7 Simple Tips for Managing Weight and Energy Naturally

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Life often gets in the way of other plans… like when you plan to slim down for summer, special events, or just because you’re like me, carrying around an extra 50 lbs after having your second baby.

While you may emotionally have accepted your extra baggage and learned to love your body through it… there is no doubt that those thoughts in the back of your mind creep up to remind you that the extra weight is taking its toll on your knees, ankles, and feet every time you take the dogs for a walk.

It is difficult, especially as a work from home, homeschooling mom to push through losing weight, especially during stressful family seasons.

Here, we’ve compiled 7 of the simplest tips for helping you on your weight loss journey, that I’m personally having success with, after spending 2 years with stubborn weight.

1. Quality Sleep

Sleep. It is one of those things that for parents is often elusive… but a lack of it may very well be an important factor to weight gain, or your body resisting your efforts to trim down.

I get it… after 6 years of not sleeping through the night, I know how difficult achieving quality sleep can be. While you can’t force the kids to stop having needs in the middle of the night, you can do little things to help promote the quality of sleep you experience when you’re able to.

2. Healthy Breakfasts

Starting your day off right with a healthy breakfast is important to providing you with energy, focus, stamina, and maintaining a strong immune system.

Unfortunately the Western diet here in the US is heavy in sugar, resembling dessert more than breakfast. Ditching breads, cereals, and pastries (or not eating at all) is an excellent new habit to strive for. Something high in protein, fiber, and vitamins would be a much better idea.

3. Drink plenty of water

One sign of stubborn weight is actually dehydration.

I found this odd when first diving into research because of my Navy days. Twice a year everyone in the military is weighed and measured to ensure their bodies are within a set of standards. This brings out some of the worst dietary body harming practices I’ve ever seen. Many people dehydrate themselves as much as possible, even wrapping their bodies in plastic wrap, sitting in saunas, and working out hard core to sweat out as much of their body fluids as possible… all to lose a quick 5 lbs. While it often does work, it isn’t sustainable at all, nor is it healthy.

While many people see water weight as a bad thing… it really isn’t. Our bodies are mostly made of water. We need consistent replenishments of water to survive, to be healthy, and to flush out the yuck. Drinking water is absolutely needed for flushing your kidneys and liver, cleansing your body and supporting your lymphatic system.

Sadly, a lot of people gain their water intake through drinking soda, coffee, tea, and other flavored drinks. This is not the water intake you want because it comes with other additives that are not health-promoting at all. In fact, most of these additives will hinder your overall wellness AND cause weight gain.

If you don’t like the water taste, you can opt to add a couple of drops of a high-quality food-grade essential oil in a teaspoon of local unfiltered honey and add that to a glass of water. This will help flavor your water in a healthy manner. My favorite oils to add to this are citrus oils like lemon and orange. Just make sure you don’t fall victim to the dirty little secrets in the essential oil industry, and make sure what you’re buying is actually an essential oil.

4. Move your body

While it’s not important to suddenly develop a Cross Fit obsession, it is important to move your body.

Losing weight after our first baby was easy and simple. We ate Paleo (aside from ice cream at night), and we took long family walks every afternoon, which was an incredibly easy thing to do with living in Rhode Island for that summer. Within our 6 month stay, I was down from 150 lbs to 130 and feeling energetic enough to chase around and keep up with my energetic 1-year-old.

I remember a few years back I was taking a yoga class with my local community college. While I had to adapt most of the poses to keep me safe in case of seizures, I ended up unintentionally dropping two pant sizes during that August to December semester.

Weight lifting may help. Cross Fit may help. Running will help. Yoga will help. Walking will help. How is less important than just getting up and moving.

5. Accountability Partners

Accountability partners seem to be crucial for everything… whether you’re wanting to lose weight, eat healthier, drink healthier, scale a business, rock a promotion, or enhance your skills with a hobby.

In fact, I took a certification course a couple of years ago to become an accountability coach where I learned that people who have or employ an accountability partner are 65% more likely to not quit their goals, and 95% more likely to accomplish them in the timeline they initially set.

