14 Easy Weight Loss Tips for Fall 2023

I’m not sure what it is about this time of you that just brings out the happy in people. Ironically, everything is technically dying, but it’s just magical! Part of that magic involves food and plenty of it. Between fall festivals, Halloween and harvest parties, Thanksgiving, and of course, the impending arrival of the Holiday Season, we love to eat. So many people let themselves gain weight during this time of year, thinking, “Well, I can just restart in January.” I’m so excited to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way! You CAN lose weight while still eating the foods you love. So, follow along as I share with you some helpful and easy weight loss tips for fall 2023.

His Grace is sufficient for me

You guys, I am a sinner. I am broken and nothing in this world fills me more than the love of Jesus. I fail every day and that’s ok, because I’m saved by the blood of Jesus. There’s no way I succeed in life unless I accept God’s grace for my life. In 2 Corinthians 12:9, Jesus tells us, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” How cool is that?! Through the grace of Jesus, He is made perfect in our weakness.

I’m writing this post because I want to glorify Christ with my words, and sometimes that means tough love (more for me than anyone, really!). Although we are sinners who need grace, we are also called to take care of our bodies. 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 says, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” We are to treat our physical bodies with respect and this means physically taking care of ourselves. We are imperfect humans who need redemption and that goes for eating well and keeping our bodies in good shape. I hope you enjoy this post!

Disclaimer:

I first want to let you know that any information I put out there is simply that: Information. It is not meant to sway you or to get you to believe one particular way over another. This is information I have gathered along the way and these are my own thoughts and opinions. What you choose to believe is based on your own thinking, not mine. While this information has worked for me, it does not mean it’s going to work for you or get you the results you are looking for. Make sure you are consulting professionals and medical practitioners when seeking out professional or medical advice. If you are in any way “triggered” or offended by the content in this post, please feel free to read someone else’s post who better suits what you’re looking for.

I Bet You’ve Been Here Before

If you’re anything like me, you have (or at least had at some point) an unhealthy relationship with food. You might berate yourself for eating “bad” foods or not seeing results on the scale from week to week. You might go into eff it mode where you’ve dieted for a month, not seen any results, and said “Screw it!” before consuming half a pizza and an entire carton of ice cream. Or, you might see a physiological reaction to the restrict-binge cycle where you restrict, restrict, restrict for a period of time. You might do a diet or “challenge,” telling yourself it’s for health reasons. A few weeks (or even days!) into the diet or program, you begin to feel miserable and think about all the foods you’ve been missing. I literally would dream of brownies in the shower. After a period of time, you break down and just can’t take it anymore. You either finish the program/diet or cut it short and dive face-deep into whatever treat or snack you’ve been craving.

I’ve been there, done and seen it all, and have seen my weight fluctuate more than the stock market on a daily basis. You can read about my story here if you’d like to learn more about my history with dieting and weight loss.

The Healing Process

I stopped dieting back in 2020 and began a journey to heal my relationship with food. It’s not perfect, but I’m now in a really comfortable place. I look at my weight now from a health perspective, and while I feel good overall, I know that I could feel better. Part of that means decreasing the amount of fat I have on my body. Let me tell you, if I’m going to lose weight, it needs to be easy! I don’t want it to feel like a struggle and I do not want to give up the foods I love. Unless it’s medically necessary, I’m not giving up pizza and tacos. It’s just not happening, friends.

When I lost 21 pounds and dropped from 186 down to 165, weight loss WAS easy and I still ate the foods I loved. In my post I linked, I share with you about Corinne Crabtree’s No BS Weightloss Program. It saved my life! She doesn’t tell you what you should or shouldn’t eat. Instead, she helps you take control of your thoughts around food. Doing her program completely changed how I think about food and it helped me finish the healing process of my relationship with food. I’m not in her program anymore, but her word is bond and advice is so sage, and I continue to heed to a lot of her teachings! So, without further ado, here are some easy and practical weight loss tips you can take with you through the end of this year.

1. Try the “on the clock” method.

This is a method I got from Corinne Crabtree. While I don’t use it every time I eat, it’s a great method to try between meals. Here’s how it goes: When you start to pick up on hunger signals, drink 6-8 ounces of water and then wait 10-15 minutes. If you still have hunger signals, go ahead and eat. If they aren’t there anymore, continue to wait until you get hunger signals, then eat. It’s important to make sure your body is properly hydrated and this method helps with that!

