MY WEIGHT LOSS JOURNEY | How I Transformed My Life In 6 Months | Weight Loss Vlog Day In The Life

This was me on November 1st, 2022, when I decided to go on a six-month health journey. This is what I did. Each day I followed this checklist I had saved in my notes, starting with waking up early. I made sure to drink mineral water every day. Stay within a slight calorie deficit with my macros. Go for a walk or a run outside even through the entire winter. I would work out four to five times a week. Spend time daily reading, journaling, and meditating. Improving my sleep habits by getting at least eight hours of sleep a night. And cutting any negativity out of my life. This video is what a typical day on this journey has looked like for me. I try to wake up at least one hour before my kids so during the week I shoot for at least 6 30 but sometimes a little earlier. I'll make my greens drink. These are my favorite phytonutrients with reds, greens, and golds. And then I'll turn on some kind of calming meditation music while I do some stretches and do my five minutes of focused meditation. A quote I read at the beginning of my journey was, visualize your highest self and start showing up as her. So I would spend a few minutes doing this. If I were truly at my highest potential, who would I be? What decisions would I make each day? This is something I would never skip. You become your thoughts. So if you can retrain your mind to be positive about yourself, this can help you overcome so many obstacles. Then I'll spend a few minutes in gratitude. I'll focus on people in my life and think of all of the abundant blessings I've received. This is just such a great way to start the day with a positive mindset. Since I began this journey in November, it's been winter basically the entire time. We had the strangest winter this year and still had three to six feet of snow in mid-April. So it's only been the last two weeks or so that I've been able to come out on my patio and enjoy some of my morning routine here. I will write in my journal and this one has been my favorite because it has daily prompts. I got this a few months ago, but if you filled it out every single day, it's exactly six months of journaling. So this would be perfect for anyone else on this journey. This is a book I can't recommend enough. I had aha moments on nearly every single page. You want to wear this? You will only wear Buzz, huh? All right, here we go. What happened? Did you spill? Now I'm just sharing a little bit of my morning routine. My boys are up so I get them ready for school while doing some dishes or cleaning other areas of my house. If my husband's home, this is when I like to go for a walk or a run. And now that it's spring here, we like to go for walks in the evening as a family. Don't underestimate what walks can do for you. If you do nothing else today, go for a walk. I'm about to make my French toast for breakfast. So I know I've shown you guys this already, this recipe many times. All I do is I have four egg whites right here. I'm going to mix in a scoop of this is the Clean Simple Eats cake batter protein powder. So I'll do a full scoop of that. And then I will mix this together and dip all of my slices of bread into this mixture. This will limit the calories because I'm not using the full egg for this recipe and I'm using way less calorie bread. So this is only 45 calories. This is a super high protein meal. And honestly, if you can just find recipes that you already love and make them healthier or just like less calories, less fat, more protein, then that's really how you stick to this long term. I like to watch some kind of inspiring video during breakfast. So if I'm on YouTube and I see a video that I want to watch, I'll save it to my watch later playlist and I will watch it during my breakfast. I've kind of made this one meal a special occasion for me each day. I make sure to handle any business I need with the kids before. So I'm not being interrupted during this time. I'm going to chat with you guys for just a minute about supplements. I know this is a question a lot of people ask during the journey is what kind of supplements are you using? Do you use pre-workout? I get those questions all the time. If you have no interest in this topic, skip ahead to this time and you just don't have to listen to this. So as far as supplements go, I basically get all of my supplements from the same company. My greens, reds and golds that I took this morning, what I have found with those, not only do I know that it's just supplementing me with a ton of phytonutrients that I know that my body's lacking. I have found when I take those first thing in the morning, I don't necessarily crave sugar throughout the day. And I can say this because when I miss taking those, I can feel a difference. The greens were out of stock for a while. And so I felt like I kind of struggled while those were out of stock. I always make sure I have extra just in case that happens again, because those are super popular. Everybody loves those and they taste super good. If you mix the three together, they taste like a berry drink. If you just have the greens, it's going to taste really green like any other greens. If you've ever had greens before, it kind of tastes like you're drinking celery or broccoli. It's not the best flavor, but the reds make it taste so good. I do take a multivitamin every day and I just get their pack of vitamins. So I'll show you that in a second. Moving on to my collagen. So this is something I take twice a day. I do take this one in the evening before bed. And I take this one sometime in the morning. It's way more than just something for your skin. Collagen is actually the largest protein in our body. And as we get into our mid to late twenties, our bodies slowly stop producing it. And that is why you start seeing fine lines and wrinkles on your skin. Now there's other things