What’s the Secret to My 5 Stone Weight Loss?

Whenever I tell people about my 5 stone weight loss, someone always asks, ‘what’s your secret? How did you do it?’

There’s no magic pill. No single thing that worked. I can give a list of the elements that when combined led to my weight loss; walking, eating home-cooked meals, habits, no snacking etc, but without the final ingredient, there would’ve been no weight loss.

And that important ingredient is making my food choices a priority.

I prioritised my health. Perhaps it’s an unpopular opinion, but weight loss is bound to fail if you don’t put it front and centre in your life. What does this mean in practice?

Time to cook

Prioritising healthy eating means taking the time to cook with real ingredients from scratch as much as possible.

Let’s address the time factor first. I often hear friends and colleagues say they don’t have time to cook proper meals from scratch and live on bowls of pasta and sandwiches instead.

I’m willing to bet that time is not the real issue, but priorities. They’re placing value on other areas of their lives. As well as not prioritising their meals, they might have a few assumptions about cooking from scratch.

They may believe that cooking meals takes too long. They lack the energy to even open the kitchen cupboard after a long day at work. They assume you need to be a skilled chef to cook from scratch.

All of these are assumptions are untrue. Most of the meals I make take between 15 and 30 minutes to prepare and cook. There’s a whole host of 15-minute meal recipes online if you look.

We’ve all felt too tired at the end of a long day. The odd time you order a takeaway or skip a proper meal in favour of a round of toast or a ready-meal from the freezer is not going to waylay your weight loss or health goals in the long-term. But doing this every day will.

And often when you ditch the processed / low nutritional value foods, your energy increases. You just have to begin.

I don’t cook fancy meals. When I’m really pushed for time, I’ll throw protein (beans, lentils, Quorn or fish) together with three types of vegetables and add a small portion of grains (usually quinoa or brown rice occasionally). Or I’ll chuck tinned tomatoes, beans, herbs, vegetables and stock in one pan to create a handy one-pot meal that I can freeze in portions for other days.

Yes, sometimes I roll my eyes at the thought of cooking and the washing up involved, but these days I’m so used to cooking something on most days that I allocate time without realising it. It’s become a habit.

Stop relying on junk / processed food

If you were to look in my kitchen cupboards the closest to junk / processed food you’d find are Quorn nuggets and tins of baked beans. I don’t have junk food in the house so I’m forced to cook from scratch.

Instead, I have whole ingredients that I can throw together quickly and that will nourish me. I’ve been reducing my meat consumption for the past three years and now tend to have meat for special occasions like Christmas and Easter or the odd meal out. These foods have less cooking time than meat.

When I cook I rarely cook for one meal. I might batch cook to save me slaving over an oven every week-night. Or, if I’m making veggies for lunch, I’ll also cook some quinoa and add extra veggies for dinner later that day. Cooking one of two ingredients at the same time for different meals saves so much hassle.

I eat a lot of vegetables, wholegrains like porridge, quinoa and brown rice, fruit, legumes, fish and beans. These foods are either fresh, dried, or in the case of the beans, often tinned. They have no nasty additives aside from perhaps a preserving agent for the tins.

Of course, I use the odd curry sauce from a jar to make a lentil curry sometimes, but I make sure to choose the sauce with ingredients I recognise, like tomatoes, onions and spices.

Even when you’re on the go, most shops sell healthier portable food choices like nuts and dried fruit, wraps, fruit and veggie crisps for those times when you can’t prepare your own meals.

Since eating in this way I’ve seen my energy levels skyrocket now that my body has lost the sluggishness brought about by additives, salt and sugar found in more processed foods.

The biggest factor in my weight loss journey has been consistently prioritising my food choices. There will always be times when I can’t stick to my ideal eating plan, but I’ll always get back on track the next day.

Sometimes this will be hard. We’ll face choices like cooking instead of sitting on the sofa or scrolling through Instagram. We’ll prepare a packed lunch instead of grabbing a takeaway coffee and panini.

But it’s worth it in the long run.

Image credit: "The concept of weight loss: the green apples and a glass of water with a measuring tape on black background" by wuestenigel is licensed under CC BY 2.0