The Right Mindset for Sustainable Weight Loss

Right Mindset

The best weight loss program in the world will not help you if you don't have the right mindset.

So what is the right mindset?  The right mindset is keeping your focus on what really matters when it comes to sustainable weight loss, and not on the gimmicks and half-truths that are abundant in the weight loss field.  

To have the right mindset you must realize the following 6 things:

Yes, You Can Lose Weight!

First, you must realize that You can definitely lose weight!  There is absolutely no reason why you can't lose weight.  Are there going to be obstacles that get in your way of your efforts to lose weight? Absolutely, but you can overcome any obstacles that get in your way if you simply believe that you can.  I am a firm believer that the person with a problem is also the person with a solution.  If you want something bad enough, solutions will come.

Weight Gain Is a Symptom

Without the right mindset sustainable weight loss is imposible!

Secondly, you must realize that Weight gain is not the problem, it is only a symptom. The problem is your habits.  So when you try to lose weight, don't focus on the weight you want to lose but on the habits, you need to change or develop in order to lose the weight you want.

Permanent Changes In Your Habits

The third thing you must realize is that the only way you can lose weight and keep it off for life is to make permanent changes in your lifestyle habits and there is no way around it.  Temporary changes in your diet or activity habits will only yield temporary results. This is a fact.  Unfortunately, most diet and weight loss programs, in their rush to help people get fast results, don't help people make permanent changes in their eating and activity habits. That is why the vast majority of people who lose weight gain the weight back.  An easy way to evaluate if the results from a diet or weight loss program will be sustainable is to ask yourself this simple question:  “Can I see myself doing whatever the diet or weight loss program is asking me to do, for the rest of my life to in order to lose the weight”?  If the answer is yes, then most likely you will be able to keep the weight off after you lose it with that program. If the answer is no, then you definitely will not be able to keep the weight off.  For example, most diets have you count calories in order to lose weight.  Can you see yourself counting calories for the rest of your life?  I don't know about you but I know I can't and I know most people can't either. That is why most diets fail long term.

Change One Habit at a time

The fourth thing you must realize is the only way to make permanent changes in your lifestyle habits is to introduce new habits slowly and one at a time.  Very few people can make big changes in their lifestyle habits all at once and be able to sustain them for life. For the rest of us, the only way to make permanent changes in our lifestyle habits is to keep the changes small and introduce them slowly over time.  Again, that is not exactly how most diet and exercise programs do it.  They have you make all the necessary dietary and activity changes all at once. 

That is the perfect recipe for burning out.  None of the popular diet and exercise programs have given any thought to the fact that people can't change overnight.   They wrongly believe that once people see results they would be motivated to keep doing what they did to lose the weight.  That is why they push people hard to lose weight fast.  If that theory was correct then how is it that  the vast majority of people who lose weight gain it back? The fact is the best results in the world will not keep you motivated if you achieved the results through a method that overwhelmed you. 

Fast Results Impossible to maintain

The fifth thing you need to realize is that fast results are impossible to maintain for the vast majority of people. Why?  In order to lose weight fast you must make big changes in your eating habits and in your activity habits all at once and, as I just explained, that leads to burnout.  The fact is the more changes you make in your life all at once, the further outside your comfort zone you get.  The further outside your comfort zone you get, the more uncomfortable you get, the greater the chances of burning out.  I do realize that people want fast results, but sometimes in life, what we want and what we need are two different things.  Believing that you can lose weight fast and keep it off is the wrong mindset that will get you into trouble.  Unfortunately, the weight loss industry has focused on delivering what people want because after all, that's what sells. They don't realize or simply don't care that it's not what people need. This is how we have ended up spending over $60 billion per year on weight loss products and services and still gaining weight as a nation.  The question I have for people who want to lose weight fast is this,”What is the point of losing weight fast if you are going to regain the weight back?”  Wouldn't you rather take an extra few months and lose weight the right way so the weight loss would be sustainable?

I got into the weight loss business not to help people lose weight temporarily. There are plenty of weight loss experts that can help people do that.  I got into the weight loss business to help people lose weight and keep it off. That is why my focus is on telling people what they need to hear and not what they want to hear.

Can't Rely on Motivation

The final thing you need to realize is that you can't rely on motivation to remain consistent with your workouts and your diet.  Of course, you need the motivation to get started but you can't rely on motivation to keep going forever because motivation is something that comes and goes.  Sometimes you are motivated to do the right thing and sometimes you are not.  If you only ate right or worked out when you were motivated, you would be very inconsistent in your efforts and most likely you would not see any results, or if you did, they would be temporary.  So if you can't rely on motivation to get your workouts done, or to eat right what can you rely on?  The answer is simple, routine! We all have routines that we go through every day, like when we first get up in the morning, you might take a shower, brush your teeth, comb your hair and so on.  Do you love combing your hair or brushing your teeth?  Do you debate whether or not you are going to comb your hair or brush your teeth?  No, you just do it. You don't love it, you don't hate it. It's just something that you deemed important and you make it part of your daily routine which you do without much thought.  Do you go to bed the night before thinking, “oh I hate having to comb my hair or brush my teeth every morning?”  Of course not. As a matter of fact, you probably don't spend any time thinking about it.

Well, that is how exercising and eating right has to become if you want to have a lean and healthy body that will last you a lifetime it has to become routine.

Having the right mindset for sustainable weight loss is the first thing you should make sure you have before starting any weight loss program.  The first thing I teach my clients, at my facility, Live Your Way Thin and with my online sustainable weight loss program, Live Thin Stay Thin, is how to develop the right mindset for sustainable weight loss.  Without the right mindset, sustainable weight loss is almost impossible to achieve.