Week 2

To follow on from Week 1, something that will help ensure you continue to make a positive start to your journey is planning. As I mentioned before, the most important thing you can do to get started is get into the habit of hitting your calorie targets and your step targets. As long as you do those two things, you will make progress and lose weight.

And something you can do to help you be successful in doing so is taking the time to decide exactly how and when you are going to get these things done.

If you need to hit 7000 steps a day (that could be approximately a forty five minute/one hour walk) then when do you have the time in your day to fit that in? It might be that you do two thirty minute walks a day, one in the morning before work, one when you get home.

You might even be able to squeeze in 15 minutes on your lunch break. These are all just ideas and the beauty is, you get to decide which way suits you best. But by actually looking at your week and setting aside the time, you make it much more likely to happen.

The same applies to your planning around food. You know you want to hit your calorie target but how can you make that happen. What meals are you going to eat through the week? Once you have decided that then what do you need to buy from the supermarket? When are you going to do the food shop? How much time do you need to cook each evening?

This may sound like a lot to think about, but deciding these things ahead of time, planning them into your week means that once you actually get into the nitty gritty of your week, you have planned everything you need to do into your week so that it gets done.

Which means that on a day to day basis you don’t have to have the stress of trying to figure these things out as you go. So for week 2 that is the only extra thing I recommend you focus on.

Review your first week, assess how you did with hitting your targets, think about what could improve and what difficulties you perhaps had, and then make a plan for week two and put it into motion.

Note that when you complete the weekly tracker this will give you a review as well to help, and also you can look back on the weekly tracker to help you assess how the week went. For example if you recognise that on Tuesday you only managed 3000 steps, think back to why that was the case and come up with a plan for how that could improve next time. It’s all about trial and error.

Week 2 Summary

• Continue week 1 actions – hit calories and step targets, use weekly tracker
• Review week 1
• Plan ahead for week 2 to improve upon your start

I know that you may be thinking this isn’t much action, you may be used to more extreme starts to weight loss programmes with more dramatic changes but remember, these are habits you are implementing that will help you maintain your progress for life. It will take time. Trust in the process and have patience.