How To Make Lifestyle Changes: Step-By-Step Or All At Once? {Video}

Should you jump right in with both feet? Or should you make little steps until the add up to one big change? In this video I go over both approaches and what approach is best for who. I also discuss how I did it personally but combining the two approaches.

Here is the transcript:

Hey, I'm Rachel Alvarado, a nutritionist and health coach with a master's in Nutrition and Integrative health. I help people lose weight on a Whole Foods plant-based diet with building a life they love. If this is your thing, then please make sure to hit like and subscribe. Now today I'm gonna be talking about what approach for weight loss and an overall lifestyle change is best for you. Is it gonna be the step by step approach or the dive right in all at once approach? Okay, so you are ready to make a change and lose weight while improving your health so that you can feel your best. But what approach is best for you? You hear about how some people dive right in head first and never look back, but others kind of more slowly wade into the pool of change and what are the pros and cons of each and what approach is going to be the best for who you know who is going to benefit the most from each approach?

Alright, so let's start with the step-by-step approach. Now, this approach is what I did personally to a point, so let's talk about that. I had always done the all-or-nothing approach and had failed at it. It left me doing the yo-yo dieting and obsessing about food. Now, when I had done the all-or-nothing approach, I had never done it as being a Whole Foods plant-based and I was not making the healthiest choices. I was just simply restricting calories. As I now know, choosing nutrient-dense foods is crucial in balancing out your blood sugar and getting over cravings. But at the time I didn't know that and I would simply just restrict or I would tell myself I'll never have sugar again and then not support myself nutritionally or come up with any sort of healthy alternatives such as like chia seed pudding sweetened with dates or my now favorite, the Healthy Fudgesicles and only have a link to that recipe below because it is so good.

But because I didn't set myself up for success, I didn't have success. So there you go, you get what you set yourself up for. So I would do this like crash dieting thing because I didn't have a sustained plan. And at the time for me, the idea of eating whole foods plant-based or a nutritarian diet seemed so far from the realm of possibility for me that I had to start kind of building in my nutrients and practicing certain habits first. So after failing at the all-or-nothing approach, I decided to do a more gradual approach. First, I focused on simply adding in more nutritionally dense foods every day. I made a goal of getting in leafy greens and fruit daily. In fact, I would make a game out of this. I would buy a big container or spinach and challenge myself to use it all before it went bad. This was um, like a fun way to encourage eating more leafy greens. And I can say that well over a decade later, spinach will never go bad in my house. So it is effective. Then I

Focused staying away from artificially flavored and sweetened foods. So I would still have some highly processed foods, but I was choosing slightly better ones. And it was at this time I completely cut out a major food trigger for me. Hot Cheetos, I know they were mothering hot Cheetos were like my numb-out food, and they were never anything I had in moderation. It was either I opened a bag and ate all of them, even if it made me sick or I had to just completely avoid them. There was no eat a few with a sandwich sort of thing, no sort of in moderation. That could not happen with hot Cheetos for me. So one day I chose never to have them again. And I remember the moment <laugh> that I decided to give them up. I was at the store and I wanted to buy a bag because later that night I wanted to watch TV and numb out veg out front of the tv.

And I picked up the bag and I put 'em in the cart. And then I started to walk away. And as I was walking around the store, I kept thinking about how this Cheeto habit really interfered with what I really wanted, which was to feel good and lose weight. So as I walked around the store, I couldn't get outta my head that if I bought these Cheetos, it would be me directly saying no to what I truly wanted. So I went back and I put them on the shelf and the people around me probably thought I was crazy because I stood there and I would put the Cheetos back on the shelf and then I would start to walk away. And then I would go back and I would grab them and I would put 'em back in my cart and then I would start to walk away.

And then I'd go back and I'd put 'em back on the shelf <laugh>. And I was having this like internal dilemma here. But finally, I put 'em on the shelf and I walked away without them. And I have never had a Cheeto since. So I knew that because of how many times I used them to numb out, that I couldn't use it in moderation, that I couldn't just have a few, I couldn't set a boundary around it. I did replace it though with air-popped popcorn, nutritional yeast, and hot sauce. Now, not the healthiest, no, but it's a lot better than hot Cheetos and it wasn't addictive and it gave me that same flavor profile so I could better control it, but still get that same flavor. And that helped me. It was like a crutch that I used to get over it.

Now, after I stopped my Cheeto habit, I started building on my habits. From there, I stopped getting milkshakes, then I started having fruit after lunch instead of a piece of chocolate. And every few weeks I would level up. I made a little micro-change here. And when that became easy, I made another little change. And with each little change, my perspective of myself and my identity changed, it kept getting easier and easier. And I would start to see myself as a healthier person. And I did. I felt a lot better. And every time I leveled up I would see the like

Physical and emotional benefits and that was really encouraging. So I think this step-by-step approach is great for people who really struggle with seeing themselves as the person they wanna become. Sometimes we may want something, maybe you wanna lose a hundred pounds, but we can't actually see ourselves there. So it's too far from our reality, but we can see ourselves losing 20 pounds or 30 pounds and being moderately healthier. So take those small steps and let the path unfold before you. Eventually though, I got far enough down the path that I was able to go all the way and fully commit to Dr. Furman's Nutritarian diet, which is a type of whole foods plant-based diet. Now, the drawback to the step-by-step approach is that you don't get the major health benefits as quickly. You will continuously improve as you keep leveling up and that's great, but it won't be that big swift dramatic change in how you feel in just a few weeks.

So now for those who want to go all the way, let's talk about that. I find this is the absolute best approach if you have a chronic disease. Because if you have a chronic disease, you are probably wanting immediate help and you are going to wanna fully commit. So improving your diet moderately will only improve your health moderately. So if you have a serious health issue you wanna address, you need to take a more serious approach. Now, for most people, this will be challenging for the first couple weeks or maybe even the first month or two. But it gets easier. The longer you do it, you then get to embrace this new, healthier you faster. If you have struggled with your health such as having an autoimmune disease, then nothing could taste as good as feeling healthy feels. To do this approach, you need to be fully committed.

You need to reach out to friends and family and tell them what you're doing, telling people around you that you are changing your lifestyle further, commits you to your goal. I find people who don't tell anyone struggle the most because it's almost as though they are afraid to identify in this new way and it's showing resistance to the change. So be vocal about what you are doing and why most people in your life will want to support you. So let them. But unfortunately, there will be some people who are not going to be the most supportive. It happens. 'cause when you make a change on your diet, a lot of times people see that as a reflection of their own diet and they get defensive and that can create a little bit of tension, but it will work its way out over time. It's okay. Find the people who support you and lean on them. Now another benefit and challenge to the all-in approach is that it forces you to change your identity immediately. You are now a Whole Foods plant-based eating person or a nutritarian. And by making the sweeping change

All at once, you are reinforcing this new identity daily. But it's a double-edged sword because it might take you a while to really feel like you are this new person. Those first couple weeks while you are detoxing and getting over some of those food addictions. You might not feel like you have shifted your identity, but your eating in this new way is reinforcing it. So you know, it goes both ways, but it's like taking a bandaid off, ripping it off, and getting the pain over with quickly. Now another approach is you really want to focus on nutrient-dense foods and really flooding your body with nutrients so that it helps you get over, you know, blood sugar dysregulation and food cravings. So let me know which approach has worked for you in making a lifestyle or diet change and let me know if you have any questions about losing weight on a Whole Foods plant-based diet. I hope this helped and I will talk to you next time. Oh, and don't forget to like and subscribe. Thanks, guys.