only do it for again It could be 15 seconds.
It could be all the way up to 45 seconds a minute I like to do 30 [00:10:00] seconds and really challenge myself and then resting as long as you need I usually just double whatever I'm doing To allow myself to rest, but you might need to work up to this and I would say a good goal is anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes of high intensity interval training back and forth, any more than that, and you start to lose the benefits of the high intensity intervals.
And like I said, two weeks out of the month, not necessarily every other day, those other days. Moving your body, getting about 8, 000 steps is probably a decent goal to get, and that can just be walking, that can be moving throughout your day. It doesn't have to be a designated 30 minute session. It can be, but I've found that moving more throughout your day is going to be more beneficial.
The habit number four doing heavier lifting. So I know a lot of people will be focusing on cardio and they want to burn the calories [00:11:00] they ate there. Focusing on burning the fat that's already on their body, but I want you to get into a different mindset heading into 2024, if this is something that you were doing prior, is I want you to focus more on your metabolism and your long term goals, because your metabolism like I was talking about is what is going to help you maintain your muscle.
It is what is going to preserve your youth, your vitality, not just being as small as you can and trying to chase calories. If we are focusing on weightlifting more, it is going to help you In the long run, be able to one lose more weight because your muscle is what burns more calories. So we want to maintain that that is your furnace.
We want to ignite that we want that fire. And so then in the future, when you do eat you, you can eat more, and you don't have to think about it. So in my circumstances, when I was [00:12:00] younger. Like say 20 years ago when I was in my 20s, I would do up to 90 minutes of cardio because I just wanted to maintain my weight.
But what it did is it kept me from being able to put on the muscle I needed and if you're spending all that time doing cardio chasing after calories, you are going to affect your, muscle's ability to recover and repair from any weight training that you're doing.
I would suggest moving forward is focusing on anywhere from three to five strength training routines in your Exercise regimen. So again, it could be as little as two. So if you're just getting started, you could do two weight lifting sessions and move up to three, four or five. It also depends on your ability to recover.
How much sleep you're getting . So there's gonna be lots of different factors, but heavy weight lifting. And heavy, I would say [00:13:00] anywhere from eight to twelve reps. You can do less, you can do more. I'm not saying this is the only way to do it, but if you're getting into and you want to know how much is considered heavy, anywhere between eight and twelve reps where the last couple of reps is considered heavy.
challenging, but you can still be in good form. I know this might sound elementary to some people, but again, if you're someone who's trying to release weight and you have been plateaued, or you find that you're gaining more weight as you get older, a big part of it could be that you're not getting in the weight training.
Maybe you're doing too much cardio, you're not focusing enough on weight training, and maybe it's just not at a high enough intensity. Building Muscle is going to keep you. younger biologically and physically. So let's get in more strength training. I think it's 2024 is going to be less about getting thin and more about getting strong.
Now with [00:14:00] that being said, cause I know I might've just opened up a door. Lifting weights is not going to make you big and bulky. I have been lifting weights for most of my life, and I have never gotten big. I don't think anyone would ever say I'm big. It takes a lot of energy.
It takes outside supplements and resources. It takes a certain amount of testosterone, which most women do not have. . And to put on any kind of major mass, you need to be in a calorie. surplus. So if you are in a calorie deficit, which if you're trying to release weight, that's the number one habit.
I didn't put this in here, but I Feel like that's self explanatory, but if it's not, you want to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight. These are just habits that are going to help you do that. There's a whole, we could talk about exactly what you're eating and how much exercise and how many calories you need.
That's not exactly what we're going to be talking about here. These [00:15:00] are the other daily habits that are going to help you release that weight. But again, primary. goal is to be in a calorie deficit to release excess weight. . Number five, creatine. So I don't recommend a lot of supplements.
Please talk to your doctor. When I'm working with my clients one on one, when we're doing the one on one atmosphere, I do have a doctor that I work with and we go over labs and you can get very specific. So that information can be answered by a doctor, but creatine is relatively safe. It is highly Researched. And the amazing thing about creating is one, it's something that we already need in our bodies. We tend to not have enough of it, especially women. Especially women that are in menopause.
So creatine has a plethora of benefits, but for [00:16:00] you to release weight, it's going to help you with your performance. It's going to help you with recovery. It's going to help you put on more muscle. You're going to be able to lift more, have more energy.
All of these things are going to be vital if you're trying to release weight. The energy that you have to put towards it is going to be key. Creatine is relatively inexpensive, so you can give it a try. And some of the other extra added benefits is it helps in performance with like cognitive abilities.
So it's going to help you be more clear, more focused. It's going to basically help your body overall with performance .
Like I said, as we get older, it is harder to put on muscle and we lose muscle, especially if we're not doing anything like weight training to build it and maintain it. Creatine is just that little added bonus that Women, especially in menopause, can benefit from because it's already a little bit harder for us to put [00:17:00] on muscle or a lot bit harder.
So that extra boost can help you stay lean, can help you lose weight as you enter a different chapter of your life. I could not go through this 10 daily weight loss habits without talking about protein. So we are talking about how you have to be in a calorie deficit to release weight.
