4 Steps to Increase Your Weight Loss

Learning to take bite-size chunks is much more manageable that taking on larger and sometimes overwhelming weight loss goals. Take small incremental steps towards your goal along with cook yourself thin recipes. Concentrate on just losing small amounts of weight at one time, five pounds is a great incremental goal. When you lose the first 5, celebrate, then decide if you want to work on the next five right a way or do you want to practice using your maintenance tools for a while and let your body adjust to it's new weight. Practicing maintenance throughout your dieting program will help to instill habits that will keep you from back sliding when you get to goal. It also helps push back the all or nothing diet or binge mentality that many of us have. So when it comes to the size of your goal keep it small enough to chew on.

Take Small Actions And Steps Toward Your Incremental Goal And It Will Lead You To Your Larger Goal.

Concentrate on just losing small amounts of weight at one time. Five pounds is a great incremental goal. When you lose the first 5, celebrate, then decide if you want to work on the next five right a way or do you want to practice maintenance tools for a while and let your body adjust. Both are fine and practicing maintenance throughout your dieting program will help to instill tools that can keep you from back sliding when you get to goal. It also helps push back the all or nothing diet or binge mentality that many of us have. Another reason not to focus on a large amount of weight to lose at one time is because it can be overwhelming and defeating. Learning to take bite-size chunks is much more manageable and allows you to be creative as well.

Sack Sabotaging Thoughts.

"It's OK to eat this because I'm celebrating." "I don't have time to work out." " I'm too tired and had a bad day at work. My family is really bugging me and picking on me I deserve some cake." Do these excuses sound familiar? These kind of thoughts can derail your best health and weight loss efforts. When you catch yourself making self-defeating excuses, squash them down by saying or thinking, "I really will enjoy being thinner, healthier and more energetic this summer, especially in my bathing suit at the beach" or ask yourself a question to put your mind to work in a manner that supports your efforts.

You can do this by asking "what can I do to keep with my exercise and nutrition today when my day gets hectic and I start to make excuses?" By asking ourselves these types of questions our brains starts to go to work to find the answers that support our weight loss efforts. Our brain reacts to our thoughts so when we send it a message like "I deserve a quarter-pounder with cheese and French fries" it will start to process the information and search for answers as to why you deserve it. It will come up with images of the things that took place to drive you to eat the cake or ice cream. It will pick out pictures and thoughts that support our bad day giving us the permission we seek to go off program. Everything is cause and effect and if we can feed ourselves with the right thoughts our brain will search for the answers that support us.

Ditch That All-or-Nothing Mentality.

Instead of ditching your diet and exercise plan when things go out of sync, have a plan 'B' ready and waiting in the wings. Being flexible can be your greatest ally in a wellness and weight loss program. When things go amuck and schedules need to change look over your upcoming week and learn to tweak it and restructure how to make everything fit. Make flexibility part of your lifestyle and ditch the rigid attitude. Learn to be happy with a shorter version of the big picture on the days when something comes up. If you find you have had a little too much birthday cake at the office then pull back a little at dinner or add some time to your workout, don't use it as an excuse to blow the day. Having an all or noting attitude can defeat you before your even out of the gate, if you can look at your weight loss program as being successful with 70 percent of your goals achieved in any given day then you can call it a win. If you can do that then all the little things add up to big results. Nothing in life is a sure thing other than death and taxes so don't hold yourself up to a standard that doesn't exist. Instead take a steady route to your success. Everything we do when broken down is done in small steps.

Don't Let Curve Balls Throw You.

Everyone plans their dieting and workouts around the perfect day and as soon as something goes off course they ditch the diet and exercise first. Instead assume the non perfect day and have plan 'B" ready, willing and able to be implemented. If your get stuck at work late one day and won't have time to cook healthy then just keep some healthy frozen dinners at hand in the freezer or a list of healthy take out in your glove compartment. If you have to go to your son's baseball game and can't get to the gym then walk laps around the field with light hand weights while he is not at bat. If it's raining out and you can't go for a walk pop in a light exercise walking tape. For every curve ball there is a home run waiting to be hit. Think about how great it will feel to hit it.

Learning to take bite-size chunks is much more manageable that taking on larger and sometimes overwhelming weight loss goals. Take small incremental steps towards your goal. Concentrate on just losing small amounts of weight at one time, five pounds is a great incremental goal.

by Patrice Ruggieri - 19 May 2009

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