Lose Weight Without Being On A Diet: How I Lost 85lbs

The scale says WHAT?!!

I couldn’t believe my eyes…and NOT in a good way.

I had just arrived home from the hospital with a beautiful new baby girl, and while her birth was a bit traumatic (I had a placental abruption which ended up with emergency surgery), I felt like a million bucks as soon as she was born. I felt like I was back to my old self…

But when I arrived home and stepped on the scale a few days later, I literally could not believe what I saw.  I had actually gained weight right after having a baby. Now everyone else I know loses around 10 pounds right away (hello, that’s how much the baby weighs…so logically you’d think you would immediately weigh that much less)..but here I was HEAVIER coming home from the hospital after having a baby.

And that feeling like a million bucks feeling…well that flew right out the window along with all my self-confidence. Here I was 85 pounds heavier than I had been 9 months earlier…and while a lot of women told me that the weight would just drop off after giving birth, that REALLY did not happen for me. In fact, the opposite was true for me. The weight stuck to me like glue.

Yo Yo Dieting

I had been a bit of a yo-yo dieter prior to getting pregnant…always trying the latest fad diet to lose a bit more weight…but it was never super successful.

The most successful attempts at managing my weight had always been with rigorous exercise…like exercising 7 days a week for hours each day.

But now with a new baby, the crazy fad diets and the rigorous exercise were both out of the question. I did not have time or energy for that…I wanted a simple, sustainable way to lose the weight.

I felt like I couldn’t live one more day in my misery. My knees ached, I could hardly get up off the floor, I had no self confidence, I couldn’t even look in the mirror and pictures of me were totally out of the question…and worst of all – I disliked myself. I was desperate for a solution. 

Maybe you can relate. Maybe you are in constant pain from the extra weight you’re carrying (an orthopaedic surgeon told us that for every 5 pounds of weight you lose, you take 20 pounds of pressure off your knees…WOoooW!).

Maybe you feel ashamed of yourself and are constantly trying to hide your body. Maybe you don’t like who you see in the mirror. Maybe you feel desperate for change just like I did.

Ask yourself…

When is the last time you felt good about yourself and walked into a room with confidence?

So…I called up my mom (Ruth) who just so happens to have a background in health and fitness (watch for a blog post coming soon on the time that Ruth owned a gym and became a certified fitness instructor).  Here’s how the conversation went: “Mom, I am desperate for a solution to my weight problem. But I can’t stomach the thought of another deprivation diet (no more cabbage soup diet for me!). Can you help me lose this weight in a sustainable way…no more yo-yo dieting. Something where I can keep living my life and lose the weight at the same time? Something where I can still go out to eat with my friends…where I can eat more than just rabbit food and bird seed…”

Ruth and I put our heads together and came up with a plan….we actually say that God gave us this plan because it’s so amazing! And that, my friend, is how the Weigh Down Lifestyle was born. 

I started using the plan – living the Weigh Down Lifestyle…and slowly and steadily the weight came off. And all of a sudden one day I stepped on the scale and went…

“The scale says WHAT?!!” 2.0

I couldn’t believe my eyes…But this time in a good way! I was down 85 pounds…without depriving myself…without counting…without being on a diet!

And I was able to keep that weight off because I wasn’t on a diet…I had made good, healthy lifestyle changes for the long haul. (And now, I’ve just had another baby so I’m in weight loss mode again to lose that weight without being on a diet by living the Weigh Down Lifestyle!)

So right now I want to share with you the 3 major points that we used to create the Weigh Down Lifestyle. 1. No counting anything (calories, carbs, macros, fibre, etc etc) 2. No more unmanageable cravings (let’s fix the emotional eating problem and neutralize those cravings) 3. No breaking the bank at the grocery store to eat less than satisfying foods (you actually CAN eat tasty food without breaking the bank!)

1. No Counting Anything…

Ok, so Ruth and I had both done the counting diets time and time again. You know, the ones where you can’t even eat a banana because it has too many carbs?!Every time I had tried to lose weight by counting calories (or counting points or carbs or something else)…I found myself hoarding my calories just to “save up” for some kind of junk that didn’t actually fuel my body.  I wouldn’t eat all day just so that I could pig out on chips or ice cream at night and still be within my “calorie limit.” Sound familiar?!

The more Ruth and I thought about it, the more this seemed like a very flawed system…so we scrapped that and decided that FUELLING our bodies well was really what we were after. We started to use portion control and actually THINK about what we were putting into our bodies. And the results started to show up quickly…

2. No more unmanageable cravings…

Think back on your last attempt at a fad diet. The first thing I think about is how badly I wanted to eat a piece of bread or some chocolate lol. The cravings were almost unmanageable. And the harder I tried to NOT think about the bread and the chocolate, the more it was ALL I could think about.

So Ruth and I decided to try and figure out how to stop the madness! And first things first…we decided that NEVER having a certain food group again was absurd. Life just isn’t like that! And I wanted to eat bread…so just by deciding that no food group was off limits allowed my brain to calm down. I stopped obsessing over what I COULDN’T eat and started enjoying what I was eating!

Secondly, we discovered that there are some very nasty chemicals and ingredients that are added to SO MANY FOODS – and they actually cause us to experience those unreasonable cravings. And as I began to choose products that did NOT contain those nasty chemicals, my cravings began to disappear…like magic! (Without getting into the nitty gritty details of the nasty chemicals, start looking for maltodextrin on your nutrition labels and avoid it like the plague!)

3. No breaking the bank at the grocery store to eat less than satisfying foods (you actually CAN eat tasty food without breaking the bank!)

Let’s be real here… who wants to double their grocery bill and enjoy your food less? Not me!! And I’m guessing not you either haha.

I started shopping differently – buying real foods…not the stuff with all the processed junk that fills our bodies with empty calories and nasty chemicals. And I started making simple meals that my whole family liked by using simple, quality ingredients. I’m talking about foods like rice, potatoes, bread, oatmeal, vegetables, fruits, meats, beans & legumes, etc etc etc. 

You don’t have to buy expensive groceries to treat your body well – what you do have to do is to get back to basics and stop over eating!

It’s one of those things that I say is simple but not easy. Change is not easy… but this is a very simple set of healthy changes to your lifestyle that will provide you with amazing results!

So if you are ready to invite God into the journey and lose weight without being on a diet like me, you can check out our 10 Day Weigh Down Plan (which is the foundation for the Weigh Down Lifestyle).

I can’t wait to see you on the inside!

XOXO
Kayce Broening