Create and maintain discipline on your weight loss journey for sustained transformational results
Since we are in the Holiday Season and the New Year is fast approaching, many of us will make resolutions or set goals for weight loss. The key to obtaining weight loss is to implement daily habit forming strategies that help you to develop a healthy mindset so you can sustain transformational results based on your personalized goals.
When beginning a new weight loss journey, many people have the motivation to succeed; however, motivation will only take you so far. The real struggle is overcoming the lack of discipline not motivation required to sustain transformational results over time.
Weight loss success does not come easy. It takes focused intentionality, hard work and discipline but more importantly, it takes time. It doesn't happen overnight.
Many people begin a weight loss journey with good intentions towards making health changes, but only experience the most modest of results. This occurs due to a lack of discipline to complete their weight loss goals. The issue is that most people fail to maintain a healthy mindset because they do not establish a healthy weight loss plan that contains practical daily habits and strategies to keep them on track.
For example, you can’t simply change how you eat and not change your movement patterns. You also must learn how to effectively manage stress if you want to keep the weight off long-term. It comes down to building new habits to uphold your transformation over time.
The most effective way to improve your discipline for sustained weight loss is to make permanent changes to your habits. This means reworking the ways you move, think and eat. It's not about changing what you do for a short period of time; it's about adopting new habits that align with your goals and values over time.
Here a five strategies for creating and maintaining healthy habits for sustained results:
Make small changes and be consistent: Focus on improving your habits by making small changes over time. This will help you build momentum as well as improve your self-confidence as you continue to progress.
Set manageable goals and celebrate progress: Remind yourself why you want to achieve certain goals and keep track of your daily accomplishments. Prioritize your goals, do it one step at a time, and celebrate each achievement along the way.
Be patient with yourself: Give yourself time to adjust to each new habit. If you slip up, it's OK. Remember that everyone makes mistakes. It's part of the process. Learn from those mistakes and start again.
Remove distractions: For example, if your goal is to go running every morning before work, put your running gear by the door the night before so it's there when you wake up (no procrastination). Remove the junk food from your house; make sure there's no TV in the room where you sleep; and turn off your smartphone or other devices that can distract you from your goal.
Tame temptation: Avoiding temptation can be a challenge but you can take steps to reduce its impact by seeking out healthy alternatives to unhealthy behaviors and put them at arm's length so you can't avoid them. For example, if you're trying to quit drinking soda, use a water bottle as your regular drink container and fill it with plain water or flavored with cucumbers/lemons instead. If you're trying to stop eating junk food, make fruits and vegetables highly visible and convenient to snack on.
When you incorporate daily practical strategies that help you to alter the way you move, think and eat, you will improve your discipline and elevate your motivation for sustained weight loss. Remember it's about establishing positive habits and new patterns that offset your old behaviors, keeping yourself accountable and being realistic in your assessment of your own lifestyle factors that impact your weight loss results.
So ask yourself, what new daily habit forming strategies can I incorporate in my life daily to keep me disciplined and motivated on my weight loss journey?
For more information and services to help you to Elevate2Wellness, check out my website at https://www.elevate2wellness.com/.