Weight Loss Tips That Work
When you make the decision that you want to lose weight it will be important that you are mentally prepared for it. While this is a simple concept, it is a well known fact that most people who start a diet will end up walking away from their weight loss plan for some very surprising reasons. It isn’t so much that they hunger pains or don’t like the food choices that their diet follows, they fail because of psychological reasons.
People abandon their diet plans for all sorts of reasons, but if examined closely there are just a few categories that these “excuses” fall into. They either get impatient with their progress, feel guilty about not sticking to their diet 100% of the time, or they just start feeling sorry for themselves and come to the conclusion that they deserve to eat whatever they want. It is at this point when the blame game starts.
People have a real talent for blaming everything and everybody else for their failures. With a failed attempt at losing weight the usual suspects are the diet-plan itself, problems with their spouse or family, problems at work, or their metabolism. Once the blame game starts it can last for years or even a lifetime. Some people will spend years attempting to lose weight on one sort of a diet or another. Sometimes they will spend their whole life on a diet and never reach their weight goal. It is sad because they also will go through their whole lives blaming something or somebody for their own failure. In far too many of these situations the problem has its roots in how the dieter’s psychological outlook on diet and weight loss plays into their insecurities.
Lets take a brief look at the psychological problems that dieters get caught up on, as well as some suggestions to get past these problems:
Lacking A Complete Understanding Of The Benefits Of Weight Loss
Lifestyle changes are necessary in order to assure success with your weight loss goals. Your eating habits are going to be turned upside down, so you might as well accept this fact and move on. What will typically happen at the beginning of a diet is a strict adherence to the plan. We all get excited when we start out on a new adventure and try to do whatever it is that we are involved with to the best of our abilities. We are motivated to succeed. Then after a few short weeks reality starts to set in. The new foods that we are eating and the different decisions that we are making regarding portions and the new times that we choose to eat all start to change our normal style of living.
It is because of these changes our gung-ho attitude towards are new diet will slowly creep away. We start viewing our diet as an obtrusive drag on our life, instead of as a bright new beginning to a more healthy weight and physique. All of a sudden our diet starts feeling like a chore rather then a step in the right direction and a new life.
In the end it all comes down to tackling this problem before it get out of hand. In order to move on from this type of problem, you will need to form a clear picture in your head as to the reasons you want to lose weight. We don’t do anything unless there is a clear benefit that we receive in return for our participation. So the benefit has to be undeniable and as plain as black and white. Without this undeniable benefit to think of as a goal, our old habits and lifestyle will tempt us and we are not good at beating back temptation.
You would think that with a diet the goals of losing weight and good health would do the trick. But they are not strong enough reasons to get us to stick to a diet. What is necessary is a highly personal, specific, self-centered benefit. One that that we can get wrapped up in and remain focused on without any regards to temptation.
Wanting to be able to walk down the beach in a bikini and look attractive is a benefit that you can easily visualize and it is all about you! Maybe you would want to appear striking in a new outfit that you can wear to a dinner party. Once again, easy to visualize and it is all about you! No matter how you decide which goal holds the largest benefit for you, as long as it resonates it is good. Don’t forget, we don’t want you feeling like “you must” lose weight. When you must do something it becomes a chore and that is not good. Nobody likes chores. Permanent weight loss can only happen if “you want” to follow a diet and healthy lifestyle.
Perfection Is Not The Goal
Statistics tell us that at any given time 43% of the people in the USA are on a diet or thinking about going on a diet. And you could bet the ranch that not a single one of these people are perfect. While your betting the ranch you can throw in the mortgage and make a side bet that all of these people that are on a diet make mistakes ever single day. They have their ups and downs on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Sometimes they fall totally of the wagon and shred their diet to bits. However in the end, if they had the proper motivation all along, they would regroup and pick up where they left off. Success would be theirs in the end. Oh Really? Absolutely, because at the end of the day there is an old saying that holds true: All of us learn more from our mistakes then we do from our successes.
A common mistake that a whole lot of dieters seem obsessed about making is the insistence on perfection. So when they make a mistake, eat what they shouldn’t, skip a day of exercise, they take it all too seriously and have a way of not being able to take the setback in stride. They accept failure as finality. What ends up happening is that a meaningless setback derails the strength ta person needs to continue.
It is not that they ate food that they shouldn’t. And it is not that they skipped a day of exercising that was scheduled. What sapped their strength to continue on the diet was that they did not have the proper psychological outlook at the start of the diet. Here is teachable moment: Perfection is for perfectionist not for dieters. The pursuit of perfection will only lead a person down the road to failure. Nobody is perfect. A more positive way to think about the whole episode is like this: Realize that mistakes happen and that they do not play a part in your ultimate success. The making of a mistake does not mean you have failed and it certainly doesn’t mean that you are a bad person.
Speed Kills
There is no such thing as a healthy diet that will allow you to lose weight fast. Do not be fooled into believing that there are legitimate diets that will allow quick weight loss as a goal. When somebody on a diet thinks that they should be losing weight quickly, and then they find out that is not going to happen, they are more than likely not psychologically prepared for the diminishing of their expectations. When a few days pass without any results, they start to give up. They think that once again it is the diet that is not working for them. What people don’t realize is that the diet is not working for anybody.
It is too bad that people do not have a better understanding of basic human biology. Our bodies are designed to survive and not to look like a model in a fashion magazine. With this small nugget of information it would not be a tremendous leap to the understanding that the human body really does not want to get rid of fat. The body views fat as an essential source of stored energy that can be used when needed. Because of this, the most fat any person can lose in a 7 day period is 3 pounds. The less overweight you are the less quickly you can lose fat. If you are 30 pounds or less overweight then the most fat you can expect to lose in a 7 day period is 1 pound.
If you lose more weight than that you are not losing fat but rather your are losing water and muscle. That is not healthy and your body will not put up with this loss for very long. Don’t obsess over how fast you are losing weight. Be happy that you are losing weight. Remember, speed kills and your not in a race. Your change in lifestyle is an adventure. Thinking about it like that will help diminish the pressure you feel and give you the space you will need to succeed as you to start to embrace new and healthy choices.
For goodness sakes don’t be one of those people who checks their weight several times a day to see how the diet is working. Adopting this type of destructive behavior will only encourage you to view weight loss as a short term project rather than a lifelong journey. While everybody would like to reach their ideal weight as quickly as possible, you need to realize this one important fact: The extra weight you are trying to lose will stay off longer if you lose it slow rather than fast. Remember this because many weight loss tips don’t work but this one does!
You need to sit down and be honest with yourself. Figure out how much weight you can reasonably expect to lose and still remain healthy. Once you arrive at that number make it your goal. If you want to lose 50 pounds, calendar out a period of 6 months to obtain your goal. If you happen not to reach your goal in 6 months then take another month. Taking one extra month to reach your goal is not failure, it is success.
As we said in the beginning, psychological problems can make or break your weight loss goals. Understanding them will increase your opportunity to succeed at losing weight. When you are ready to start out on yet another diet, remember to have your mind in the right place so that you can be in really good position to accomplish your weight loss goals.