that are obviously happening internally. They've had third party testing done. They were able to prove that within 28 days, your hyaluronic acid, which is the moisture in your skin, will increase by 6,000%. So that alone right there is pretty impressive. I did a 12 week before and after picture. I'll actually include it right here where you can see what it did to my skin. I always have acne, always. And since I've been on this, it's very, very rare for me to even get some kind of pimple. So that's something that I really love. It also helps with joints, your cardiovascular health, obviously your skin hydration. And they've also been able to prove that it will reduce fine lines and wrinkles. So that's just some of the reasons that I love the liquid biocell. So I take one tablespoon of this at night. Now this one is the trim. If you follow me on Instagram, I'm sure you've seen me take this. This is the collagen. It looks like chocolate pudding. So it's a different texture than this one. But the difference with this, it's the exact same ingredients, but they have added CLA. So that will help with inhibiting fat storage, which is the hardest fat to get rid of. Don't mind Elliot. Okay. So I always mix my trim with my tray biotic. This is a prebiotic, probiotic and postbiotic. It's the only three in one probiotic. What I love about it is it's in bead form and it's for gut health. If I could only recommend one product for you guys to take, it would be this one. Just because if you can fix your gut health, you're fixing so many other issues. 90% of our serotonin, which is our happy hormone, is produced in our gut. Almost every single autoimmune disease can be traced back to our gut. So it's just a good thing to be taking care of our gut and to be feeding it the healthy bacteria that it needs. And me personally, I don't love to take pills. So because of that, I love that this is in sprinkle form. What I will do is I will just sprinkle it on my collagen. But if you don't have this collagen and you want to take it on something else, you can spread it on a sandwich or really eat it with anything. So if you're in doubt, you don't know what you want to take, I would start with the probiotic. What are you doing? I usually have at least one load of laundry to do, sometimes two every single day. So this is when I will spend time doing that. And then I'm going to get my workout in. These are the minerals I've been drinking this entire journey. I love the flavor of them. Minerals can taste really nasty. These taste like berry. I love them. They give you a good source of energy. So I like to take these before I do my workout. Sometimes I'll mix them with my greens in the morning, but that's like, it's pretty rare. Most of the time, I just drink it plain with my water right before my workout. What I've been doing for my workouts is I just focus on muscle groups every day. So today is Monday. I'm going to be doing legs today. I do have like sample workouts of movements you can do for your legs, for your arms, for your full body, all that kind of stuff. So I just go to my files on my phone. And if you get the download, this is how you can access those. So I searched files on my phone. I just click on my sample workouts. That's the download. And then all of those workouts are right here. I know it's not a full blown guided workout, but if you're just getting started, this can be helpful. Also, if you guys are interested in more of a follow along workout, I will actually link a few of my favorite apps that I've used in the past. I will link those below. Most of them are around $10 to $12 a month. And so I feel like that's really worth it, especially if you're just getting started and you don't really know what you're doing. Otherwise, you can just follow along on the files I provided and just add a few movements if you don't like some of those, take some away, do some movements that you enjoy. The key here is you want to be pushing your muscle to where it hurts. The last two should be difficult. So if you're wondering what weight you should be doing, it's as simple as that. If the last two are difficult to do, then you're at the right weight. If you fly through the workout with no struggle at all, then your muscles are not getting the workout that they need. So just go up in weight. Or if you don't have higher weight, then just do more of the reps. I just finished my workout. As you can see, it was very slow and steady while I sped it up for you guys. So I only showed you some of the workouts. But three sets of everything, I literally feel like I'm going to die after every workout. But I feel so good. I feel so energized. I just know I'm going to feel so much better throughout my entire day for getting that done. And Mondays are definitely not my favorite because legs just kind of take it out of you. I'm always dying a little bit more on leg day and full body day than really any other day of the week. I wanted to have a sit down portion of this video where I just shared the tips that helped me, how I stayed consistent, just anything I can share along the journey. I heard this quote when I started my journey and it said, the person who loves to walk will go farther than the person who loves the destination. So think about that. If you enjoy the journey, the possibilities of where your destination is, where you're actually going to end up far surpasses the person that's only focused on the end goal. I just want to lose 20 pounds. I want to look this way. If you find a way to love the journey, you will far surpass that goal. So just think about that as I'm sharing some of my tips with you. If you're like, I'm not really someone who likes to do those kind of workouts, or I don't like that kind of food. Do not do the exact same thing that I'm doing. You got to find something that works for you, something that you love, something that you will stick to longterm. And that's how this will become a lifestyle change. So how did I even start this journey? Well, back in November, November 1st, I was scrolling on Instagram and I came across a graphic that said, if you did these things every day for six months, you would be a completely different person. And I took that and I said, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it for six months. I got on Instagram. I shared it with everybody. I said, Hey, I'm going to do this checklist for six months. If anybody wants to do it with me, that'd be awesome. The thing is six months is going to pass regardless. And I wanted to feel good. I was sick of not really being conscious about the food I was putting in and not being consciously aware of how little I was moving my body. And I just wanted to be conscious about the decisions I was making again in my day. And that's really what created this whole entire journey. So if you get on my Instagram, I do have a highlight bubble that goes from month one to month six. So you'll see a lot of me working out, food I was eating, just motivational things, books I've been reading. So you can follow along the whole journey on Instagram through my highlight bubbles. But because this wasn't an actual challenge, I made it a challenge. And now I have something you can download off of my Etsy. So you're going to get five different files. I have the whole explanation of the journey. I have a lot of my tips in there. I have some things that you can print off and mark every day. So there's like this one that shows the whole six months. Like this is just you mark one off every day. And then I have one that's like a daily checklist that shows you week by week. So it's 26 weeks and it's just what you check off every single day. So all of that is saved into this download. Again, you'll get five. You can save them straight to your phone. And anytime you want to access maybe meals or a workout, all of that is available right there on that download. Moving on to some of my tips. So the first tip is I switched my mindset about my workouts. So me working out, like I've never had motivation going to work out. I've never put my workout shoes on or my clothes and been like, I'm just so motivated right now. I get my motivation after the fact. After my workout, my mood increases, my energy increases. I feel like I make way better decisions with my food naturally after I work out. So there's all sorts of benefits of working out. But before I work out, I'm not really motivated. What I have switched my mindset to though is thinking long-term. Over the last year, I've been very aware of people that I know that are not that old, like they're 50s, 60s, 70s, and they struggle a lot with their physical body. And it terrifies me. I just want to make sure I'm taking care of myself, building muscle while I'm young so that I have skeletal muscle. I follow another doctor on Instagram that talks a lot about skeletal muscle, especially with women and how that is the number one issue that we have is we lack skeletal muscle and it causes a lot of problems for us long-term. So when I'm working out, I'm actually thinking of myself later on in life and how grateful I will be that I develop these habits now and to just continue lifting weights. 90% of my workouts are done from home. I just lift some weights. I thoroughly enjoy working out like that. I love how I feel after I work out. And I know long-term, again, this is something that my body really needs. The next tip is I did not cut one single thing out of my diet. And you're probably thinking, well, how the heck? How the heck do you lose weight? You're not cutting stuff out. My biggest suggestion to you is to think of food that you already love and eat every day and find a healthy alternative. This is how you stick to it long-term. This is how you can stick with this literally for the rest of your life. You just eat healthy. And maybe on the weekends, you eat things that are not healthy. That is what a lifestyle change is. And that's what I've done this entire journey. On the weekends, we go have shakes or we go have dessert somewhere. And I'm not even thinking about any of this stuff. And then back on Monday, I'm still eating the good things that I love. But I'm just eating them in healthier portions or I'm using healthy alternatives. So for example, this morning, I had French toast. French toast is one of my favorite things of all time. Instead of using bread that maybe has 200 calories in each slice and just using like full eggs that have fat as well and lots and lots of syrup and sugar. Instead of doing that, I'm using egg whites. I add protein to it. And the protein tastes like cake. So it makes the French toast taste like cake. I'm using bread that only has 45 calories. So I'm able to have a lot of slices of that. Where if I just had a regular French toast, I would only be getting the protein from the egg. But then also a lot of fat and a lot of carbs and a lot of sugar. So I just found recipes or just different ways to make the food that I love. Another one of my favorites, I love BLTs. I eat those all the time. We eat those weekly. My turkey sandwich, I'm actually going to have that for lunch. So you'll see how I make that. Instead of using regular bread, I use flat bread, way less calories. So there's just lots of little things you can do to still eat the things you love. Get on Pinterest, type in all the different recipes that you love personally and look for healthy alternatives. And if you can't find anything, just make it up yourself. Think of a way you can add protein to it. Think of a way you could cut out fat and use just different ingredients that way. And you can stick to the things that you love to eat and that you know you could stick to forever. The next tip is instead of going grocery shopping, order your groceries online. So you can just do the grocery pickup. That's completely free. You can