A busy mother has revealed how a ‘slow and steady approach’ helped her dropped an astonishing 21kg and four dress sizes in under a year.
Perth mum Jodie Marah, 36, took stock of her situation when she was tipping the scales at 80kg in August last year, which she thought was too heavy for her petite 162cm frame.
‘Overweight and nearing obesity, I had to make a change,’ she posted on her Instagram and TikTok accounts.
‘Fine, I’ll do it myself’.
In a video shared to her social accounts in late October she revealed the five steps she took to achieve her incredible transformation.
A Perth mother has revealed how she managed to shed 21kgs in under a year by taking a ‘slow and steady’ approach
She said the most important step for her was learning to calorie count and sticking to a ‘calorie deficit intake’ meaning she ate fewer calories per day than she needed to maintain her current wake.
She admitted this process does not work for everyone but said it was main thing that helped her lose weight ‘for sure’.
‘I started tracking my maintenance calories, which are the calories needed to maintain your current weight,’ she in one social media post.
‘Once I knew them, I calculated my deficit calories, which is how much calories your body needs to sustain you but to also lose weight.
‘I also started weighing my food and tracking it in an app for convenience, as well starting to eat more protein and vegetables.’
Another important tip was ‘Go slow and set small goals’.
She said often people want to lose 10kg ‘immediately’ and could get discouraged but it was better to set achievable targets and work consistently towards them even just working in increments of losing one to two kilograms.
‘We really need to slow down and take it easy on ourselves especially if we want this to be a lifestyle change that we can maintain,’ she said.
‘I definitely felt more encouraged once I was losing those one or two kilos I felt good and I would reassess it and go now ‘I am going to lose another two kilos’.
Jodie said counting calories and cutting out snacks were two of the important ways she managed to trim down
She said the major hurdle she faced in reaching her goals was eliminating ‘midnight snacks’, particularly chocolate.
However, using the small goals approach once she achieved this she was able to cut out unhealthy snacking altogether.
Another thing she recommended was: ‘Finding exercise that you actually enjoy and changing the way you think about working out’.
‘I never thought I would like the gym, I thought ‘cardio, I hate that’ and I still hate cardio,’ she said.
But by trying other things she discovered she like resistance and mobility training.
The last bit of advice she gives is that you ‘still have to live you life’ meaning that it is OK to enjoy splurges.
To embrace this approach she recommended the 80/20 diet where careful calorie consumption is practiced 80 per cent of the time with the rest being a chance to ‘let yourself go’.
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