Alias Beltran tried to lose weight by restricting his diet, but he felt like a failure. Attitudes toward weight loss are shifting from fad diets to an overall healthy lifestyle. Bertrand lost weight by making simple lifestyle changes and being active.
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Alias Beltrán went through a series of restrictive diets until he lost 75 pounds and kept it off for six years, but it didn’t work long-term and left him feeling like a failure. Ta.
“I was trying to do the same things I thought would work, like quick fixes and bad diets,” Bertrand, 25, a Florida-based marketer and content creator, told Business. told Insider. “It felt very difficult. I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere.”
It was only when she started prioritizing her health over her looks and implementing healthy lifestyle changes that she was able to sustainably lose weight.
Her story coincides with changing attitudes to weight loss, as people increasingly reject fad diets and strive for lifestyle choices that support long-term health and well-being. Weight loss drugs such as Ozempic have also helped dispel the myth that willpower alone is enough to achieve a healthy weight.
Beltran’s journey began in 2014, when she was a freshman in high school, when a doctor told her she qualified as obese, which prompted her to reevaluate her daily habits. “I started analyzing and calculating where I was, where my family was, where my friends were. Is this the way I want to live?” she said.
She decided otherwise and tried to lose weight.
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The restrictive diets she tried, such as the keto diet and intermittent fasting, made her become obsessed with what she was eating, and counting calories led to bulimia. “Tracking what I ate almost sent me into a downward spiral of overthinking and overanalyzing my life and food as a whole, and it took the fun out of my life,” she said.
Bertrand shared two simple changes he made to lose 75 pounds and keep it off without giving up his favorite foods.
Bertrand made the track team in college. Arias Beltran
1) Join the sprint team
Bertrand has always played sports since he was a child. When she was examined, she was on the track and field team.
She was a thrower, but wanted to lose weight and had always wanted to try it, so she decided to join the sprint team. She began splitting her time between the two teams, half practicing throwing and half practicing sprinting.
Both required fairly rigorous schedules of daily training, but while sprint training included running, pitching practice did not. The first year was difficult both physically and socially. She said changing teams was not normal and people on both teams whispered to each other and looked at her sideways. But it gave Beltran a real sense of purpose and self-worth, making it rewarding.
By spring 2017, she had lost 75 pounds without actively trying. She said that by running two to three times a week, she was able to burn far more calories and run faster than before.
“I was so proud of myself for finding something I really loved and starting to take off with it,” she said.
When Bertrand returned to her health care provider in 2017, her doctors were surprised to find she had lost so much weight. “I remember the doctor asking me what I had done, and I had a completely different reaction,” she said.
She later joined the Michigan State University track and field team as a hammer thrower and continues to train every day even after graduating from college. Typically, she does a combination of lifting, running, kickboxing, gymnastics, and hot yoga.
Exercise is extremely beneficial for overall health and longevity, but it may play a smaller role in weight loss than we think, as exercise accounts for about 5% of the energy we expend each day. research suggests. In order for a person to lose weight, they must create a calorie deficit in which they burn more calories than they burn. This means that diet is the most important factor.
Bertrand asked her mother to add more fresh produce to her grocery cart. Arias Beltran
2) Eat smaller plates and add healthier items to your grocery order.
Before starting his weight loss journey, Bertrand ate a lot of processed foods. She was eating two bags of ramen and lots of hot Cheetos a day. Her family often ordered pizza for dinner and ate it late into the night.
When she decided to lose weight, she started noticing how other people were eating. One of her best friends is Lebanese and both of her parents were doctors. She noticed that their family had completely different eating habits than hers. For example, they ate together at 6 p.m. and ate smaller portions on smaller plates than Bertrand’s family.
They also ate a mostly Mediterranean-style diet consisting of beans, fresh vegetables, fish, and grains. “Some days we’ll have Greek food, some days we’ll have Mediterranean food, some days we’ll have hamburgers, and again, the portions are very reasonable,” she said.
Beltran asked his mother, who was shopping for groceries at the time, to stock up on more fresh produce. And she started thinking more about portion control. “It was very doable for me. All I have to do is grab a small plate, so it was very doable,” she said. This means she doesn’t overfill her plate and naturally eats less without having to track her food.
“Over time, my adjustment became less about needing to look a certain way and more about wanting to feel a certain way. I want my body to feel good,” she says. I want to be confident,” she said.
“I think what made this trip so successful was that I stopped caring about how I looked. How I looked was a byproduct of my love for traveling.”
