Weight loss motivation isn’t just a picture of a super slim model on the fridge. A good mindset for losing weight is everyone’s business, and it’s not easy. Often in books they offer something that is not very suitable for a particular person, which is why most of us cannot “sit out” a diet, accustom ourselves to constant physical exertion. However, psychologists have long studied the general patterns of motivation, and today we will try to apply this knowledge to losing weight.
Emotionally stressful motivation
This motivation is described in the works of Dr. Kovalkov and his supporters, who are the majority among Russian nutritionists. It is suitable for girls who are fixated on their appearance, fashion and everyone who gave up on themselves and lives.
According to it, you need to convince yourself to lose weight for your own health. This motivational technique is quite effective for losing weight. It helps to highlight the main thing for which you are struggling with excess weight, and to shift attention from unhealthy methods of losing weight to normal ones, which are recommended by doctors. Step by step instructions for motivation:
- Get tested, ask your doctor to tell you in detail about the health hazards that excess weight causes.
- Consider what you can and cannot do if weight increases and health deteriorates. Trust me, following short-term diets without switching to a healthy and balanced diet will guarantee weight gain.
- Understand: losing weight is necessary for health in order to be active and strong as long as possible.
- Choose one weight loss regimen recommended by a board certified dietitian and follow it.
- Don’t flaunt your first results. Track the improvement in well-being, continue to lose weight according to your own plan until the result is achieved.
Rational motivation for effective weight loss
This technique belongs to the cognitive therapist D. Beck, it is suitable for those who like to control everything, plan, write lists, set goals.
- Make a list of things you can do after you lose weight but can’t do it yet. Write anything here, both important things, such as having a baby, or small whims, such as buying a mini skirt with lace.
- Write down the most important points from this list on a card that you always carry with you and read from time to time.
- Be sure to reread your motivation card before every meal.
- Set a specific goal for yourself, but don’t associate it with weight. For example, this: “I will stop adding sugar to drinks, eat cakes for lunch, I will take healthy snacks with me to the office, and I will do all this by the end of October.” The goal may also be to keep to a diet.
- List individual activities for your goal to achieve it, these will be tasks. So, for example, if your goal is to drink unsweetened coffee instead of sweet, the task for Monday will be to put 1 spoon less, on Tuesday – 2, on Wednesday – replace the remaining sugar with stevia extract in tablets, and the like.
- Try not to overwork yourself and your body, do not set many goals at once. For weight loss, it is optimal – 2 or 3 goals for 1 month, so you can return or acquire healthy habits.
- Write down the goals, objectives, specific activities in a special notebook. Draw the sheet in half, fill in the columns, naming them “plan” and “fact.”
Slimming imaging
Visualization is a visual representation of something. Desire visualization is a mental representation of what you want. Visualizing your body the way you want it to be, forces your subconscious mind to align your body with the mental image you have created as much as possible.
This technique is taken from the systems of positive psychology A. Sviyash and L. Hay. Suitable for visuals, creative people who are able to be inspired by beauty, not health.
How to lose weight with this motivation:
- Think in great detail about how happy and interesting you will live after losing weight.
- Sit down at the table and write a motivating first-person story of what you will do after losing weight.
- You can make a whole collage of magazine photos, shoot a photo story about this future life of yours.
- By looking in the mirror, convince yourself that you are worthy of a wonderful, vibrant life.
- Start doing everything as if you have already lost weight. If you dream of going on a trip – go on it right now, if you want to update your wardrobe – buy a couple of stylish things.
- Reread your slim life story morning and evening, reinforcing it with dreams.
- Visualize imagining yourself losing weight or using a collage of yourself to be slim.
- “Scroll” the visualization as soon as you start to be lazy to do exercises in the morning or feel a craving for junk food.
- Choose a weight loss method that feels most natural to you.
Here we have sorted out the most popular motivations for losing weight, these are:
- emotionally stressful;
- rational;
- visualizing.
The choice, as always, is yours.