How to Keep Your Motivation Up While Losing Weight
by
Tanya
Updated September 3, 2010
Motivation to keep to your weight loss goals.
It’s the same old story: you’ve begun a weight loss program only to give up just before you started making some real progress. Sometimes, it’s just the completely wrong time to try to change your life and sometimes, it’s just a lack of the proper motivation to help you keep up the hard work.
1. Document your progress, every day. When you monitor your program on a daily basis, you can actually see what you are doing and how it reacts with your body. Doing this can give you a leg up on what works for your body so you don’t waste precious time on a routine that does not give you the results you desire.
2. See yourself healthy. A great way to push yourself and keep your motivation high is to be able to see yourself at your healthiest. Try gluing a picture of your face on a body that you wish to have and keep it in a visible place, such as your bathroom mirror or on the fridge. You will be etching this picture into your subconscious, which is more significant than you can imagine, while giving yourself something to look forward to.
3. Don’t sweat it if you can’t make a workout. Aim to only miss workouts with a major justification and then promise yourself that you will work out twice as hard the next day. Don’t beat yourself up; what has passed is passed. You can only go forward and work on not letting it happen again.
4. Ask a buddy to join in. It has been proven that exercising with another person promotes the feeling of liability and you will be less inclined to skip workouts if you know someone is relying on you. Having someone rely on you to meet at specific times will force to you keep your work schedule, even when you might often just say “forget it”.
5. Do just a little. There are going to be times when your motivation is so severely lacking that you feel like just giving up. When this starts happening, try performing one set of exercises to test yourself. If you really do not feel like continuing, then stop. Chances are that you will feel much better when your body is doing something that you won’t want to stop.
6. Treat yourself, to a spa day or a special dinner that you’ve been dying for. It is important to indulge yourself once in a while, to maintain your love and vivacity for life.