How I Lost Weight & My Body Confidence Journey

[Music] hey guys welcome back to my channel I hope you guys are staying safe at home if you can I was reading a bunch of your guys's comments on my last video and I was so happy to hear if that my videos are helping to distract you a little bit and bring some sort of light to your days and I want to continue to do that it's hard not to talk about what's happening in the world right now but if my videos can be some sort of escape for you following that intention gets me really excited to create content for you guys so today we are making a video that you guys have been asking for for so long I didn't have some crazy transformation but a lot of you guys have asked how I lost the weight how I toned up and what are some tips I got I tried to film this video two weeks ago and I ended up having two hours of footage the whole video I was just talking in circles and making sure that I wasn't going to offend anyone and just making sure I wasn't going to say the wrong things because this is a very sensitive topic and I think all of us struggle with this at some point in your life health and fitness and your relationship with your body and your self-confidence it's so different and unique for everyone I can go on and on about things that you should be weighing yourself for like how you make people feel when you're in a conversation with them or what you have to bring and give to this world its beauty and self-confidence just goes so much deeper than how you look on the outside it is so much about how you feel in your body and feeling comfortable in your skin I don't want this video to feel like this is what I looked before and that was bad and that wasn't beautiful and this is what I look like now both versions of myself are beautiful and also my body is going to change I plan on having in the future gravity pulls your skin down accepting that my body will always be changing was the first like freeing moment for me the reason why this video felt important for me to make is because I look back on that version of myself and it's not about how I looked or how I fit in clothes but it was the relationship that I had with my body and the way that I treated myself and the amount of guilts that I would hold on myself it was so consuming I just felt my intentions were in the wrong place and I was doing things for the wrong reasons we'll get into that later but the other reason I want to do this is because if any of my tips and tricks that I share with you guys inspires you to better yourself I'm all for that I think there's always room for improvement so I want to talk about the shift of mentality and then also just simply what I did to lose the weights I'm going to be spilling all of the tea let's jump back okay growing up I never really thought about it I started making YouTube videos in middle school I think around high school it's pretty common for girls to start comparing their bodies to other girls or celebrities or models I would get comments about my teeth being too big or too yellow or having elf ears like all of this stuff is just so burned in my memory and that sort of stuff kind of set it off for me I did everything I think in high school I used to Google like the height and weight of celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Mila Kunis to compare myself to what they look like and what I thought I should look like which is just so problematic because everyone's body is so different even just jumping from like high school to moving out to Los Angeles living on my own for the first time throughout all of that I never got like super obsessive with one certain thing but I always was fluctuating in my weight and constantly going through phases and the reason why nothing ever stuck is because it either was unattainable for just a daily lifestyle or I started it for the wrong reasons I feel like I've literally gone through every single phase I went vegan for seven months back in high school I try and like calorie counting for two weeks if I reached my daily limit and cow I would go out for a run to try to set it back to neutral which is just not the way that bodies and health work at all I had a cycling face where I did indoor cycling all the time with my girlfriends but then we would like go out and get drunk and party and then the next morning we're hungover but we'd sweat it all out by working out and we were just depriving our bodies of like rest and nutrition and I would force myself to do some of these workout classes that just either kind of did nothing for my body or I really just did not enjoy doing then comes the influence of living in Los Angeles and that all sort of mixed into social media and Instagram and constantly seeing highlights of people's lives and their best angles and their best lighting and I was so guilty of that I'll say viewer first I would use face tune I would get insecure if someone was about to post like a group photo that I didn't get to approve before like it's it's just so sad how consuming it had become the biggest difference for me is just mentally how I viewed all this and how I treated my body it makes me sad thinking back on it I think around spring 2018 I was probably my heaviest I was about 18 pounds heavier than I am right now I started getting comments about my arms you're so young why you have saggy arms like a pregnant woman or something and it's destroy to me I was too insecure to wear like spaghetti tank tops in my videos growing up online and being in the public eye totally messed with my concept of like self-image the only reason I say this stuff is because I was always too afraid to admit that I would try so hard to preach this healthy lifestyle and self-confidence and stuff when inside I felt like a fraud because I didn't know how to love myself yet I think that's okay I don't think that every 18 19 20 year-olds knows how to process that and give advice to thousands of people so I just want to normalize that let's get into the details let's get nitty and gritty how do the way I've compiled a list of different tips and I'm gonna go