6. Cut Your Sugar/Junk Cravings with A Gut Health Regimen

I was one of those people who loved a nice bowl of ice cream or cheesecake every night about an hour after dinner. In fact, for nearly 10 years, that was my routine with my husband… we would finish our dinner, relax for about an hour, and indulge in something sugary. Sometimes just as a nice treat, other times to “eat our feelings.” While we didn’t gain much weight from it, looking back I see it really wasn’t healthy for us.

After having 2 kids, everything changed. We don’t indulge in much junk food, but our nightly dessert habits definitely weren’t helping any with supporting my body in losing the 50 lbs that stuck on me after our second baby. Within 12 months of having our first child, I was back in my pre-pregnancy sizes and really proud of myself. 24 months after baby #2… I was still 50 lbs over my pre-pregnancy weight… even with drinking tons of water, exercising, and all the other nontoxic tricks.

Then… I learned more about gut health. This helped me realize a lot about why I healed my chronic autoimmune health crisis by embracing the Paleo diet. Gut health is so important to our overall wellness… and having a poor gut bacteria ratio can impact our food cravings, drink cravings, moods, weight, physical health, mental health, and more.

What I’ve noticed switching to a strict Paleo diet, was within 30 days I had no desire for sugar. I used the 30-Day Guide To Paleo Cooking to help us get started because it offers a fantastic meal plan to help give us ideas through that month while holding us accountable. The authors in that book provide meal planning and shopping lists for 3 meals a day for the entire 30-day period. I was surprised to see at the end of the 30 days, I had lost a small amount of weight, but I felt much better and no longer craved chips or any other snacks. I was perfectly happy with an extra dose of veggies in the afternoon.

Of course, within a year of going Paleo and healing my autoimmune mess, during our first pregnancy we fell back on the bandwagon of our nightly ice cream treats. The rest of our diet was clean eating and healthy, so we didn’t think much of it. When I was diagnosed with Systemic Candida during my second pregnancy, we needed a way to heal gently. I opted for a high-quality probiotic, prebiotic, and vitamin C regimen that worked wonders.

My sugar cravings dissipated to the point where I no longer even craved having ice cream after dinner to “eat my feelings” on particularly stressful bedtime routine nights. My husband was a bit shocked… but we learned that was the one thing that started my journey to losing that extra 50 lbs.

7. Products you put on your body…

It sounds weird, I know… but it’s true. So many products we find at local and online retail stores are filled with harmful chemicals that absorb through our skin and our lungs at an alarming rate. Most of these chemicals are not friendly to your body and can cause a whole host of problems including autoimmune issues, neurological problems, behavioral issues, infertility or birth defects, cardiovascular problems, hormone problems, and more.

Often while your body tries to figure out what to do with them, they’re stored in our fat cells, making losing that fat seemingly impossible. Then when you do start to lose weight through improving gut health and flushing your body with extra water, you end up feeling dizzy and nauseous and assume the regimen isn’t working or worth it. This is normal. When those chemicals are dislodged from our fat cells when we are burning that fat, they have to take their course through your body to exit through your pores or lower digestive system. It isn’t comfortable, but it is necessary for long-term health and consistent weight loss.

If you continue to use products laden with harmful chemicals, you will continually be replenishing the fat cell toxin load, making trimming down impossible.

If you remove these harmful products from your daily routines and replace them with safe options that don’t contain those 2,500 harmful (yet common) chemicals, then our weight loss will be more permanent and less stubborn.

I have a whole course, A Healthier Home For A Happier Life, that I invite you to take that covers the information I found through continually researching this topic since 2013. I do provide individual and group coaching on this topic too, if you feel you’d benefit from some guidance on ditching household toxins, please let me know!

Related posts I know you’ll love:

• But you don’t look sick: A Journey Living Through Autoimmune Disease
• What No One Tells You About Life After Autoimmune Recovery
• My Journey Defeating Candida, The Healthy Way
• There Is Always Purpose To Your Pain

Looking for more info about adopting a healthier lifestyle? Check out our online courses or my home business opportunity centered around maximizing your physical and mental health.

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