5 Tips to help you stay motivated to lose weight
Let’s make sure we all understand this: being healthy isn’t just about the numbers on your scale. There are tons of other factors that affect your health besides your weight, and everyone is built differently, with different genetics.
However, if being overweight is starting to affect your day to day life, sometimes weight loss needs to be the goal. Unfortunately, even if you know how to lose weight, sometimes thats just not enough and finding the motivation to actually make those healthier choices and have the self discipline can be another challenge.
Heres 5 tips you can use to help you stay motivated to lose weight and be at your best:
1. Find Your Why
Weight loss motivation starts with figuring out your intention behind why you really want to lose weight to begin with. Maybe it’s to have better energy, to keep up with your kids, to lower your cholesterol, to live longer or to fit into your clothes better!
Find that “WHY” for weight loss, and you need to remind yourself of it every single day. The clearer you can be about your reasoning, the more motivated you will be.
Long term payoffs like disease prevention are great, but some people also need an immediate payoff to stay motivated. Think of how great you feel about your body right after a third and challenging workout or a day of healthy eating—that can also be your why, too!
2. Write Down Specific Goals
Studies show that writing down your goals holds you accountable and makes you more likely to achieve them.
Document your goals and place them somewhere visible, so you can see them daily.
How much weight do you actually want to lose? And how are you going to make it happen? Maybe your goal is to do cardio three times per week, or to eliminate all soda and sugary drinks from your diet. Be specific when you write them down.
Tackling weight loss one small goal at a time makes it more manageable and realistic, too.
3. Seek Out A Supportive Community
Passing on party foods or spending more time working on your health can be isolating and discouraging if your friends don’t understand or support you.
This is why finding a positive, like-minded community is so important for this journey. Join a gym, enlist a workout buddy, hire a health coach, or join an online fitness community of other people who share common goals. It will motivate you to keep going even when you encounter challenges and setbacks.
4. Try a Fitness App
Motivation right in the palm of your hand. Fitness apps can offer step-by-step guidance and help you track your progress, which can make starting your weight loss journey a bit less intimidating. When you track your progress and you can see how far you're coming along its a big motivator. One of my favorites in My Fitness Pal, an app that helps you document your progress. It's absolutely free. With a free account, you can track food and calories, activity, weight, and more.
5. Approve Of Yourself Just As You Are
Focusing on your goals is great. But withholding your own approval “until you lose weight” is not a good plan. Practice self-love. Self-love starts and ends with you, and no number on the scale can give you the internal validation you need to believe in your own worth and believe in yourself.
Coming from a place of self-loathing or comparison with others will not motivate you to be healthy; in fact, it can lead to shame spiraling and negative associations with exercise and eating right.
View your journey to better health as a reward, not a punishment—you are treating yourself the way you deserve to be treated.
Try to practice these and apply these on a daily basis, because they are very helpful and effective weight loss tips!