into each one with my personal experience and why it's on this list for me nothing about what I'm gonna say is fast or cutting corners or quick cheats on how to drop 20 pounds in a month it took me a year and a half to get to where I am right now I think a lot of people don't know that because when you're losing weight very slowly people just don't notice it as much and so suddenly you know it can be eight months later and my friends were like whoa how'd you lose so much weight so fast what and like it had already been eight months these are still things that I stick to as much as I can now a day and I've been doing these things for like a year and a half they're doing all of these I just feel way more connected and comfortable in my body and I'm listening to it I know how bad I used to feel and mentally how I used to think those two points are the reasons why I've stuck with this tip number one if you are going to change anything about the way that you are currently eating your diet whatever you want to call it take it slow be patient with yourself don't try to cut out a million things take one improvement that you want to work on and focus on that one thing and see how you feel my issue growing up always was trying to just start and end things cold turkey it would throw off my energy levels completely throw off just the balance of like my digestive system and everything because I would make all these drastic changes I never let my body get used to them and so they just never stayed consistent and I felt so lost and sort of helpless because I had done all these things around fall of 2018 I meant to my boyfriend Phineas just from being in a relationship with someone who found me so beautiful and sexy it helped me become way more comfortable with myself and sort of regain that self-confidence but I started making really subtle lifestyle changes that eventually led to the weight loss but I did not realize it when I started doing them the first thing that I changed is I really cut back on my alcohol intake that makes me sound like I drank a ton back in the day and I really didn't I think especially around my age range and just being in the city summer of 2018 your girl was partying going out on weekends taking her tequila shots all of those Moscow mules and cocktails and shots and mixed drinks all of that adds up and then you have the drug Chi's so we'd go to Mel's Diner and get some french fries or whatever post mates when we get home at this point we've definitely drink wine here and there I would say I have like a glass of wine once a week once every two weeks there was just like a whole month where I stopped drinking and it was crazy how much that sort of shifted things for me mentally and physically around the new year so now we're talking January 2019 I really wanted to try out taking dairy and red meat out of my diet both of those food categories just never sat well in my stomach Dairy would just break me out and make me gassy and then read me would just make me feel really like backed up and bloated because it would take longer for my body to digest the red meat and so those kind of slowly left the chat those are like the only three things that I cut out I never stopped cutting out sugar I never cut down on my fats for my carbs or anything like that we eat pasta all the time we have bread all the time so let's talk about fitness being active is very important moving your body stretching your muscles moving your joints getting your heart rate up these are all things that we've just grown up knowing and it's common sense I think when it comes to toning up and strengthening your body it is very like you got to be active you can't build up muscle without doing something I think the secret to it all is just finding out what you enjoy doing because it won't feel like an obligation or a chore that you have to do Barry's boot camp hot yoga cycling Orangetheory working out in the gym do weights running on the treadmill February of 2019 at this point I was like two months in to just feeling so much better about myself for making all these little changes that we just discussed around that time a couple of my friends got really into hot Pilates now this was a game changer for me I have always hated running bad knees just runs in my family so my knees hurt if I run too much working out at the gym I just I couldn't get myself motivated enough to do that and stay consistent with it hot Pilates taught me that I am really into doing workouts that are based on my body weight so not using any sort of crazy weights not using any crazy equipment you know crunches push-ups ABS stationary sort of cardio stuff like jumping jacks and squat jumps I found all of that to be way more stimulating and exciting for me versus like going outside and running three miles I think it was the combination of just like killer music blasting in the studio developing friendships and going out with friends which is an incredible way to get yourself motivated to be active which is just not doing it alone doing it with others doing with friends encouraging each other so I think it was like the combination of all of that got me so into working out for the first time in my life I finally was like I found something that I love I would say around like Coachella 2019 I was ripped I felt so good about my ABS I felt the strongest I'd ever felt in my entire life and that was also kind of the point where people were like girl you look snatched she was away for a very very long time and many months I was just obsessed with Pilates I loved it so much right now I'm in a different phase we now have a dog so we walk in the mornings we take hikes that run for at least an hour long remain honest I really want to get back into ha Pilates but the only reason why I haven't did a long time is because it lives much farther away now so it's kind of hard to justify a very long draw to get to a class that you're also going to be sweating in for an hour and then you have to drive all it's like a three-hour experience so cutting out those three things taught me to listen to my body in a way that I never realized I could because any time I would have one of those things I would note it's such a difference with how I felt either that day or within the hour or the next morning it taught me to be patient and actually listen to my body because I remember times where I felt like food controlled my day I would wake up in the morning and be so excited about my breakfast and then I would snack there were days where I just didn't experience the feeling of hunger because I was the second I slightly started getting hungry or I was actually just thirsty I would immediately eat my next meal or snack right away my digestive system was just always going always churning recognizing when my body was hungry and wasn't hungry it was so much easier and so much clearer to me at the end of the day whatever works for you might totally not work for someone else I'm not going to recommend you know you should have three meals a day or you should have six smaller meals a day there are so many different diets and lifestyles that work for people and work for their schedules my next tip is to figure out what you like that's healthy and good for you and brings nutrition into your body and stick with it if you don't like Brussels sprouts do not force yourself to eat Brussels sprouts when I decide that I like something I will eat it all the time I have a very bland tastebud palette my favorite thing for breakfast is avocados toast it gives me healthy fats in the morning I get carbs in from the bread that helps me with energy avocado toast I could eat that every single day and I wouldn't be mad about it my number one vegetable is broccoli broccoli will never let me down so you'll find me eating broccoli way more than I'm eating asparagus this next tip was very game-changing for me my most vulnerable moments were always when I was friends this might sound dumb but when it comes to indulging yourself in any sort of desert or something that you know is not bringing any sort of nutritional value to but it's bringing you joy and happiness which is sometimes on the same level if you have a craving go satisfy it when it comes to that stuff sharing is a game changer for example when phineas and I go out to restaurants every single time we always get dessert it's like this weird thing where if they ask us about a dessert menu we're gonna take it we're gonna choose something no exceptions like we're gonna have dessert at the end of our meal but we enjoy ordering one thing and just sharing that one thing sharing something indulgent with someone makes you appreciate it more I feel like even just like with every bite and spoonful you're like oh my god this is so good what do you think oh my god are you also dying whether it be with your friend or your sibling girlfriend boyfriend whatever your roommate and this is coming from someone who used to have the biggest sweet tooth in the entire world I just feel better at the end I'm like yes this is something that we shared we enjoyed together and I don't feel like I overdid it by any means I'm so sorry if you were hoping that I would go through every single thing that I eat and don't do and do but I personally don't want to live a life that is so focused on what I'm putting in my mouth and what I am doing every single day because I've been there and I've been that obsessive and it doesn't make me happy and honestly every single day is different all of those things I just mentioned are things that I like to remind myself and all those lifestyle changes turned into habits and kind of just fell after one another I guess I've never approached the way that I ate in that way which is sort of like oh this one thing made me feel really good well yeah so I'm not gonna drink alcohol every single weekend what if I cut out this thing Wow that makes me feel so much better too I never want to be restrictive I never want to punish myself for slipping up one night because you have to look at the big picture what sorts of things do you want to change and follow that you can keep up and that are going to impact her health and your energy and everything in the grand scheme of things and honestly that is all that I've done and my body's still always changing I definitely am NOT as ripped as I was when I was doing hot Pilates and I'm not mad about it and my fitness and health journey doesn't end here it's just unrealistic to think that you can get to one place and just stay there forever what the past like year-and-a-half has taught me is that all of these different lifestyle changes and habits and everything that we talked about in this video are going to affect the way that you feel when you're thirty forty fifty I want to do things that are going to ensure my health when my kids are having kids you know I want to be around for that there's so many reasons why taking care of your health is so important and I feel like it just goes way bigger and beyond than just aesthetically how you look all these workouts and all these little things they all add up and I personally just want to set myself up for a healthy future that's the video I really want this video in the comment section down below to be a positive and encouraging space so if I see anything that's negative or toxic I would probably just delete it and it's not because I don't want to face any sort of criticism or anything like that I just really want the comments section to be a conversation where we can encourage each other and share different tips and all that stuff if I see something crazy negative kicking it out I love you guys so much I hope you enjoyed today's video and I will see you guys for new one person back

Channel: Claudia Sulewski

Views: 2,205,608

Rating: 4.9777236 out of 5

Keywords: claudia sulewski, Claudia Sulewski vlogs, Claudia Sulewski vlog channel, Finneas girlfriend, how I lost weight, how to lose weight, body confidence, weight loss journey, body image, how I stay fit, lost 18 pounds, toning up, get healthy with me, workout routine, what I eat, diet, hot pilates

Id: 9L4udlH5E5A

Length: 17min 35sec (1055 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020