Many of you, including myself have been trying to lose weight for many years. We have tried the diets, read the "30 weight loss tips" in magazines, brought the fitness videos. But there is still something lacking. Many people have lost weight with different methods and kept it off for years. I bet each of us knows someone who was fat in school and then we see them years later and the look gorgeous and slim. So weight loss diets and methods DO work for some people. What separates the ones who it works for and those it doesn't then?
It's about mindset
Yes, the difference between us and people who have slimmed down is mindset. You may be thinking that's a load of rubbish. Personally I have loads of motivation to lose weight:
I feel ugly
I lack self confidence
I don't want to die young of heart attack/stroke
I don't want to get diabetes
There's some pretty strong motivation right there but I'm still fat. I lose weight like ½ - 1 stone and then I put weight back on. Over the next few weeks, I'll cover different methods that are working for me.
Push / Pull method
Half of a method of motivation is above but we're missing the second half.
The second half is something to move towards. We have the motivation there to start to move away from our current weight but as soon as I lose that half stone, my self confidence improves, I feel like I'm doing well. And then I relax in my habits. "I've done well so one bag of sweets wont hurt." And then things fall like dominoes from there. Before I know it, within a few weeks I've put all that weight back on.
So, what we need is something that when we've lost our motivation that pushes us to lose weight in the first place, pulls us towards our target weight. It's simple really but it works. Above we have a list of reasons we don't want to be fat. Now all we need is a list of reasons we want to be slim.
How I do this
I took a notebook and on the left page wrote "Pushing away motivation" and "Pulling towards motivation". Here are my motivations for each of these:
Pushing away motivation
Being embarrassed buying XL clothes
Feeling fat in front of new people I'm meeting
Feeling embarrassed going to the beach on holiday
Feeling low self-confidence
Feeling tired
Seeing my man-boobs
Feeling fat when the barber is adjusting the height of the chair.
Pulling towards motivation
Being told I look like I've lost weight
Looking in the mirrors and thinking "damn I look good!"
Living longer in a healthy body
Not having to suck my belly in
Having to buy a smaller belt
Having to buy smaller clothes
Having a six-pack
Having one chin
Being able to rock climb
Seeing muscle definition in my arms / shoulders
Wanting to show off my new body to people
The more weight you lose, the more the 'towards' factors will motivate you. Each day, I read through my list of 'towards' and then add one more to it. This helps keep my motivation high and puts me in a good frame of mind to start the day.
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