8 Key Steps For Healthy Weight Loss

Adopt A New Mindset

Adopt a new mindset, know when you are mentally ready, take action and adopt healthy habits for life. If you really want to change your habits, you need to adopt a new mindset.

You need to adjust your mindset so the healthy choices feel right.

They need to feel right and not like a punishment, hard work or a feeling of deprivation.

You need to be committed. When you are committed you will have motivation, determination and a positive outlook to resist all temptations and overcome all obstacles.

Research has shown that people who are positive are more likely to choose nutritious foods than those who are depressed.

If you are stressed, you may look for instant gratification in the form of junk food to eat.

You need to change your mindset and then stick to it. Do not give up at the first obstacle.

When temptation and frustration strike, concentrate on the many benefits you will gain from being leaner and healthier.

You need to practice positive thinking. It can be easy to give up or lose focus when your mind is filled with negative thoughts.

Practice positive affirmations about achieving your goals. This will keep you motivated. When you change your mindset you will need support; confide in your family and friends.

Share your goals with them so they can be supportive. They will be able to help you, and build you up along the way.

A great way to keep yourself motivated is to hang a slim outfit where you can see it every day.

This will remind you daily of your end goal. Choose an outfit that is a size smaller and when you reach that size, change the outfit for another slim outfit. This will keep you focused and motivated.

Only with a positive mindset will you be able to change your negative habits and your unhealthy way of living.

When you have a positive mindset you can achieve anything. You will be able to move away from your unhealthy past into a healthier future.

You need to harness a positive outlook that will keep you continually motivated.

Okay, you need to hear this. I want you to reject the diet mentality. Diets give you a set of rules about what you should and should not eat.

Often, when you are on a diet and know that a certain food is not allowed, you immediately start craving that forbidden food.

Try not to think of the foods you love as “off limits”, instead, just try to eat them less often.

When you are focused on the diet mentality, you create a viscous cycle of cheating on your diet, followed by shame.

Restricting certain foods can lead to uncontrollable urges and binge eating.

Deprivation diets set you up for failure. You will end up starving yourself until you snap and you will likely binge eat, which will cancel out all your previous efforts.

Reason Why You Want To Change Your Life

Next identify the underlying reason why you want to change your life. Do you want to get healthier to make sure you live a long, healthy life? Do you want to look better?

Do you want to lower your health risks? Whatever your reason, you need to discover your primary motivation. When you know what it is you will be able to keep yourself motivated.

Focus On Your Daily Habits

We all have habits which we perform almost automatically. We are what we repeatedly do. Habits help define us as individuals.

We all have our own way of living our lives, and our habits help us along on this journey.

Over a period of time, habits become learned, automatic behaviours. You can incorporate new healthier habits into your life.

Habits can be learned and unlearned, and bad habits can be addictive.

Changing your habits is a process, which involves several stages.

With new skills, knowledge, and new goals, you will develop new habits.

Make a list of the habits you want to change, and then make a list of the new, healthy habits you want to replace the old ones with.

You need to slowly change one bad habit for a new, healthier one.

Patience

Patience is required when making lifestyle changes. A lifestyle change does not happen overnight, it can take time. It can take weeks, months or even years to make changes that will last a lifetime.

Know That You Are Mentally Ready

You have to make some mental changes to help break your old habits.

When you are beginning this transformation, you need to realize that you want a real change and not a quick crash diet.

Know that you are going to make long term changes, and a commitment to your health – for life. Only permanent changes will work in the long run.

Create A Realistic Plan

Make sure that you set yourself a realistic time frame. If you need to lose a lot of weight, you will need to give yourself time to lose that weight.

Remember that you are setting lifelong goals. Realize that these goals will take time to achieve.

Do not set unrealistic goals because you will just become disheartened.

Take Action And Set A Realistic Goal

Get a medical check up: you need to know if there are any deficiencies in your blood analysis that need to be rectified, such as iron, folate, B12, insulin, thyroid, inflammation and/or hormone imbalances. Deficiencies in these areas can affect fat loss, energy and well-being.

Make your goals realistic and go for small changes one at a time.

Instead of eating a burger at MacDonald's every day, slowly start to increase adding whole foods into your diet. The following week, prepare your own breakfast, choosing natural, healthy ingredients.

Next, start to walk for 10 mins during lunch break, eventually increasing your daily walk to 15, 20 or 30 mins each day. You get the idea.

Practice consistent exercise – you can’t just do it every now and then. It will not help if you walk every day for two weeks and then take a month-long break. Instead, exercise for a shorter period of time, but do so consistently.

Make yourself accountable to someone else by exercising with a friend or family member.

It is easy to let yourself down if you do not feel like exercising. However, if you know your friend is scheduled to meet you, it is harder to just stay at home.

Research has found if you exercise with a friend, as opposed to exercising alone, you are twenty percent more likely to succeed.

Remember this is not an overnight change. You may fail a few times, or backslide, but keep the end goal in mind. Do not be too hard on yourself.

Remember, everyone has setbacks, and you are no different. There will be times when you want to quit, but you will need to persevere.

Use A Structure To Adopt Healthy Habits For Life

People struggle with eating healthy, exercising regularly, drinking more water, etc.

We all have busy lives, and don’t have two hours to spend in a gym. We want to eat healthy, but without a plan, without structure, its pretty tough and can be overwhelming.

Depending upon where you’re at in your quest to live a healthier lifestyle, taking it one step at a time, to make it feel like it’s part of your normal day, is the best approach.

There are countless studies that advocate, lifestyle and behavioural modification changes, writing your goals, tracking your results, and being part of a community, are key to weight loss.

Our healthy living tracking software will help you learn more on how to achieve long term healthy weight loss, in a format, that creates structure for success.

Studies

Weight Loss Strategies For Success, Mayo Clinic, 2014

Lifestyle Changes Help Obese Lose Weight. WebMD, 2010

Lifestyle Changes Result in Weight Loss for Women Who’ve Been Treated for Breast Cancer, BreastCancer, 2015

Can Lifestyle Modifications Using Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes Reduce Weight? CDC