Having trouble losing weight? Do you constantly find yourself worrying over your weight loss goals without making progress? Here are a few simple tips to you help jump-start your progress and help you get the body you dream of.
1. Realize why you want to change and determine your specific goal for change.
Write this down. Not only will writing it down serve as a reminder when you see the written down goal, but it will also give you something more concrete to strive for, which helps focus and motivate your efforts.
2. Prepare for your weight loss change with adequate planning.
This requires you to set regular checkpoints where you sit back and objectively evaluate your progress markers, deciding if you need to tweak anything to achieve your goal, or adjust your goal if it doesn’t meet your particular desires or circumstances.
3. Establish appropriate systems to help you accomplish your goal.
Weight loss comes down to burning more calories than you consume. Easy, right? 😉
To accomplish this, you can follow a variety of protocols from a looser IIFYM calorie counting approach, to a structured meal plan, to intuitive eating, or even a themed diet like the paleo diet.
Decide on a reputable system that has shown significant results (I’m personally a fan of macronutrients targets with mostly healthier foods), but realize that unless you are weeks out from a bodybuilding/physique competition or a photoshoot, it doesn’t matter too much initially. Just pick a plan, and stick with it for a period of time (ideally at least a few weeks to give your body time to adjust).
While caloric deficits are ultimately the most important factor to weight loss, different people respond differently to diets or weight loss approaches, and you may find certain approaches or methods to be better for your performance, satisfaction, adherence, and overall sustainability depending on your particular circumstances.
For example, if you’ve tried it out for a weeks and you just can’t stomach doing a 16 hour IF-style fast into the afternoon, you don’t need to follow a strict IF style approach. Feel depleted of energy on a low-carb paleo diet? Add in carbs to improve your energy and performance.
4. Once your system is in place and you have your progress checkpoints established, stop obsessing over the details of your diet outside of your planned evaluation times.
Simply follow the diet for the few weeks/months you planned, and adjust it or try a different perspective or technique until you find something that gets you the results you need. Hopping from diet to diet, or constantly tweaking, has various downsides that can undermine your weight loss effort;
- It prevent you from learning what works best for your body
- It hinders your ability to evaluate programs or methods effectively
- It hampers your progress even on effective programs because you’re not following the program!
5. Make your diet secondary to your life.
This goes with not worrying about your diet, but it’s worth repeating. Focusing on other things going on in your life helps reduce your food-focus during your diet. Reducing your focus on food helps you better deal with hunger (or perceived hunger) signals that could cause you to give into temptations and derail your diet.
This also allows you to get more done in other areas of life and achieve the big goals you always dreamed of (while still losing weight).
You don’t want your entire day to be about or focused on food. Trust me, I’ve been there. Food and eating are supposed to be temporary occurrences that serve to nourish the body, not be the sole focus of your day and life.
As an added benefit, not worrying about your diet can reduce your biological stress response, improve your willpower, and further promote your weight loss efforts.
Weight loss is simple, in theory, but often difficult, in practice. To make the process easier, plan for your goals effectively, follow your plan without worrying over it or tweaking it until your progress checkpoints, evaluate your progress regularly and objectively, and make your diet secondary to your life.
This lower-stress approach to weight loss will help you figure out what really works for you. Over time, as you keep what works and throw away what doesn’t, you’ll be able to lose weight more quickly and effortlessly than before. You’ll be able to move as you have always wanted to, feel as good as you have desired to, and have the body you’ve dreamed of.
Footnotes
Overweight measuring tape image via Fj.toloza992
