Dos and Don’ts From a THM Veteran - Briana Thomas (2024)

January 4, 2016 by Briana Thomas Burkholder 59 Comments

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Any time of year is a great time to start getting healthy, but the start of anew year seems to attract a lot of wannabe dieters. While I’m not too terribly keen on this approach, I’m writing a mini-series of hopefully-helpful blog posts about Trim Healthy Mama to kick off 2016. You can see these posts linked up right here.Over on my “Starting THM” page you can find a quick synopsis of the Trim Healthy Mama plan as well as a bunch of helpful links and info!

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Do:

• Exercise, at least a little bit, 4-5 times a week. You’d be amazed at how much just 100 reps (total) of various exercises a couple times a week can do for toning. For example: 50 squats, 30 sit-ups, 20 pushups (ladies’ pushups or regular – make this work for you)
• Eat lots of coconut oil. You’d be amazed at how much that stuff will rev up your metabolism!
• Drink Oolong tea! It’s another great metabolism-booster. For simplicity’s sake, I usually just drink mine hot and plain, but if you want to make the Shrinker with it, you can definitely do that.
• Get plenty of E meals. I shoot for one or two a day. Everyonce in awhile,I like to do two E meals back-to-back. This really shakes up the metabolism! If I do this, sometimes I eat S the whole next day if I feel like it, but not always.
• Break up your meal routine. Don’t get into the oatmeal-for-breakfast-every-day rut. This one is super important. I eat oatmeal quite a few mornings for breakfast, but I try to throw in an S breakfast every couple days. As I said in the previous point, I also try to throw in some back-to-back E meals. Do the unexpected for your body! It keeps your metabolism guessing.
• Embrace those healthy fats! Don’t skimp! However, embrace quality over quantity. Sometimes people are scared of healthy fats because “fat” sounds like “fattening”. Fats aren’t fattening – unless you just plain over eat! That’s one of my biggest pitfalls. There’s nothing wrong with fats, but double dessert every day will add up, trim and healthy or not!
• Along the same lines, learn to be content with normal portion sizes, and don’t let the fact that your food is healthy be an excuse for gluttony. Use discipline in your portions, and don’t just eat for a hobby. Don’t get me wrong – there are lots of people out there who need to learn that they can eat more, but some of us overly zealous foodies hear that and think it applies to us too. And then we wonder why we can’t lose weight. Yes, on Trim Healthy Mama I can get away with eating more because my metabolism is alive and well, but there is still a limit to how much I can eat and still lose weight! (For more on this topic, you can check out my post about food freedom versus gluttony here.)

Don’t:

• Eat much late at night. For me, evening snacking and weight loss are inversely proportional. Therefore, I try to keep any evening snacks either very small or very light.
• Eat lots of peanut butter every day. This is my downfall. Nuts are really calorie-dense (but they’re so good…), and nut butters just don’t process quite as efficiently as foundation fats like coconut oil and butter. I eat my fair share of peanut butter, but I try to keep my consumption of it to a moderate level.
• Eat so much! Unless, of course, you’re one of those people that needs to eat more. I, however, am one of those people that enjoys snacking all day, every day. I eat big meals (I like to joke that breakfast is the reason I get up in the morning). I love my afternoon snacks! I love dessert! I love ice cream! I love chocolate! I just love food in general.
• Obsess about the scales. They don’t make sense sometimes. There are times when I just feel skinny, but I step on the scales and find that I actually gained weight. Don’t believe those scales. They vary according to the time of day, hormones, fluid fluctuations, carb intake, salt intake, exercise, whether you dreamt about donuts last night…everything. I recommend weighing once a week or so and tracking a general trend in your weight instead of weighing in every day.
• Sweat the small stuff. This is a lifestyle. It’s a journey. If you cheat, big deal. Yeah, you read that right. Now don’t do it again. If you accidentally ate a crossover, big deal. Now you know for next time (and crossovers are still healthy, so congratulations!). Whatever you do, don’t delay starting your healthy journey because a) you don’t quite understand everything or b) you don’t have all the ingredients yet. Any step is progress, so start now.
• Binge cheat. So you snuck a chocolate truffle from a Christmas candy platter. That’s actually not a whole lot of damage done. Go brush your teeth, go to bed, wake up, and eat something healthy in the morning. Do NOT say, “I’ve blown it already so I might as well have a huge bowl of ice cream slathered in peanut butter and chocolate syrup.” That’s a LOT of damage. If you’ve been eating healthy for awhile, chances are you’ll feel physically sick afterwards. Even if your tummy feels perfectly fine, you’ll probably be mad at yourself for giving in. It’s not worth it. Don’t do it. Have some self-discipline. Saying no to something physically can actually be a good spiritual exercise!

Do you have any dos or don’ts to add to my list? Comment below!

Click here to check out my Starting THM page. It has a lot of helpful tips and links to get you started or help you continue your journey!

Click here to see all my recipes in a cool NEW pictorial recipe index!

YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY:

• STARTING THM

• MY RECIPE INDEX

• RECIPE INDEX BY FUEL TYPE/ALLERGY/THEME

• Dos and Don’ts from a THM Veteran

• 5 Tips for Starting THM

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