Good and Bad Habits: Knowing Which Support Your Weight Loss Goals and Which Don’t
When trying to lose weight and keeping it off, you have to take on a number of habits and values that will carry you through the program and ensure that you get the results you’ve always wanted. You have to create a full assessment of yourself to determine the habits that keep you in shape, as well as the habits that only keep you from getting fit. You have to focus on the good habits and eliminate the bad ones over time. Here are some tips.
Stop Focusing on What You Don’t Want
Experts say that people simply get what they set their minds on. However, most people who are trying to lose weight put so many negative thoughts and hindrances in their minds that they end up getting fat or just quitting their program. The things you focus your attention on becomes your reality in the future. This is because, even unconsciously, you start to work on moving towards that goal. If you keep telling yourself you’re too busy to exercise, or too stressed to diet or too tired to go to the gym, you’ll simply accomplish just that.
Focusing
Instead, focus more on the things that you can do. Your mind will start to control and influence your actions and habits, thereby getting rid of the negative emotions and motivating you to start losing weight. Stop focusing on how exhausted or discouraged you are, because these feelings will only slow and drag you down. It’s also quite different from positive thinking, since you focus on things that are actually present already. As soon as you are aware of placing the right habits and behaviors that lead to weight loss, you can include your imagination to put emphasis on everything. Think of yourself as a cartoon character and play with the images in your mind. Feel free to fast forward, pause and rewind to get the actual picture.
Awareness of Habits
Habits can be described or categorized according to their functions to your success. You can categorize these as supportive habits, non-supportive habits and empowering habits. Supportive habits are described as practices that help you get closer to your goals. These can include having healthy sleeping and waking habits, setting a schedule for dieting and exercising and staying away from alcohol and junk food.
Non-supportive habits are the ones that will keep you from becoming the person you need to be. Examples are sleeping late, being disorganized and missing the gym several times a week. Empowering habits are practices that motivate you to keep going and maintain the weight after you’ve lost it. Examples are getting a buddy to ensure that you stick to your workout, meditating every night and thinking about your ideal self and self-assessment activities that let you understand your current needs for future goal-setting.
Schedule Your Success
Schedule your success by creating a calendar of activities. Break down your main goals into more specific objectives to be accomplished throughout the schedule. You should also incorporate values that need to be reinforced every now and then to keep you consistent and motivated. For example, if your program and weight loss routine lasts 90 days, you should try to use the values daily. Pick one value that you can use at least 30 times throughout the program. You might choose to use this once every 3 days, depending on your needs and how you wish to be empowered.
Stop Every Now and Then
Take time to reflect independently about everything that’s going on in your life. You should try to monitor your progress and write down your ideal goals. After each week or day, you should write down beside the ideal, your actual score and determine if you reached the objective or not. Write down the reason why you accomplished a task, as well as the possible causes of falling short. The reasons for success will be the habits that support you, while those that led to the shortcomings will be the habits that do not support you.
Visualize yourself in the present, then fast forward into the future. Do you still have the habits that empower and support you? Have you effectively gotten rid of the practices that put you down and keep you from losing weight and keeping it off?