2. Halftime hunger method.

This is one of my favorite methods and it’s another one I got from Corinne. It’s absolutely golden and one of the main methods I used when I lost 20 pounds back from 2021 to 2022. Here’s what you do: When eating, eat half of your meal. Wait 3-5 minutes and reassess your hunger. If you’re still hungry, eat half of what you have left. If you’ve hit enough, discontinue eating. Do this until you have either hit enough or until you’ve finished your meal. It absolutely works! It causes you to slow down, pause, and think instead of inhaling and shoveling food into your mouth. You would be surprised at how much less you end up eating by using the halftime hunger method.

3. Sleep, sleep, sleep.

It’s true that your body needs proper rest to recover, but there are other reasons it’s important for you to get proper sleep when trying to lose weight. For one, if you don’t get enough rest, you won’t have enough energy to complete physical activities. As someone who suffers from mild insomnia, I have nights where I sleep fewer than six hours. The next day, not only do I lack energy, but I also am mentally fuzzy and find it hard to think and concentrate. Not only is the proper amount of sleep important, but it’s also important to get to bed at a decent time. Most people work a job with the same hours each week. Knowing this, it’s imperative to build a bedtime routine that allows you to go to bed at a time that works for you (but preferably isn’t at 2 a.m. in the morning haha).

4. Don’t focus solely on the number on the scale.

Weight loss is just a symptom. You might be working towards weight loss, but it shouldn’t be your end goal. If you lose weight, other things are going to happen. You’ll probably exercise more and eat healthier or work to get off medication. Just because you lose weight doesn’t automatically make you healthy. When you focus more on overall health and less about the number that pops up, your mentality shifts and it can sometimes even make it easier for the numbers to drop. You also MUST remember that the number on the scale is literally just a number and you cannot control what it’s going to show. You can control your own actions, though.

5. Look more heavily at body measurements.

If you want to focus on the number that shows up on your scale, by all means, go ahead. But looking at your body measurements is going to give you a much more accurate number to go by. While it’s not perfect either, body measurements don’t fluctuate like your weight does on the scale. Sure, you may end up a little bloated and that might change your measurements, but it doesn’t happen as frequently as changes on the scale do. It’s important to note, that with body measurements you have to be patient to see results. You’re not going to drop five inches off your waist in one week. In order to see true fat loss and a change in your measurements, you have to practice patience and you’ll see the changes happen over time.

6. Get. Your. Water. In.

Hydration is incredibly important and we are so blessed in the United States to have clean water to drink almost anywhere we go. Being properly hydrated is essential to your health and without being hydrated you might end up with headaches and a slew of other symptoms. If you don’t like water, start with flavor packets or even make a fun drink using club soda and some juice! Water is ideal, but it’s ok if you don’t like water and it’s ok to start where you’re comfortable.

7. Enjoy the process.

We are so focused on that end goal when it comes to weight loss that we often forget it’s a whole process. There are thousands, maybe millions, of little steps and changes that add up to big results. Find non-scale victories to get you excited along the way as you hit micro-goals you set for yourself. Things like being able to run faster, realizing your jeans that just came out of the dryer are loose, having more endurance during a Pilates workout, saying no to dessert and acting like it’s no big deal, forgetting that you bought ice cream and left it in your freezer. These are all non-scale victories and what make weight loss fun. When you ease up a little and begin to enjoy the process of losing weight, you don’t focus so much on hitting your goal by a certain date.

8. Find creative, fall-inspired ways to exercise.

Fall is America’s favorite season and for good reason. The weather starts to cool down, the leaves change, and there’s just a different smell in the air. It’s an amazing time of year and along with it are some fall-themed ways to exercise:
~Go hiking and enjoy the leaves
~Run or walk a fall or Halloween-themed race
~Get lost in a corn maze
~Pick apples and pumpkins
~Participate in a parades
~Rake leaves

These are just a few to get you started, but there are so many ways to exercise while celebrating the beautiful autumn season.

9. Learn your hunger and enough signals.

This is the key to not overeating, therefore making it the key to weight loss success! The main reason we gain weight is because we overeat. Yes, you can even overeat on healthy foods. Mainstream nutrition teaches a “calories in, calories out” mentality, but there are many who say it’s not just this that affects weight loss. While there are many different sides to the story, most of us can agree that you will gain weight if you eat too much. With this in mind, learning to eat when you are truly hungry (not stressed, angry, upset, or bored) and learning to stop before you are full are going to be so hopeful.

