Have you ended your freshman year of college and noticed that your oversized T-shirts aren't so oversized anymore? Are you beginning to wonder if you've actually gained weight instead of shrunk all your clothes in your dorm's crappy dryers? Have you accepted the fact that the Freshman 15 is a real thing that will suck all your confidence and joy out of your summer?
If you've answered "Yes" to any of the questions, don't worry! I took the liberty of doing some research on the surefire ways to lose weight before you get back to school!
Just kidding! Below is a list of stages that come from my personal experiences when it comes to trying to lose weight:
1. The Denial & Acceptance Stage
During this stage, you try to come up with all the reasons why you shouldn't work out (see "I love my curves"). You get to a point where you put the waffle fries and the Cook-Out milkshake down and accept the fact that you need to lose weight.
2. The Goals Stage
This stage is a more obvious one. You simply create an end weight for yourself and, if you're really serious, download an app that tells you how many calories you have to consume in one day to get to your dream weight. Spoiler: You will stop using the app after three days.
3. The Research Stage
Pinterest will be your main source of information. You scroll through tons of pins of fun, yet effective, workouts and healthy food recipes. Take caution when going through the food section. There are some mean pinners who accidentally pin tempting desserts onto their healthy food boards. These instances are cruel and distracting and may lead you back to stage 1 if you're not careful.
4. The Motivation Stage
Here, all forms of social media come into play to seek the ultimate motivation. I suggest following all types of skinny people so you see their pictures every day when you're on social media. I find this stage extremely effective when I have given into the temptations from stage 3. The moment you see a skinny person while you're chowing down on a chimichanga will make you think twice about your life decisions.
5. The Working-Out Stage
Hopefully you found some workouts during stage 3 that you are eager, or willing, to try. This stage is the most exciting. You see results quicker, which motivates you even more. You work out really hard the first couple weeks (or in my case, the first couple days) and start to see yourself losing weight. Unfortunately, this shall pass.
6. The Eating-Healthy Stage
You've discovered so many new healthy recipes during your research period that you're dying to try! Most of these include a ton of ingredients you had no idea existed, so you must trek out to your nearest Whole Foods. Unfortunately, you will never use these ingredients for anything else other than that one recipe, so you decide to stop trying to be creative and just eat simple healthy things. Then, you get really tired of eating baby carrots and broccoli florets with ranch every night so you start telling yourself that pasta is OK, but in small amounts. Three days pass and you convince yourself that chocolate is okay to eat, as well, because it came from a bean, which is a vegetable.
7. The Starting-To-See-Progress Stage
This is the best stage. All of your hard work has finally paid off. You've lost six of the 10 pounds you want to lose. You're over halfway there! You decide to reward yourself with something different every day. Dark chocolate chips are the gateway diet food. Once you reward yourself with five small morsels, the amount increases each night. The next thing you know, you've finished the entire bag in two days! Disappointed in yourself, you vow to never do it again and your weight-loss journey continues. Spoiler: You do it again.
8. The Phasing-Out Stage
This stage is a combination of the ends of stages 5-7. You reward yourself for working out strenuously by dwindling down to doing five push-ups every day and calling it a work out. You reward yourself for eating kale for five days straight by eating a piece of pizza. You keep rewarding yourself for small things until the weight slowly starts to creep back.
9. The Relapse Stage
By this point, your diet has failed, yet again. You go back to your ways of eating an entire bowl of pasta for dinner and a pint of Ben & Jerry's Half Baked for dessert. Your workout regimen is non existent and you consider walking up the stairs cardio. Your pants don't fit anymore. You regret many things, including the entire pint of ice cream. Especially the entire pint of ice cream. You decide to do something. See stage 1.
Currently, I'm on stage 5.
