Ways to Stay Motivated to Lose Weight

How to stay Motivated

Beginning a weight loss plan and sticking to it can sometimes seem too hard to successfully accomplish. Often, the reason is that you either lack motivation or quickly lose it once you get started. Fortunately, motivation can be worked on. There are things that you can do to strengthen your motivation, and keep it from fading.

What follows are some ideas that you can use to stay motivated as you try to lose weight.

Find out why exactly you want to lose weight

Think about what specific reasons you have for wanting to lose weight, and make a list of them. Popular reasons include an ability to keep up with your children or your grandchildren, avoiding diabetes and staying attractive. Have a look at our article where we talked about in detail how to motivate yourself to work out.

Be realistic with your expectations

While many high-speed diets and weight-loss programs do exist, health experts recommend losing no more than two pounds a week. If you are any more aggressive in setting your weight loss goals, you may find that those goals are too hard to achieve.

You may experience frustration and a drop in motivation. Goals that are somewhat challenging to achieve, but that you are able to reach with no more than a reasonable amount of exertion, can give you a sense of accomplishment when you succeed with them, and bring you even more motivation to go on.

Research indicates that people who set realistic weight-loss goals, and then achieve them, are likely to stay motivated for longer.

Set process goals, rather than end goals

Many people attempting to lose weight think only about the pounds that they hope to lose, and lose heart when the going proves to be slow. It can help, instead, if the goals that you set for yourself are all about the actions that you must lose. Studies indicate that people who focus on process goals, rather than on end goals, are more likely to stay motivated in their efforts.

All you need to do is to set goals such as going on brisk, 30-minute walks five days a week, or managing to eat five servings of vegetables each day. Once you focus on actions that you can easily perform each day, you'll find that you come by a sense of accomplishment that helps feed your motivation.

Go with a plan that is a good fit for your lifestyle

Most diets are based on a plan of cutting your calorie intake. It's important to be realistic about how many calories you can actually succeed in cutting without losing your resolve, however.

People who choose severely restricted diet plans, research shows, tend to find the going too hard before long to lose motivation and to give up. Rather than take an all-or-nothing approach to weight loss, it can help to devise a plan that has you reducing your portion sizes and your calorie intake in small, achievable steps.

Start a weight-loss journal

Studies show that people are more likely to achieve their weight loss goals when they keep track of all that they eat in the form of a food journal. It's important to write down every single thing that you eat, from snacks to bits of candy.

It is often also helpful to write down in the journal the emotions that you feel each day around the times that you eat. Doing this can help you determine if there are emotional triggers in your life that lead you to eat, and help you work your way around them.

Force yourself to be accountable

Researchers find that people committing publicly to their weight loss goals tend to stick with their aims for longer. Once they tell their friends and family about what they hope to achieve, they often find it harder to give up and find the motivation to keep going. You may also motivate your friends to join to your weight-lose plan, maybe you decide to go to the gym together which will have its benefits as you are going to motivate each other.

Publicly committing to weight loss can help you stay motivated. Anticipate challenges Normal, everyday life tends to throw up surprises from time to time. If you don't plan for them, you will likely have them disrupt your weight-loss routine and cost you your motivation.

Whether it is birthdays, plans to dine out, holiday parties, or vacations, you need to plan for how you will continue to stick to your diet through disruptions. It's also important to plan for how you will keep everyday setbacks and stressors from causing you to lose heart. These challenges are only to be expected.