In No BS Weightloss, Corinne teaches you how to look for your hunger signals. For me, it’s an empty feeling in my stomach, sometimes a headache, and sometimes a belly growl. It typically comes around normal mealtimes, but so many things affect how much or little I eat that day. In any case, what’s so important is being able to learn when you are truly hunger and not eat out of emotion. It’s also important (and way harder!) to learn when you should stop. For me, my enough signals include thinking that I don’t need anymore food, sighing, my belly expanding, and hiccups. If you have no idea what your hunger and enough signals are, the best place to start is to just begin to notice how you feel when it comes to eating and try to pick up on some signals your body is telling you.

10. Stop people pleasing.

Oof, this might really hit home for some of you. I used to be a major people pleaser. I still deal with it at times, but Corinne’s program helped me get past being a people pleaser. Being a people pleaser when it comes to food means it’s hard for you to say no even if you want to. You don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings and you give in. This might look like eating donuts someone brings into the office even when you already had breakfast, eating a piece of cake a friend or family member gave to you when you didn’t put it on your plan, or accepting an invitation to eat out when you have food prepared at home. People pleasing is so hard to learn to stop, but it can happen. I did it! More than anything, being a people pleaser doesn’t hurt your friends and family in the long-term, it hurts YOU. You’ve got to learn to say no.

11. Treat yourself with grace.

You. Are. Not. Perfect. Ok, this was more of a reminder for me than any of you. I majorly struggle with perfection. I have high standards for myself and that can be a double-edged sword. While I strive to do well, I also fall hard when I don’t. And it hurts. I used to berate myself for not seeing the results I wanted within the timeframe I gave myself, even if it was completely unattainable to reach them due to uncontrollable factors. Again, Corinne is amazing, because she taught me how to give myself grace and move past frustration so I could begin seeing progress. I’ve said this before and I’ll continue to say it: You can’t hate yourself into losing weight. You’ve got to learn how to love yourself throughout the process and embrace all the mess-ups and failures along the way.

12. Create small, attainable goals.

Why do we pull a number out of thin air and tell ourselves we have until a certain date to hit the number? Seriously, why??? You have absolutely no control over what number is going to show up on the scale. What’s going to work better is creating smaller goals that will snowball and get you to your bigger goals. Trust me, it works so much better this way. Your goals could be a simple as drinking an extra glass of water, going to bed ten minutes earlier, walking an extra five minutes, taking three fewer bites during meals, or committing to noticing hunger and enough signals. Are those goals hard? No! That’s the beauty of it. It’s so much more fun as well to create small goals that you KNOW you can reach. And they will get you to your bigger goals so much more easily.

13. Stop equating weight loss to suffering.

Maybe this should be #1 on the list. Sooooo many people do this. They act like needing to lose weight is the worst and hardest thing in the world. And so they bring down themselves and others around them. They make losing weight out to be so dramatic when it’s not. If you want or need to lose weight, acknowledge that and then do something about it. Being a drama queen who whines and complains isn’t going to help you reach your goals any faster. It’s just going to keep you miserable. When you take the emotion out of weight loss, it becomes a lot less difficult. Look at weight loss from a scientist’s perspective. Get curious instead of crying that you didn’t lose three pounds this week. Maybe there is a reason the scale isn’t moving, but when you are matter-of-fact with losing weight, it gets a lot easier.

14. Remember that the food will always be there the next day.

This is one of my favorite tips. As someone who’s been through the restrict-binge-repeat cycle countless times, this tip was a saving grace when it came to weight loss. After restricting for so long, I’d put myself physiologically into a state of starvation, so when I came out of it, my body craved all the foods. And when I began to eat those “off limits” foods, nothing was going to stand in my way. I remember eating a dozen Christmas cookies in one sitting, eating three corn dogs, half a bag of onion rings, and two slices of chocolate cream pie in one sitting, and eating so much food that my stomach hurt and it physically pained me to breath.

Not good! So, when I started to tell myself that the food will be there tomorrow if I wanted to eat it, it became a lot easier to say no, thank you.

I know this journey can be tough, but you’ve got this and God’s got you! Looking for accountability? Let me know. I’m always on board with being an accountability partner! We can enjoy this journey together.