Thin Blog

Posts Tagged ‘food choices’

Getting motivated to lose weight has never been a problem for me. The problem has always been the lack of ability to sustain that motivation for the time period needed to lose the weight.

All too often I would see the television show “The Biggest Loser” and resolve to lose the weight and eat better. Somewhere along the journey of the season of “The Biggest Loser” I would slack off and soon it would be the season finale. I would be watching the formally obese contestants flaunt all of their weight loss and say to myself that “I need to go back on that diet”. Somewhere along the way I would waiver from the diet plan and be settled into being over weight again.

It was during the shows most recent finale that I decided enough is enough and it was time to get serious about my own personal weight loss. I had read many books and watched infomercials and I have always come up short. It was this time that I realized that what I was missing was self determination to lose 100 pounds. I decided that my past failures were because I have come up short on sustained motivation because of my lack of self discipline.

Sustained motivation because of a lack of self discipline has always been the overwhelming reason behind my failure to lead a healthier lifestyle. This may seem like a simple statement but it is true. All too often our desire is not rooted deep enough in the decision we make to lose the weight. We launch ourselves headlong into the weight loss quest and limit our ability to maintain our motivation because of the lack of knowledge we possess. The one issue I see present in many weight loss “wannabes” is they do not know what needs to be known to make correct food and exercise choices. One of my early questions was what kind of “diet” plan are you going to start? I have learned that if it is not a plan you can live with for ten years then chances are you will ultimately fail.

The entire weight loss journey is similar to putting a jigsaw puzzle together while horseback riding. In your life you are required to keep moving and make your “diet” plan work for you in the real world. Sure you could lose weight skipping carbs, but could you forgo carbs for 10 years?

You need to wrap your mind around your quest to lose weight. By that I mean you need to obtain basic knowledge and then by applying that knowledge into your daily decisions you will increase your motivation through small achievements. As those achievements come to life you begin to groom the growth of your self confidence which will feed your motivation that will help you to be able to sustain your motivation.

Knowledge is power and that statement holds ever so true in weight loss. With this discovery I have been able to lose 20 pounds to date!

Everyday is a day to make choices when it comes to losing weight and fitness. For most people getting out to do the cardiovascular exercise on a daily basis can be most of the battle. You may have a great weight loss morning and afternoon, in your food choices, and then blow the whole day that same night. All too often people get motivated to “get healthy” and start a program and get positive results for awhile but then wander into failure. If you are, or have been in this situation then you by no means alone.

All too often individuals get discouraged or distressed and then wander into a repetitive situation that breeds failure and then more discouragement. What is meant by this is that all too often a person is dieting to  lose weight and then one day has a candy bar. Up until that point there was an imaginary barrier and that candy bar was on the other side. After the candy bar is eaten there is a feeling of failure and dejection. If not “checked” this emotion will result in more candy bars and less exercise and then total abandonment of the weight loss / fitness goals. This is, more often than not, the continuation of a perceived cycle of dieting failures because this was just one of many attempts to lose weight that resulted in failure.

A simple cure for this is to skip the “diet” and change the lifestyle. What is meant by this is that if you just try to exercise for the fitness aspect, losing weight becomes part of the equation without the ups and downs of perceived diet failures. If you can start an exercise routine you will be able to “blow” your “diet” on a Friday night every now and then. This is because if you try to get your body healthy through exercise you will not only change your body but you will also change your thinking. If you get into a routine and stick with it for awhile you will actually enjoy performing the exercise.  After it becomes a habit (14 days) your mindset starts to change and eating right is less of an issue.  It is less of an issue because the focus of your attention isn’t to just lose weight, it is to become healthier.  This will begin to manifest itself in eating less bread sticks or not loading up the baked potato.  The choices you make to eat will not be limited to diet foods but will expand to any foods.  You will just learn, and desire, to to be smarter about your food choices because you want to be able to exercise better because you want to be healthy.  When you start to eat right you will be able to stray every once in awhile because ultimately you will be back at the gym on Monday.

By starting an exercise regiment before starting a “diet” you will allow your mind to adjust to the fact that you are doing good things to your body. After awhile the food choices will become easier to decide in the direction of being healthier.  By trying to be healthy you will not have to diet because you will make better choices in not only diet, but also in quality and quantity.

Wanting to lose weight is the first step to actually losing weight.  By the mere fact that a person has the thought that they would like to be thinner and healthier presents the possibility that you can become not only slimmer but also much healthier.  Overweight people suffer from many ailments that are caused by the mere fact that they weigh too much.  High blood pressure, diabetes and death are the end result for thousands of people each and every year.  300,000 people die from being obese each and every year and if you are overweight the year you will die is much sooner than it needs to be.  Sure you want to lose weight but the true question you need to answer is just how bad do you want it?

For some people the effort to lose weight has become some huge object that they themselves have decided is too large to deal with.  For those that are overweight you need to remember that if you need to move something heavy it is much easier to do it a piece at a time.  If you want to lose weight then stop trying to look at your weight loss as 100 pounds or even 200 pounds.  Why not just try to get through today and make better choices for just this one day?  Why not see if you can lose 2 pounds in the next week?  Stop thinking about the huge number and start to chip away with a little number.  FitDay provides a great and easy to use program that will track your information on your computer daily.  Enter your weight daily and try to make better choices.  Try to just get through one day at a time and the weeks somehow start to get a little better.

The big question you need to ask yourself is not if you want to lose weight, but just how bad you want to lose weight?  Do you have sustained motivation or do you just think you want to lose weight?  Weight loss is not impossible, it just needs to get done and it starts again each and every day.  Some days will be better than others but then that is what life is all about.  Why not just worry about the here and now?  Why not just make some better choices today?  Why not drink more water today?  Why not walk those few blocks instead of the bus?  Why not eat some fruit instead of some donuts? 

It all comes down to choices.  What you choose is what you end up with.  Weight loss is all about what you choose and not just about what you want.