do the delivery. For the last six months, that is all I've done because I just know if I go to the grocery store to do our weekly shopping, I'll be going through the aisles and I'm like, well, that looks kind of good and that looks kind of good. I just know me personally that that's how I am. And so I just avoid that by doing my groceries online. Another big tip is to write down any excuses that you find yourself giving yourself when it comes to working out, eating good, just any of the reasons that you find yourself giving excuses like, well, I can't, I can't do that because of this. For me personally, I'll give you an example. When I started doing macros, this was my excuse. I'm like, I just don't have the time to sit and think every single day. Okay, what am I going to have for breakfast? What am I going to have for lunch? Okay, I got to add it to my app. Let's see what the calories say in the macros. At the end of the day, that was the last thing I wanted to be doing. It just was so time consuming to be figuring that out during the day that I was like, screw it. This will never be for me. I will never find the time to do this and stick to it. I couldn't even comprehend how other people did it. I'm like, there's no way anyone finds the time to track their macros every day. It just is outrageous. Then I thought, well, when do I typically sit and maybe scroll on Instagram? Okay, well, I usually do that at night after the kids have gone to bed or after our evening routine. All right, well, let's actually use that time to maybe plan the macros for the next day. Once I figured that out, I was like, okay, let's try this. Let's see how this works. At night, I sit down. I'm usually eating my chocolate molten cake and watching a TV show with my husband. That is when I plan my macros for the next day. What I'll do is I'll say, okay, maybe I'll have oatmeal for breakfast. Maybe I'll have a salad for lunch. Then maybe I will do, I love this chicken rice dish that we make that has zucchini in it. Super good. So maybe that's what I'll have for dinner. Then I'll go and I'll look at the macros and I'll say, okay, well, I'm short about 40 grams of protein. So where can I add in some protein? Maybe I'll have a snack before lunch and I will have a protein shake with a bill bar. There you go. There's my 40 grams of protein. And then I'll look at all of the calories. The calories look good. The macros look good. All right, I'm good. Now I know when I wake up, I already know what I'm going to eat. Takes out all that guesswork. It takes out all that frustration of like, oh crap, I don't have this ingredient because I plan it the night before. If you do nothing else but that, it will change the game for you. Just plan your food the night before and you will have no struggles the next day. You already know you'll hit your macros. You don't have to wonder what am I having for lunch? What am I having for dinner? You already know all of that. So that is my number one tip. Something that really, really helped me. For the late night snackers, for me personally, that has always been a big struggle for me. One of the things on here is you need to wake up early and to wake up early, you got to go to bed earlier. So for me, I found because I went to bed earlier, I kind of just got rid of that whole habit. I have to start our evening routine a few hours early just to make sure that I am ready for bed around nine o'clock. We have the kids' homework done. The kids, all their stuff is ready. Their lunches are ready for the next day. Their clothes, maybe I need to do some more laundry. I start all of that around six or 7 p.m. It's been a little bit later into the evening now because it's getting lighter, but like in the winter, it's dark at five. And so I kind of felt like I was already ready to go to bed by that point. So we have the whole evening routine done. Dinner's done. And then what I like to do at that point is that's usually when I will make some kind of meal or dessert for myself or a snack. I always save something for my evening. It's either something like a chocolate molten cake, which is really just like another high-protein meal. I can't believe it tastes as good as it does. I'll either have that or some kind of popcorn. I love like those popcorners, those little bags of chips or Boom Shicka Pop. That's something else that I love to have. So I will save calories for the evening. And then part of my evening routine is I will have that little snack with me that's obviously portioned to what I'm going to be eating. We'll watch a TV show. I don't feel like I'm lacking in anything. I've never one time felt like, oh, this is so hard. It is actually been the opposite. I have loved the new habits that I have formed. I love like looking forward to those little meals. If I'm just allowing myself to eat whatever I want through the day, it's less enjoyable. There's something about like looking forward to the evening or like looking forward to something. I can't wait to go to bed tonight and enjoy that dessert. Or I can't wait for the weekend to go out to dinner and enjoy all of the food and the desserts. There's just something about eating healthy all week long, looking forward to the real actual dessert for the weekend or eating healthy all day and looking forward to that little dessert you made for yourself in the evening. So I loved it, but it's also really helped me cut back on late night snacking because number one, I'm asleep. Usually when I was late night snacking, it was like 10, 11 or 12, maybe even later than that. And I'm asleep at that time. So now I'm in bed at nine. I'll have my snack, my dessert, whatever it is. We're watching our show. I'm filling in my macros. This is just what I do every single night. So starting your evening routine early, going to bed early and maybe having your snack that's portioned before, that can completely stop your late night binging. The