That's just thermal dynamics. That is something that doesn't have to be huge. I would say in some of my other podcasts, I'll be talking about how slow and steady is the most optimal thing you can do when releasing weight and keeping it off permanently. So you don't have to be in a huge calorie deficit, but increasing your protein is going to help you in a few different ways.
One, it's going to support your muscle growth. Again, muscle helps with your metabolism. Your metabolism is probably the most important next to being in a calorie deficit to lose weight and keep it off. So we want to be healthy. supporting [00:18:00] that muscle growth, supporting the muscle maintenance while we are in that weight loss phase.
It also is going to keep you more satisfied. So when you're eating foods, if you're eating foods that don't have protein in them, you're going to want more, you're going to be hungry sooner. So we want to not necessarily be so focused on how many calories we're consuming. That is very, very important. It's actually really important, but if we're eating the right things, if we're consuming the right nutrition, we are giving ourselves the nutrients we need, we won't need as many calories to feel satisfied.
And the third reason is, protein is going to burn more calories per gram. So, when you eat things like carbs and fat, you're not going to burn as many calories breaking those down and utilizing the nutrients as you are protein.
So, when you incorporate more protein, it takes your body more calories to break it down. It all adds up. Number [00:19:00] seven. Fasting. Now this can be a controversial topic. I'm going to make it a little less controversial because I want most of these tips to be things that the majority of my audience can take away.
And so when I talk about the majority of my audience, I am referring to Guys can use all these tips too, but my main demographic that I am wanting to connect with is women. And so when we talk about fasting, fasting can be great. Not necessarily so you're in a calorie deficit, but that can help because if you're controlling when you're eating your calories, it's a lot easier to control what you're eating when you have a frame of when you're going to be doing that by.
But the other thing is, that fasting has been shown to help with regulating blood sugar and insulin. So if you can regulate your insulin and your blood sugars, that is going to help you [00:20:00] release weight. There is this whole other part where if you are giving yourself a window where you aren't eating, you're also freeing up that energy.
So that your body can do other things like focus more on detoxing, healing, recovering. That's what they call rest and digest. So when we're sleeping, our body is resting. When we're sleeping, our body is recovering. And part of that is, ideally, if you took my Habit number one, and you're not eating three hours before sleep.
You're starting that process sooner, but when we're not digesting, we're allowing those resources to go to other parts of our body to heal and recover. And so that is another benefit of fasting. One parameter that I have for women that's more of a generality, but again, you can speak to your doctor on this, or if you're working with me, you can speak to the team.
12 hours is a good place to start. It's relatively safe. Can you do more? [00:21:00] Yes. I hear other doctors talk about doing a 16 hour window where you're not eating. But just to play it safe, just as a place to start off with, 12 hours I think is a good place to start. Because if you're not eating 3 hours before bed, and then you're sleeping 8 hours, math, then you only need one hour after waking up when you would begin eating again.
Number eight. This one isn't necessarily a daily.
Habit, but there's something called an exit strategy.
So if you are in a diet You are, in some sort of calorie deficit. You don't want to go from a calorie deficit to go back to what you're eating. But you also don't want to stay in what you consider a calorie deficit.
There is a period where your hormones are going to be Somewhat dysregulated because anytime you're in a diet is going to affect your cortisol. Your metabolism [00:22:00] is going to be a little bit slower. Your energy might be affected. Your mindset might be affected. So there is a period where you want to go from your calorie deficit.
To a maintenance plan and that is what I call the exit strategy because if you just Stop from your diet your hormones are going to try to get you to eat more You are going to be hungrier.
We want to go to a place where we Somewhat manipulate the system so our hunger hormones go back to normal so that we increase your metabolism. We want to get your hunger hormones in a place where your body isn't trying to get you to, to gain that weight. I know this from, personal experience. Now this is extreme, but I did a water fast in the mountains of Costa Rica. And I did it for a month and it was actually a, healing [00:23:00] thing.
So I, I was there to heal some issues. I'm not recommending this, just putting that out there. But this is something I did and it was supervised. And so I went and I did this. Waterfast for about a month in Costa Rica came back and I could not get. satisfied. I was so hungry all of the time and I did put the weight back on
I was lifting weights when I got back. I was weak as heck. I remember actually being in the airport. Understanding that I just went through a water fast, not understanding how weak I was, because even with the water fast, we still did like a few days where we slowly reintroduced food.
And I went to go put my luggage up. above the seat and almost took myself out and a couple people around me and I had to have someone like reach in and put it up. I'm like, Oh my God, I'm really, really embarrassed. That's usually pretty easy for me, but I digress. I did put [00:24:00] the muscle back on, but I also put on that relatively quickly and I was really hungry all the time and I could not turn that off.
So you want to have a plan going into your exit strategy. If that is, that is probably one of the best reasons. to not only get support on your journey, but also have that aftercare of someone who understands what you need to do so that you're not one of these people who loses the weight, goes off of the diet, puts the weight on plus some, then tries to lose weight again, and puts the weight on plus some.
