With the New Year upon us many people make getting healthy a priority, but even those with the best intentions can struggle on their journey. There’s so much out there when it comes to weight loss or eating healthy and it can feel overwhelming, but it is possible to change your lifestyle and maybe it all starts with a different mindset.
Tammy Overhoff started her weight loss journey 10 years ago, but it is so much more than that now. At the time she was a busy mom of two little girls, working full time. “I didn't really have a lot of time, or at least I didn't think I had a lot of time. So basically, my days were just a total hamster wheel of waking up, rushing my kids off to daycare. It was really hard for me to kind of wrap my brain around, like, how do I even begin to change my lifestyle,” she said.
“I just didn’t like the person I became physically and psychologically, I feel like when you're so exhausted, and you're heavier, and you're busy and all of that, I just really didn't feel happy either. So it was just kind of like I was just in this place where I knew I had to make a change.”
Ten years later, Tammy is happier not just with how she looks on the outside but the inside as well. She has even gained a following of almost half a million followers on Facebook through her blog, Organize Yourself Skinny. She’s on a mission to help people fit a healthy life into their busy life.
“I really didn't understand like how I could put on like 50 to 60 pounds over the last you know, however many years but then when I started tracking my calories in those first couple days, I kind of call it my food overhaul. I realized very quickly why I gained that weight. I had like 3000 calories in by before I even ate dinner. I was eating those calories in salad dressing, coffee creamer, all these like little bites that I was taking while like making dinner for my kids. I just wasn't really paying attention to the food I was eating and that in itself was such an eye opener for me.”
Tammy says it comes down to focusing on the why, not the how. “Why can’t we change our eating habits, now how do we change our eating habits.” She’s says focusing on hot zones, can be life changing. “I feel like when people kind of embark on their weight loss journey, they are trying to fit this new weight loss life into their already chaotic life. So their chaotic life and this healthy lifestyle, they're just not going to match.”
Just what exactly are hot zones? Tammy says think of the moments in your day where you feel overly stressed or overwhelmed, for parents maybe it’s dinner time.
“The kids are screaming, because they're instantly like starving, like they haven't, you know, had any food for a week straight. And you're like, alright, well what do I make. Or maybe you bought all these ingredients, but now it's like, 5:30, the kids are screaming for food, and you don't have an extra hour to get food on the table. So what can you do to relieve that hot zone. So that's an area where you're always like, eating unhealthy, or getting a pizza, you know, or whatever it is that's happening.”
The decisions made in these moments are more about survival and less about long term healthy goals and that’s one big reason people struggle, because those moments aren’t going to go away unless you start to address them.
“Where are you like really struggling with making healthy choices? Instead of trying to just put a band-aid on it by just following like a weight loss program really looking at well, what can I do to make my environment supportive of my weight loss efforts. Instead of trying to force my weight loss efforts into my environment that is just not set up to make it work."
Tammy suggests something as simple as prepping the meat you need for dinners for the week to begin. By slowly starting to set yourself up for success for those hot zone moments is how it will turn into long term habits and routines.
“Those things will actually give you more time during the week, like it's not even necessarily about weight loss, like weight loss is like a bonus that happens. When all these systems are in place you just feel like you finally have control over your life. You just start to feel happier and more confident and just better in control of your days.”
To learn more about Tammy and follow her blogclick here.