Losing weight can feel like a mammoth task but making small tweaks to your diet and lifestyle can make a huge difference.
A slimmer who shed 6st in eight months shared the strategies she implemented to achieve a huge transformation.
Nicole Armstrong, who goes by Itsjustcole on YouTube, revealed that her unhealthy relationship with food caused her to put on a lot of weight. This severely damaged her confidence and negatively impacted her mental health.
Determined to make a change, she started her slimming journey in January 2020 and eight months later, was 6st down.
Nicole Armstrong dropped a whopping 6st by going ‘cold turkey’ on her favourite unhealthy foods
YouTube / Itsjustcole
To achieve her transformation, Nicole cut ultra-processed foods, fizzy drinks and alcohol out of her diet for the first three months of her journey. Instead, she prioritised healthy, whole foods.
“I just decided that I was cutting everything out,” the slimmer revealed, “chocolate, crisps, sweets, fizzy pops, takeaways, fast food – pretty much everything I was eating before”.
For the first week, she struggled with headaches as a result of sugar withdrawal. However, by the second week, she felt better.
“I knew I needed to do it,” the slimmer told her viewers. “It was like going cold turkey.”
As defined by the NHS, processed foods have been changed in some way when they are made or prepared. Ultra-processed foods have been through even more processing and often include ingredients you would not usually have at home, such as preservatives, sweeteners and emulsifiers.
The NHS explained: “Not all processed foods are unhealthy, but many ultra-processed foods are high in calories, saturated fat, salt or sugar.”
A newsletter entitled ‘Highly Processed Foods Linked to Weight Gain’, published in the NIH News In Health, stated: “A study found that when people consumed a diet of highly processed foods, they took in more calories and gained more weight than when on a diet of minimally processed foods.
“On the highly processed diet, people ate more calories and gained an average of 2lb. On the unprocessed diet, they ate fewer calories and lost about 2lb.”
Examples of popular ultra-processed foods are sweetened drinks; crisps; packaged cakes and biscuits; ice cream; sweets and chocolate; some ready meals; and packaged meat pastries like pies and pasties.
In addition to eliminating ultra-processed foods from her diet, Nicole started tracking her calories using the health and fitness tracking app MyFitnessPal.
She said: “To this day, I still track my food. To use the app properly, you do have to measure everything out. It was a little bit annoying to start out but now it doesn’t bother me, it’s like second nature.”
As for exercise, Nicole started by incorporating one hilly walk into her week.
Once she had followed these habits for three months, the slimmer became more lenient with her food intake.
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To achieve her transformation, Nicole ditched takeaways and fast food
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She stated: “I definitely wasn’t going back to where I was, but I wasn’t going to go, ‘I’m never having a chocolate bar for the rest of my life’.”
If Nicole wanted to have a chocolate bar, she’d allow herself to enjoy one. However, she made sure she still adhered to her daily calories when she added these treats.
She also upped her exercise, investing in a cross trainer and an exercise bike, which were both a “massive help”.
Nicole said: “I can just get on there and do an hour and I love it. If I do not exercise one day, I feel so sad, compared to the person who would feel sad because they’d eaten too much eight months ago.
“Now I feel sad because I’ve not exercised – I am a completely different person.”
While Nicole was able to make a major transformation using these methods, she is not a professional and her weight loss strategies may not work for everyone.
Those who are struggling with their weight should always consult their GP before making any major lifestyle changes.
In other weight loss news, a doctor shared the best times to drink water for effective slimming.