Because what's happening is each time you go through a round of being on a diet, you are slowing your metabolism, you are losing muscle. And if you're not having an exit strategy, your metabolism might stay. So you are gaining more weight quicker and you don't have the muscle so you don't have that ability to eat as much either.
Number [00:25:00] nine, we want to go slower. So the habit, the daily habit I want you to think of is this isn't a race. This is a destination. So your habit should be how slow can I go how much can I eat? While I release weight for all of the reasons I talked about if you're eating if you're trying to release weight too fast That's not a daily habit, right? That is I'm gonna do this now and then I'm gonna do something later I'm going to make progress now and then I'm going to go into a more lifestyle approach, but it doesn't really work that way.
Anything that you're doing too extreme, cutting calories too much, cutting too many food groups out, working out more than you feel is sustainable. Long term is going to one negatively affect your hormones and your metabolism, but it's also going to affect your mindset. I have a lot of people that I talk to that are all or nothing, and [00:26:00] they don't really, they've never cultivated that moderation, and so they're either all in or they're all out.
And so if you think in those terms, that is the results you're going to get. You're either going to be all in or all out. So it is best to take your time, make these new habits, tweak them as you go, and don't worry about the person who's losing 10 pounds in a week. A lot of that is water. Some of that might be muscle.
It is not fat. Maybe they pooped more because they changed something in their diet. All I'm saying is we want to think about our long term goals so that we have long term results. And number 10, the habit we want to incorporate daily. So that it will help us lose 30 pounds, or 20 pounds, or 10 pounds, or 60 pounds, is we need an identity shift.
You need to step into the [00:27:00] identity of the person who is in her dream body. You need to step into the identity of someone who works out every day. You, you need to step into and claim the identity of someone who is healthy. You need to step into the identity of someone who eats dark chocolate during the day.
their period and not a bag of Kit Kats. Again, talking to myself. We want to step into that identity of someone who is disciplined, who shows up for themselves, who goes to bed at 9 o'clock. You want to step into the identity of someone who gets up when the alarm goes off. Who lifts weights three times a week, no matter what, even if it's for 10 minutes, even if I can't get my 60 minute workout in, I am the person who shows up at least for 10 minutes because that is who I am.
I am the person who doesn't drink during the week. It's just [00:28:00] who I am because I have goals. I am the person. When I say I'm going to do something, I do it. I'm the person who looks for solutions rather than problems. You need to have an identity shift. Because if there's anything in your life, and yes, this is where the tough love comes in, if there's anything in your life that you desire that you don't already have, it is because you don't align with that identity.
And so we have to figure out who do you need to be? How would that person feel? How is that person showing up? How is that person responding, not reacting to the challenges that are in front of them? Are they someone who uses excuses? And yes, we all have situations that make things hard. I'm not saying that, but what I am saying, is if you can get to a place where you can shift your identity to the person who already has this, to the person who's already fit, to the [00:29:00] person who does hit every other week, to the person who doesn't indulge in excessive amounts of sugar or alcohol or drugs or distractions like YouTube or Reels or TikToks If you're the person who doesn't plop themselves on the couch and watch three hours of TV back to back to back.
Not that you can't do that here and there, but if you can become the person, who is that? Is that someone in your life? Do you have a role model? Do you have someone who's already living this way? Can you step into their persona? Were you this version of yourself at one point? How can you get back to that?
Write down what would I do? How would I feel? What would my goals be? How would I respond to things? This is something that I also do with my clients. Where we tap into who they are meant to be. Who they would need to be to take on this new role in their [00:30:00] life. For me. This is basically my life mission.
If you know anything about human design, I'm a 2'6 So I'm a hermit and a natural for part of my life. So basically I'm just meant to do what naturally comes natural to me. It's also known as the dancer, and I'm, I love to dance, just naturally. I'm not, I'm not someone who likes to teach as much as I like to just move naturally.
But I'm also the six, which is the role model. Basically, my, my life's mission is to become the ideal person that I would have wanted in my life when I was younger. This is my mission. This is who I am. Who are you? Who are you meant to be? So with my clients, we tap into that. Whether they have this idea of what they want to create in their life and who they would need to be.
Or if we go into tools like the gene keys and human design that gives them some more ideals. And then we wire that in. [00:31:00] Because your identity is just a character. It's just an avatar that you decided to play. And you can rewire that out. There's other things I talk about, like, your identity can't be manifested if you don't have the energy that's aligned with that manifestation. You can make this shift. Now, you don't have to wait to become this version. You don't have to do anything. This is about being first and then doing.
And then you can have all the things you want in 2024.
If you guys have an inkling to find out more about what I do, I will leave some links below in the ways that you can work with me. One of the best ways you can work with me is the Aligned Body Awakening, which is my group experience where we go through and we create your whole strategy that is in alignment with your hormones, It helps ignite your metabolism and your energetics,
[00:32:00] how do you rewire your beliefs and your thoughts? How do you release? Parts, conflicts, or self sabotage and how do you step into that identity, and then I also have my one on one, the Dream Body Alchemist, we do this work together.
And that is how you get the fastest, most permanent, most aligned results. I hope you guys have a great day. Check out these other videos and I will see you guys next Wednesday. Bye.
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