How to Prioritise Your Weight Loss Goals?
At the start of each year, you’ll find a number of strategies that can motivate you to lose weight. But despite being one of the top New Year’s resolutions, about 80 percent of people abandon their resolutions by February. It’s important to consider that motivation is an internal factor, and not making it a priority sets you up for failure. While building intrinsic motivation isn’t easy, there are still ways to prioritize weight loss so you don’t give up on your goals.
Set an Objective
Most people want to use weight as an objective, 5kg by then, 10kg by this date, etc, but weight is not a great objective. It is really important to understand body composition is not just a number. Your body is made up of muscle, fat, and water, and there are devices that measure ‘badly’ this composition. Even though I never suggest to take the numbers too seriously, if you pick a good device that is consistent you can measure progress. So the objective would naturally be more in tune with less body fat, more muscle and not so interested in the number overall. Pick small achievable targets, ones you can surpass even, get acquainted with your new lifestyle first, things will get easier.
Aim For Better Habits, Not Results
One of the major reasons weight loss is unsustainable for some is that they fail to plan for what will come after they’ve achieved their goal. That’s why you should focus on building a habit or changing a lifestyle instead of just losing pounds or body fat. When you’re trying to maintain a routine that centres around your goals, it automatically becomes a priority. Moreover, things feel like less of a challenge when they are part of your lifestyle.
Take Every Opportunity to Move
Remember how I mentioned that every step makes an impact? I meant it literally. It’s true that to meet your weight loss goals, you’ll have to maintain a regular exercise routine and clean up your eating habits. Even most workout enthusiasts believe that energy drinks energize them; however, you must first determine whether your healthy energy drink is truly healthy. Aside from exercise, it’s important to understand how you can incorporate healthy eating and movement into your daily routine.
That means taking every opportunity to get some extra movement, whether it involves taking the stairs instead of the elevator, taking the bus to work instead of driving, or walking to the corner shop instead of ordering items online. And if you work a desk job, you can set half-hour intervals to get up and take a short walk before getting back to work. Once you start doing this, movement and exercise will come naturally instead of feeling like a chore.
Find a Supportive Environment
Even if you’re motivated enough to change your lifestyle, the people around you may not be too supportive. When you begin making healthy changes to your lifestyle, it does two things: it makes others around you wonder if they should be doing so as well, which is uncomfortable, and it leads to situations where your friends and family may have to make changes to accommodate you. Both these factors make people compromise on their weight loss goals.
If you find that you’re surrounded by weight loss saboteurs, then it’s time to build an environment that fosters a commitment to health and encourages you to do your best. You can do this step by step, like accompanying a co-worker at their weekend yoga class, signing up for monthly hiking trips, and joining a neighbor on their evening/early morning walk.
Make Healthy Changes a Part of Your Routine
Remember that it’s easy to say that you’ll start taking walks every morning before you go to work, make your lunch at home instead of ordering takeout, and make the short walk to the bus stop instead of taking your car to work. However, you still have the same 24 hours in a day, so adjusting these new changes in your routine all comes down to planning and how consistently you can do them.
Get Enough Sleep To Incorporate *Said* Changes
This brings us to the most important part. A lot of these changes become achievable once you start waking up earlier. And the only way to do that is to go to bed on time. Understandably, this is easier said than done, but it’s not impossible. For people who work long hours or have numerous responsibilities, cutting back on sleep is common. That’s because it seems like a good way to keep up with leisure activities and a social life, which helps reduce stress.
Nevertheless, getting enough sleep is a cornerstone of building a healthier routine. So instead of treating health-related activities and leisure activities as two separate things, look for ways to make weight loss fun and engaging. Whatever that looks like for you, it may be different for everyone.
Be Forgiving When You Slip Up
A common tendency among people with a lack of commitment toward losing weight is that they treat even a single misstep as a catastrophic event. For example, not having enough time to prepare lunch at home and end up ordering takeout. Instead of treating it as an instance when you went off track, you give up on your efforts entirely. In such situations, it’s important to remember that you can always forgive yourself and do your best to get back on track. And you don’t have to compensate for making unhealthy choices, because your mind will start associating weight loss with something malevolent and punishing. So just move on and try to do better one day at a time.
Most Importantly: Hold Yourself Accountable
Studies show that being accountable can increase productivity, and this doesn’t just apply to weight loss, but a variety of different domains. You can stay accountable through various methods, like having a gym partner, hiring a coach, or writing a weight loss journal.
The most effective is to have a weight loss coach by your side, as their guidance and expertise can help you make healthier choices in different areas. For instance, cooking meals, the best times to eat, and what workouts to schedule at different parts of the week.
Other than that, you can use a journal or fitness app like my fitness pal to log your meals, track your weight, and chart your exercise performance. Keeping a log of how many squats, lunges, sit-ups, etc you can do with every progressing day is a great way to see how far you can go.
Weight loss becomes difficult when you fail to make a commitment and lack the motivation to perform consistently every day. Using strategies like setting specific objectives, building a supportive environment, and holding yourself accountable are some of the ways you can prioritize your weight loss goals.
Certified Transformative Coach with 25 years of experience helping people live a better life.
