Make your bed.
Oversimplification, I know. But hang in there. What separates people who find success in their weight loss journey from the unsuccessful? Consistency. Now, I’m not talking January 1st – January 27th consistency. I’m talking 2017 to 2073 type consistency.
Literally anyone can white-knuckle some challenge for 4 or 8 weeks. That’s not the hard part. The hard part is routinely planning out your meals week after week for years, preparing lunches, and not reaching for a treat to solve a “bad day”.
What we need to do is cultivate the habits of change. These habits will lay the tracks upon which you’ll put your diet and exercise “train”. And they don’t have to be related to diet and exercise whatsoever! Hence, making your bed will help you lose weight.
Most of us can manage the 90 seconds everyday that it’ll take to tidy up your bed. 30 minutes of exercise or 15 minutes to prepare a healthy lunch may be a task too tall for you right now. The important thing is to build up your tolerance for small, consistent, progressive habits.
Once you have 8-12 weeks of making your bed, it’ll be a little bit easier to add a 10 minute walk. Eventually, you’ll be working out consistently and preparing your own healthy food using the skills you learned from making your bed.