Approaching weight loss from the wrong perspective is one of the main reasons so many people fail with diets and eating plans.
And on the flip side, getting your mindset right can be a game changer for successfully losing weight.
Here are some mindset shifts that could help you to supercharge your weight loss and keep the pounds off!
Think About Why You’re Doing It
Understanding why you want to lose weight can make a lot of difference. Basing your reasons on being happier or looking good are a lot more likely to fail as there’s no saying that losing weight will actually make you feel good about yourself or bring you happiness.
Instead of choosing this type of reason as your basis for weight loss, look at things differently. Think of your weight loss as part of a journey to becoming healthier and not just a means of getting to an end target.
It’s a great opportunity to introduce healthy habits into your life that set the scene for both improving your health and losing weight into the bargain. When your ultimate goal is to live a longer and healthier life, weight loss will probably happen as a nice extra bonus as a result of these new habits.
Don’t Go For Broke
Trying to do too much too soon with your weight loss can work against you and this is one of the reasons why fad diets and drastically reducing your calorie intake aren’t successful in the long term.
You might lose some weight to begin with, but chances are, this will quickly tail off and depending on your mindset and eating habits, you might even start gaining more weight.
When it comes to weight loss, slow and steady tends to do a lot better than trying to lose weight as quickly as possible.
You’re a lot more likely to succeed if you go for smaller shifts that add up to bigger lifestyle changes. If you do them every day, they’ll soon become habits.
This is more of a long game and you probably won’t see results straight away but there’s a better chance of actually achieving your weight loss goals compared to focusing on one big goal that could fail.
You want your healthy choices to feel natural and not like a chore or as though you’re depriving yourself and this is where healthy habits can really come into their own.
Breaking the Food-Emotions Cycle
One of the factors that can make it hard to lose weight involves emotional eating.
We often eat when we’re not really hungry and because we’re feeling certain emotions.
Breaking the link between food and your emotions is a key mindset shift to master if you want to lose weight and keep it off.
Moving away from emotional eating helps you to react to genuine hunger cues so you’ll eat to fuel your body and not in line with how you’re feeling.
Mindful eating is a great way to get back in touch with your body’s hunger signals but it can be a big challenge to master, especially if you’re used to emotional eating.
Finding ways to address your emotions that don’t involve food can make a huge difference in being able to lose weight naturally.
Visualizing Weight Loss Success
Visualization can be a powerful technique for weight loss, especially if it’s combined with positive self-talk.
How does visualization work?
The theory is that it helps to rewire pathways in the brain so it can be great for breaking habits and learning new ones.
To get the most from it, visualize yourself at your ideal weight, with your body fat transforming into a much more positive form of energy. Keep this mental image in mind as much as possible.
You can use positive affirmations and self-talk to highlight to yourself how you’ll feel when you get to this point. Don’t forget to focus on how you’ll feel with your health, fitness and wellbeing and not just how much better you’ll feel about being thinner.
Even though this is going to happen in the future, keep your self-talk in the present tense and not the future to make visualization a more effective mindset shift.
Tell yourself that you have the power to change your body through the power of your mind as the finishing touch.
Doing this every day can be a lot more effective than you might think.
Start making a plan for your life-long goals for your health, not just the short-term ones.
Remember to remain body-positive. I am always here to talk if you need to. You can take advantage of my 15-minute free chat if you feel you need some 1:1 guidance. It’s my way of giving back – I’ve been on the binge eating path, and having someone to lean on is the only way forward.
References:
https://www.medicinenet.com/binge_eating_disorder_pictures_slideshow/article.htm
https://www.medainc.org/binge-eating-vs-emotional-eating-whats-the-difference/
https://www.medicinenet.com/emotional_eating/article.htm