When I tell people how much weight I’ve lost, one of the first questions that I get is: “What diet did you use?”.

I usually tell them that it wasn’t a diet.  I did it the old fashioned way.  I changed the way I eat and I started to exercise.

The second question that I get is: “How long did it take you to lose the weight?”.

It took me a year and a half to lose 48 pounds.  I learned a valuable lesson from this.

Success is rarely overnight.

When I was using the fad diets, I could lose 35 pounds in 3 months.  The problem that I had was that I could never sustain the diet.  I wasn’t eating foods that I liked.  I would eat the foods until I got the results that I wanted and then go back to the foods that I liked after losing the weight.

Like my life coach told me that to get to your dreams, you have to make the small steps towards the dream every day.

Every day, I have to choose the food that will maintain my weight.  If I were to go back to eating doughnuts and cake every day, then I would gain the weight again.  I still get cravings to this day.  I indulge every now and then.  I just don’t overindulge like I used to do.  There is this restaurant in Marietta called Capers.  They have this dessert that I get every time I go.  It is the best.

Fad diets don’t work for most people because they aren’t tailored to the individual.

For me to maintain my weight, I had to find a way to eat that was tailored to me.  I don’t like to cook so my diet was going to have to incorporate that into it.  Luckily my life coach came up with some simple ideas that I still use to this day.  Thanks to the small steps that I do every day, I can maintain my weight.

Another example, when I knew I wanted to be a nurse I knew that it was going to be a long process.  I had to do the prerequisites for the program before I would be able to get into the program.  Even after I graduated from the program I had to pass the NCLEX before I would be able to practice as a nurse.  To be a travel nurse, I knew that I was going to have get experience before I would be able to be a travel nurse.  I didn’t become a nurse overnight.

To get to my dreams, I had to take the small steps towards them.

Are you taking the small steps towards your dreams?