You Will Believe it When You See it
I am sure many of you can remember that time when you were younger, just starting out on your journey to financial independence. You “kind of” knew how much your income was, and you “kind of” knew how much you were spending each month. However, your monthly credit card bill was growing bigger and bigger. You were so certain that you were not spending money on any big or unnecessary things…until you sat down and went through every single item on three months’ worth of credit card bills, and you realized how many unnecessary purchases you’d actually made. When you subtracted your expenses from your income, you discovered that each month you were actually draining your savings by $500. You wouldn’t have believed it until you saw it with your own eyes.
The same concept applies to my clients when we get to the Nutrition part of the Heavenly Body Formula. This is what approximately 70% of my clients say: “I eat healthily.” “I barely eat anything.” “I only eat salads and fish or chicken for lunch and dinner.” And yet, they have been trying to lose weight for 5–10 years (before starting Heavenly Body coaching), without any success. I tell them to track everything they eat for one week, and I remind them that they MUST be truthful — otherwise, they will waste their money, their time, and their effort toward getting the body they want.
Every single client who’d made the aforementioned claims was completely shocked at how many extra, unnecessary calories she was adding every single day. I am going to give just one example. One client was trying to lose weight, so at the beginning, we needed to establish her calorie account (how many calories in and how many calories out). She was very knowledgeable about healthy food, and I would say that 90 % of her diet was made up of healthy foods — including her daily desk and car snack, which she really loved: Inner Peas (Delicate, Crunchy, Baked Green Pea Snack). However, when we actually listed out her food consumption on paper in numbers, she had a big “aha” moment. The caloric value of one serving of Inner Peas is 130 calories, which is perfectly fine. But she didn’t realize that a whole bag contains 3.5 servings, which means a whole bag is a whopping 455 calories! And here is the kicker. Since the snack is so addictive, it is really hard not to finish a whole bag: “It is healthy, the bag is small, and they are peas, not chips!” Every day, she had one bag that she finished at work, and then she had one in the car while driving back home. So, with those two bags a day of supposedly-health-conscious snacks, she was adding an unnecessary 910 calories to her daily calorie income! By the end of the week, she was adding an extra 6,370 calories!!
To put it into perspective, you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in, to lose one pound of weight. This translates into a reduction of 500 calories per day to lose one pound in a week. So instead of being in a 3,500-calorie deficit (because she wanted to lose weight), she was adding an unnecessary 6,370 calories into her calorie account every week. She wouldn’t have believed it until she saw it because, as I said, she usually ate so healthily.
I want to let you know that I am not a “calorie chaser” or the “calorie police.” I absolutely dislike checking and counting my calorie intake, because I believe it is another reason why a strict diet with a set caloric intake doesn’t work. Our mind is not designed to stay too long under the calorie counting pressure. I am even against food journals (but that’s just me; as I always say, I need my freedom) because they also take time and introduce some pressure. However, it is necessary to look at numbers in the beginning, just like when you needed to figure out how much money was coming in and going out of your bank account if you wanted to pay off your debt and start saving money for the future. Once you had your amounts listed out, you didn’t need to be constantly checking and counting every single bill or purchase.
The same is true of your calorie account, especially if you want to lose weight. But all you need is to make sure that your calories-in number (food) is smaller than your calories-out number (your basal metabolic rate + exercise). Don’t worry if you realize you have been over your calorie budget without knowing it. I have done it too, with my beloved almonds. I was snacking on them because they are healthy, easy to grab, and crunchy. Yet, I was also adding almost an extra 1000 calories to my daily calorie budget.
So, we all do it. However, the most important thing is to find the leak and fix it, instead of just accepting the lie that you will never be rich and you will never have a body you are proud of.
You know you can, and you will if you want to!
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If you are seriously ready to get the body you have always wanted, email me: heavenlybodyafter40@gmail.com
