In a world filled with quick weight loss plans and tips, the truth of weight loss works differently. Progress can be painfully slow. After all, it’s hard to stick to your diet when everyone enjoys fast food and other processed foods. But don’t lose hope. Once you set your weight loss goal, work towards achieving it each day. How do you not lose heart? Try these simple tips.
1. Remember that weight loss is never supposed to happen quickly
The effects of quick weight loss diets rarely last. When you put on weight over the years, your body accepts your high average weight level as its baseline. When you try to drop your weight below that level, your body can resist. It can take months of perseverance to get your body to readjust its baseline weight. If you don’t lose weight quickly, you need to remember that the process is supposed to take time.
2. Rope in a buddy
It can be a great way to shore up your morale to get a motivated friend to diet with you. You can compare notes, commiserate or rejoice together, and count on the other when one of you feels like giving up. It won’t do to find someone who is often less motivated than you are.
3. Don’t be too strict with yourself
The stricter you are about depriving yourself fattening foods, the harder you are likely to take it when you make slow progress. To help yourself stay upbeat over the long haul, it’s a good idea to ease up on yourself. You can, within reason, consider allowing yourself a few of your favorite foods from time to time.
4. Don’t set yourself up for an impossible goal
The more weight you promise yourself you will lose, the longer it will take, and the harder you will find it to stay upbeat. A pound a week, on the other hand, is a rate that’s easily attainable. Setting small weight loss goals is a proven way to get fit without damaging your health.
5. Set attainable milestones
If you have tens of pounds to lose, it can take a year or more to reach the weight level you hope for. It can be difficult to wait as long as a year before you tell yourself that you’ve arrived, though. It’s a good idea to set intermediate milestones. You get to celebrate, then, each time you lose 10 pounds or so.
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6. Don’t compare yourself to other people
It’s a depressing no-win game to constantly compare yourself to other people. You can perpetually seem to come up short. Trying to lose weight is no exception. It’s important to set your own goals and to judge yourself by them, rather than by what other people seem to have achieved.
7. Don’t weigh yourself every week
Dieting is a precise science. While you’ll do great one week, you’ll lose nothing at all the next. Weighing yourself frequently, then, can often end in disappointment. To keep your spirits up, it’s a good idea to visit the weighing scales no more than twice a month and to work out your average gain each week. You’ll be much happier with the results you get.
8. Focus on putting variety into your diet
It can be extremely difficult to stick to a diet when the tastes available to you completely bore you. Before you even venture on a weight loss diet, it’s important that you work out how to give yourself a great range of tastes with the foods that you’re allowed. It’s a better idea to have a wide variety of delicious fruit and vegetables, smoothies and sandwiches to try. You’ll find yourself despairing much less often than you would if you only had a couple of recipes to survive on.
9. Leave out the guilt
Guilt can be a constructive emotion, but for many people, their guilt does nothing to push them to do better in life. Rather, it emotionally destroys them, telling them that there’s nothing they can do once they’ve made a mistake. If you repeatedly violate the rules of your diet, it’s important to own up to the mistake and to move on. Repeated failures are common in any endeavor.
10. Prepare a detailed chart that tracks your progress
If all you do is to keep track of your last weigh in, it can be easy to overlook how far you have got. Instead, you should try to record your weight each time on a chart. After a few months, you will begin to see how steady and dependable you progress has been. It will pick you up.
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Many people spend years on various diets, trying to lose weight. It’s natural to be discouraged when your entire life is focused on no greater a goal than to lose a few pounds. If weight loss goals seem all-consuming in your life, it could be wise to consult a doctor, or perhaps a counselor. For everyone else, though, all it takes to stay upbeat is a little common sense.