Motivation to lose weight

Motivation to lose weight

      When you are on diet, pay attention to what amount of food you eat, follow your workout plan, keep yourself busy with checking food for calories, etc., it is quite likely that you will forget your actual aim and your motivation to lose weight. However, knowing your motivation is extremely helpful when trying to lose weight. After all, your motivations are the reasons why you decide to reduce your weight. Defining and knowing clear motivations will help you tremendously to stay disciplined and to reach the weight you want. You will definitely find it helpful to try the following steps:

1 – Define your motivation(s)

     People want to lose weight for very different reasons. Many decide to go on diet, because they hope that they’ll feel more attractive with less weight. Others want to lose weight for health reasons. There are also people who need to reduce their weight as a requirement for a job application and others hope to be more agile in everyday life. It is important to make sure that you define your own motivation. Your motivation may be among the points listed above, a combination of two or more of them or something completely different. It is about your body and it’s up to you to define your motivation yourself. It may help you to phrase your motivation(s) in writing, for example in a diary. When you phrase it, try to be very precise. However, in the course of your diet, you might want to rephrase your motivation and there’s nothing wrong about that.

     You can also try and write your motivation down on a piece of paper or a card and keep it at a clearly visible place at home. Some people find this very useful and attach a photograph that reminds them about their motivation next to their notes. This might be a photograph of a beach, where you could show off your results, a blouse that you would like to buy or practically anything else – it’s all up to you.

2 – Share your motivation(s)

       Once you have defined your motivations, share them with your friends, family, colleagues, and others. For example you might tell your friends something like “I want to lose weight, because I’m going on vacation in the summer and I want to look great in my bikini”. Another thing to say might be “My doctor advised me to lose weight, because it will reduce my back pain tremendously.”

       By making your motivation and your aims “public” among people you know well, your determination to lose weight will be intensified, because it gets more binding characteristics. Your friends, family, colleagues, etc. will thus be like witnesses for what you’re saying and you will feel more obliged to stay disciplined.

3 – Remind yourself of your motivation(s)

After a few days or weeks, you might forget about your motivation to lose weight or it might seem less intense to you. If you have fixed your motivation in writing on paper, take it and read through it. Remember how you felt when you wrote it. Is there anything that you would like to change about it? You might realize that your motivation has changed or that you have meanwhile found even more motivations for losing weight. Revise your motivations in this case and make yourself clear about what you want.

4 – Contrast motivation and results

       Have you lost weight during your diet already? Congratulations! Make yourself clear how much closer you got towards reaching your eventual aim and be proud of yourself. If you haven’t lost weight, it might well be that you are not clear about your motivations anymore. In that case, you can try to rephrase your motivation and think about steps, which appear helpful to you. Not losing weight might also be because your motivation(s) are not strong enough. Think about them again, rephrase them and try to be even more precise when you put them into words.

       You might also find it helpful to reward yourself once you see results – This maybe a shopping trip during which you buy new clothes to look fabulous in, a photo shooting or buying new sports equipment that will help you to keep exercises being something fun and enjoyable to do.

Remember that it’s about you!!!

       Many people have reported that it helped them to picture themselves in their favorite clothes, which they used to wear in the past, but which were then to small for them. Others said that this was just stressful and not motivating to them at all.

      There are also success stories of people who found that picturing themselves being much more agile and handling their lives and their work with much more ease was a real motivation for them, whilst this does not appear helpful to others at all.

      That is why the most important thing is to remember that motivation is always personal. Remember that is about you and your aims. You are the one to set motivations and to try to reach your aims. After all, you are also the main person to see results and to enjoy them – whatever they might be.