This easy weight loss trick is no sweat.
Jenna Rizzo, a Georgia-based fitness coach who specializes in women’s weight loss, is offering a simple psychological tip to combat yo-yo dieting.
“Take out a pen and paper, and I want you to start writing all the things you can add to your current diet: more protein, more fruit, more vegetables, more fiber,” Rizzo said in an 83-second clip this week. “Go into detail … Greek yogurt, chicken breast, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, the more detailed, the better.”
She shared her own experiences with inconsistent eating habits to support her reasoning for this health hack.
“I have tried every single diet under the sun — keto, intermittent fasting, counting calories, you name it, I’ve probably done it,” she revealed.
She notes that she was usually able to maintain her healthy eating during the workweek, but when Friday came around, it was a free-for-all.
“I would have one cheat meal, and it would turn into a full-blown cheat weekend,” she explained. “I’m talking eating to the point of literally being in so much physical pain — and kept going.”
Rizzo explains that her binge eating, which once led her to order two brunch entrees, eat an entire pizza, and polish the day off with a pint of ice cream, was due to a mindset that correlated unhealthy foods with restriction.
“My brain was telling me that these foods are limited, and I need to eat as much as I could when I could,” she said.
Rizzo urges those with similar tendencies to adopt her abundance mindset, which she has used to help clients throughout her career.
She says that making a list reduces feelings of deprivation.
“When you start focusing your mind on all the foods you can eat, you’re creating an abundance mindset around food rather than a scarcity mindset,” she reasoned.
Rizzo insists that this shift in perspective lends itself to consistency, clarity and long-term weight loss.
“Over time, you’ll start to feel a little bit more safe with food … this is going to help a lot with consistency, and we know we need to be consistent if want to lose weight,” she said.
Rizzo’s advice comes as the American Heart Association warns that obesity rates are expected to climb from 43.1% to 60.6% of the US population by 2050, with unhealthy diets largely to blame.
Obesity has been linked to a higher risk of more than a dozen cancers.
