Change Your Mind Change Your Life

I am compelled to write about something I hear from clients often … the many reasons why they can’t lose weight or achieve their health and fitness goals. We all start each endeavor to change with the best of intentions. We make up our minds to do something, we stay on plan for a few days or maybe even a few weeks, and then our motivation starts to fizzle and we settle back in to our old habits. Maybe you attribute your inability to lose weight to a lack of willpower, no time to prepare healthy meals, lack of motivation to exercise, or your inability to say no to dessert when its offered. And likely it is all of these things.

Studies suggest that individuals do not fail in their weight loss efforts (or to maintain weight loss) because of lack of knowledge of healthy food. Rather, because after weeks, months, or even years of “restrictive” dieting and failed attempts at exercise programs, we develop something called “behavioral fatigue”. Restrictive behavior leads to behavioral fatigue, and ultimately dietary sabotage. The ups and downs dieters experience create a mental fatigue that impacts motivation. It becomes a vicious cycle.

You could spend a lot of time, money, and energy reading the latest “fad” diet book, purchasing the latest ab machine that is going to sculpt your midsection, or starving yourself only to find yourself back to square one when those strategies fail. Or, you can acknowledge that you likely know what it takes to lose weight (ie. eating the right foods in the right amounts and exercising) and focus your energy and attention on what is holding you back emotionally.

Change your daily behavior, and you will change your life. It is not what you do one day, but what you do every day that adds up over time to accumulate small changes which contribute to big changes.

Strategies that can help you with your new “behavior”:

*Enlist the help of a professional trainer, life coach, therapist, or even a friend who can hold you accountable and offer support week after week

*Write down your specific goals, how you are going to attain each goal, and why it is important to you

*Identify the “behaviors” that are sabotaging your goal(s), and replace it with something healthier. For example; if you reach for something sweet every night after dinner, instead, drink a cup of tea or eat a cup of fresh berries

*Use “mindfulness” to think about every behavior that either contributes or sabotages your goals, and make a conscious decision not based on impulse or emotional factors

Life is too short to beat yourself up, so don’t get hung up on past attempts. But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. It is true that you have to initiate and sustain change in order to achieve your goals. So set yourself up for success… set small achievable goals, identify the behaviors that are sabotaging your success, and deal with the emotional issues at the core of your behavior.

Thanks for reading!

References

“The No. 1 Obstacle to Weight Loss” Christy Matta, World of Psychology

“Weight Loss Psychology” Dr. George Blair-West