The Elusive Motivation To Lose Weight
You know that you will look and feel better if you could just maintain a healthy weight, but it is so hard to find the motivation to lose weight and actually keep it off long term. We all know that fad diets don’t work, but we’re not so adept at developing an effective weight loss program and remaining consistent with it.
The following approaches will help you learn how to keep motivated to lose weight once and for all.
Collect Proof You Need To Lose Weight
One way to enhance your motivation to make life changing shifts and take control of your weight is to collect evidence to build a case against yourself for losing weight. The purpose behind this is to prove the point to yourself that that you desperately need to lose some weight, and you can do that through pitcures.
Take a few photographs of yourself as you are at the moment, and then collect pictures of yourself as you were in the past. Get together as many images as you can that represent you at various different weights and times in your life. You can then line them up on a table in order of time or glue them onto a paper or poster board.
You’ll find that it’s rather hard to deny that you have gained weight when you are staring at yourself from an outer viewpoint. Do you look like the person you know you are inside? Can you use this to motivate you to to return to the days of being healthy and thin?
Focus On Fitness Too
When you want to lose weight it become easy to forget the bigger picture and only pay attention to the scale. A more balanced approach to lowering your weight can be achieved by setting fitness targets that have nothing to do with what you weigh. For instance, sign up for an upcoming 5K event and decide to walk it. Other options may be to work up to doing a certain number of chin ups, sit ups, or push ups. You could even plan to work up to completing one handed push ups, for example.
You can train to run if the race is far enough away and you can realistically get into good enough shape to be able to handle it. What you should definitely NOT do however is set yourself up for disappointment with unrealistic goals, so make sure what you set out to do is achievable. Doing so will ensure you maintain your motivation to lose weight in an effective manner.
Create Friendly Contests
Get your friends on board and come up with a friendly competition. Everyone can pitch in to get a nice reward that goes to the winner.
If its hard for you to find people in real life to do this there are many online weight loss forums that often have many contests going on on a regular basis.
Use Visual Incentives
Perhaps there is a particular peice of clothing that you would really love to put on? Maybe it’s a smaller sundress with light sandals or a pair of short shorts without cellulite and fat jiggling out of the bottom. Regardless of what it is, purchase it in the size you would ultimately like to be hang it up in a place where you will see it daily.
You can also try it on occasionally as a visual reminder of how much progress you have made!
Notice that most of these tools for getting motivated to lose weight involve forward thinking. It’s about taking action now because you want something better for yourself in the future, rather than focusing on what you have to give up now.
This article was written by Mike Roberts of getting motivated to lose weight. For more from Mike see how to keep motivated to lose weight.
Processing your request, Please wait....
