Has your motivation to achieve your New Year’s resolution of losing weight for good dissolved like sugar in water? Are you finding it harder than ever to keep your head in the weight loss game or, worse yet, have you already given up and thrown in the towel?
Staying motivated to lose weight is like trying to entertain a young child at Christmas. At first it’s pretty easy because they get to play with a lot of new toys and everything is exciting. But, give it a few minutes and they get bored and want to go back to their old toys.
That’s how it is with weight loss. You start out all fresh and excited because you’ve got new exercise equipment to try out or new workout clothes to wear. However, once that initial glitter starts to fade, you’re left battling the desire to go back to your old habits and behaviors.
Here’s one truth about motivation: if you don’t constantly attend to it, it will disappear quicker than a piece of chocolate cake left unattended at a PMS seminar. So, how do you keep it around when it wants nothing more than to leave you to fight your weight loss battle on your own?
Here are some simple and effective tricks that ought to do the job:
- Put an empty jar or vase on the counter. Every time you make a positive decision towards meeting your goal (such as going to work out when you didn’t want to or bypassing your favorite unhealthy fast food joint), put a colored stone or piece of paper in it. It’s motivating when you try to see how quickly you can fill the jar. And, once you do, make sure you do something nice for yourself such as download a new book or spend the afternoon getting a pedicure. It’s okay because you can clearly see you’ve earned it!
- String a set of paper clips together where each one represents a pound of weight that you want to lose. As you start dropping the weight, move the paper clips over to a new strand – your success strand. Seeing your progress along the way will continuously remind you that you’re headed in the right direction.
- Help someone else lose weight. You may be wondering how you’re going to do that if you’re struggling with it yourself. But, the more you motivate others, the more you end up motivating yourself. Be a weight loss mentor and you also get the benefits!
- Always act as if someone else is watching you. For example, pretend that you have your own reality show and the rest of the world is watching the daily decisions you make in your effort to lose weight. Their success relies solely on what they see you do. This sort of imagination play will help you remain accountable for your actions and you’ll be less likely to make not-so-good decisions.
These are but a few things you can do to keep yourself motivated to lose weight. What are some things you’ve tried that others may want to use? Feel free to share because we’re all in this together!
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