next tip is if you print off the whole weekly checklist, I was not perfect every single day. There were lots of days that I missed things or I maybe didn't get my walk-in or I didn't get my four to five workouts in that week. That happened all the time. I could see the consistency when I stepped back and I looked at the overall picture. Whereas before I always felt like I had to be perfect. If I miss something, then just screw it. I'm just going to stop because I can't do this. Obviously, if I miss something one day, just do away with that mindset and just try to be consistent. This is a six-month thing. You're going to have days that you just don't get anything done or days that you don't check every single thing off and that's okay. The whole point is you're going to wake up tomorrow and here's your checklist and just try again the next day. The last tip that I have is check in with yourself often. I do check-ins with myself every single day. I also do check-ins with myself weekly. I reflect back on the week and think, okay, this wasn't really working for me. What can I do to make this better? Maybe I just need to wake up like 30 minutes earlier and then I can solve this problem or maybe I need to go to bed 30 minutes earlier and then I can solve this problem. Just check in with yourself. Reflect on the day, the week, the month. I did monthly reflections, daily reflections, weekly reflections. Just check in with yourself as often as you can to see where you might need to shift some things around. But again, just doing that consistently is really going to help you with the whole journey. Now I'm making my lunch. This is a favorite go-to turkey sandwich. I have this usually a few times a week. For bread, I use either lavish bread or cut to carb. Cut to carb is my favorite, but you have to order it. Or lavish bread, you can just buy in any store. So it's just a little easier to get your hands on. I'll start with spreading a low-fat laughing cow cheese wedge on the base. The only thing I ever weigh is the meat. I try to get four ounces. So I'll put my wrap on the scale to make sure that it hits the four ounces and then I will just add my other toppings. I'll fold the wrap closed and then cook it upside down so it seals it shut. What you don't see a lot of is because I work from home, all of the in-between, I'm either helping a kid or doing some kind of work on my computer or on my phone. So as I'm eating lunch today, I'm actually editing this video that you're watching right now. But no matter what your lifestyle is, if you work full-time out of the home, if you have a bunch of kids, it's really just a matter of prioritizing your time and being conscious about the decisions you're making throughout your day. Got a lot of construction going on over here today. So Thomas just removed the two chicken coops we had back there and he's going to replace it with one big one. So this is kind of where we spent the majority of the day. Kids have been in the bounce house and then just doing a lot of yard work. If you can see way up there, there's like a hundred trash bags on the front of our lawn. So we have a lot of cleaning up tomorrow. I think we're gonna call this a day and I'm gonna go start dinner. For dinner, we're having chicken with fried rice and zucchini. This is a family favorite that we all enjoy, but for the most part, whatever I make for dinner, we usually all will eat it. Sometimes I'll make something different for myself, but again, it just kind of depends on the day and how much time I have. Other than that, it's really all about portions and finding alternatives to higher fat or higher calorie meals. For this meal, I had half a cup of rice with only two ounces of chicken because I wanted to eat a built bar for the other 16 grams of protein and I'm saving room for my yummy protein dessert in the evening. After dinner, the kids will take their baths and get ready for bed. And this is when I like to get everything ready for school the next day and clean the kitchen. Then my evening routine for myself becomes something I really look forward to. I always make something or save room for some calories for nighttime. Today, I'm making my protein chocolate melon cake dessert that's super yummy. I use my brownie batter protein, dark chocolate Kodiak waffle mix, some cocoa powder and almond milk. Start by measuring one third cup almond milk into a mug that you can cook in the microwave. I'll add a scoop of protein, one fourth cup of the dark chocolate waffle mix, one tablespoon of cocoa powder and then mix it up until it looks like batter. You'll want to cook this in the microwave for one minute at 70% power. This is what it should look like when you take it out and let it cool for one minute. I like to dump it into a bowl and you'll see some drizzle at the bottom. This tastes like the chocolate sauce and makes it really taste like a molten cake. I usually do a scoop of vanilla halo top ice cream, but I only have cake flavor. So today I'm going to use my light frozen whip in place of ice cream. I like to do half a cup and you definitely need ice cream with this. I don't like it just plain. Mixing the ice cream with the cake makes it taste super good. We love to watch shows every night, so I'll have some kind of show playing while I eat my dessert or snack. Then I'll spend time writing in my journal prompts for the evening portion. This helps me reflect on the day, which is so important to do constantly if you're trying to make positive changes in your life. Then I'll go to my Lose It app and I will pre-log all the meals for the next day. I'll do my breakfast, lunch and dinner, then see what my macros look like and if I'm really low in protein, I'll go add in a protein shake or a bar and if my fat's too high, then I might remove something. But this usually only takes me a few minutes and it completely takes away the guesswork for the next day.