5 Steps To Easier Weight Loss

Have your New Year’s promises to yourself gone awry, preventing easier weight loss? Wondering why?

This often happens because people overpromise on their goals. These big resolves are not realistic, so they’re bound to lead to disappointment and failure. Examples:

1. You have 80 pounds to lose and promise yourself you’ll lose it before your cousin’s wedding, which is three months away.
2. You are accustomed to eating fast food several times a week and decide you will be totally vegan starting today.
3. You have not exercised in years, and you promise yourself you will exercise at the gym for an hour five days a week.

What would it be like if you made promises you could keep, and felt successful?

To try it out, here are some suggested steps for easier weight loss…

1. First decide on some realistic final goals that you want to achieve.
2. Then break up each goal into subparts. I.e., you want to lose 50 lbs. in a year. That would average to a little over 4 lbs. a month. That would be about 1 pound a week. This is called chunking. It helps because your focus is on something achievable.  In this case, your goal is to lose 1 lb. a week. Keep your mind on one week at a time.
3. Keep your goals measurable. If it’s losing a pound a week, weigh yourself and keep a record. If your final goal is getting to sleep by 10 pm and you now stay up until midnight, you might want to cut back 15 min. a week. I.e., Go to bed 11:45 the first week, 11:30 the second week, etc. Be sure to track your bedtime in a journal.
4. Consider working with a buddy to be accountable and feel supported. It might be someone who has similar goals, or it might be someone you can trust and who supports you unconditionally no matter what you accomplish or don’t accomplish.
5. Give yourself a small reward for accomplishing each goal. This might be sometime like a massage, mani-pedi, taking time for a long bath, etc. Be sure that your goal is not counterproductive. For example, if your goal is to lose weight, avoid rewarding yourself with a package of cookies.

Ready to start? First write down what you want to accomplish. Then take it from there. Note: Your goals might change while you are working on them, and that’s okay. Just redo your list of goals and subgoals and keep going.

For more success tips, click here.