The Psychology of Weight Loss – 9 Tips to Stay Focussed

It’s difficult right? Losing weight isn’t an easy feat by any stretch of the imagination.

Losing weight requires more than a physical commitment – the mental aspect is also vitally important. When it comes to fitness, the mind truly is a powerful thing.

Have doubts that there is a mind-body connection to wellness? Simply try this easy test: do a workout of your choice (running, walking, lifting weights) with your favourite ‘workout tunes’!!. Then do it again tomorrow but this time with no music at all - you’ll quickly see how the simplicity of motivating music can help you go further, faster or simply feel stronger during your routine. That’s the power of your mind!

Why is the mind-body connection important to understand? Because, having the wrong mental approach to getting fitter can have very powerful negative effects. A huge amount of 'dieters' quit their weight loss plans because of psychological reasons.
What you think, can create what you are! Your personal self-talk is crucial in determining whether or not you are successful at reaching your weight loss and fitness goals. Continual negative thoughts can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you daily bombard yourself with self-defeating thoughts, then eventually you will begin to believe them. Likewise, if you surround yourself with people who think this same way, or continually talk to you in a negative way, then you can quickly start to believe them and act in the same negative way.

When you tell yourself such things as “I’m always going to be fat” or “I can’t stop eating” or “I can’t walk that mile”, then naturally you’ll start to believe the myths as factual. From there you have immediately set the stage for failure.

So, how can you dig out of the seemingly endless downward spiral of negative thoughts and feelings? Start with these nine important psychological exercises:

1.Create a list of all the negative thoughts that you have about yourself. Then create a second list of all the things that you like about yourself. Keep working on your positive list until it is much longer than your negative list. We all tend to be our worst critics, so this can be a challenging exercise. Write down even little things like “I can make a great cheese sandwich”, or “I always get to work on time”.

2.Take your list of negatives and change all of them to positive potentials. For example, instead of “I always fail at losing weight” change it to “I can succeed at losing weight.” Or, instead of “I can’t stop eating”, change it to “I will control my portions.” Destroy your negative list and only keep the new potentials list.

3.Stop using these words: can’t, won’t, never. Replace them with: can, will, always.

4.Forget the past. That piece of cake you ate yesterday is old news. Forget about it and move on. Live only in the present. You can’t change what you did even an hour ago. All you can do is resolve to stay focused and committed right now and try to keep that same focus tomorrow too.

5.Stop making excuses for why you can’t exercise and eat right. Start by making a list of all of your steadfast excuses and also all the reasons that you should workout. The list of reasons why you should exercise inarguably should be much longer. Post your list of reasons where you can see it daily.

6.Stop the blame game. Promise to take self-responsibility. It’s easy to blame your genes, your diet-plan or even your family for your failed diet attempts. But not accepting full responsibility will simply keep you trapped in a repetitive loop of failures.

7.Start to surround yourself with more positive people who will help with staying focussed and also provide support with accountability. Group training and group support is vital for optimum success.

8.Let all those closely related and friendly with you, know that you are on a weight loss journey. This helps when times of temptation come, that their support will be unwavering. Ask that they support you and encourage you to stay focussed on your end goals. You may count on them more than you first realise.

9.If you use the power of the mind to allow you to typically ‘over-exaggerate’ your daily physical output and ‘under-exaggerate’ your daily nutritional input, then start to write things down to help you keep a track of exactly what you are doing. Sometimes, we play mind games with ourselves with this sort of data, and it can negatively affect our end goal.

Yes, weight loss may be approximately 80% nutritional and 20% physical… BUT it's also 100% psychological… If your mind isn’t fully programmed to allow you succeed, then failure to a level will ultimately prevail. No more 'diets' - let's make lifesyle changes!!!

Take the necessary steps required to ensure you are ready and fully prepared to take on everything the weight loss ‘competitor’ throws at you. Switch your mind into positive feelings and thoughts, and you are well on your way to success.

As always… Good Luck on YOUR journey!

:drinker: