5 Factors That Help Motivate Weight Loss

It’s difficult to stay motivated to lose weight sometimes, right?

When things aren’t moving fast enough, we tend to give up.

Try these 5 ideas to help keep you on track and motivated!

Losing weight is difficult, no doubt about that. Whether you have 5 vanity pounds to lose, or 150 pounds to lose for medical reasons, motivation can play a huge factor in your success. If you aren’t driven to do something, chances are, you won’t do it!

Here we are going to take a look at 5 successful motivation techniques for weight loss so you can achieve and maintain a healthy body weight.

1. Look at Yourself

This isn’t meant to be a negative element in your motivation. Many people, when they’re trying to lose weight, try to avoid the mirror. They’ll avoid pictures, the mirror, and anything that gives them an image of their body.

This isn’t healthy!

Some experts recommend that you look at your body routinely.

Embrace your body, and you’ll be able to watch it change. There’s nothing more motivating than watching muscles develop where fat used to be. If you have a significant amount of weight to lose, you may need to take photos to see this progress at first.

Provide yourself a time lapse of how far you’ve come and track your journey and see what you’ve achieved.

2. Chart Your Progress

Another motivator aside from watching your body change can be watching your numbers change. These figures don’t necessarily have to be the weight on the scale either. Tracking things like calories, inches, cardio endurance, and weight can all have a great impact on your motivation.

If you can, you should put all the data into a chart so you can make those numbers visible. Put those Excel skills to use for your weight loss motivation!

3. Set Attainable Goals

Accomplishing a goal releases neurochemicals similar to those that are released when gamblers win a big jackpot. Knowing this you can set yourself up on a cycle of motivation that’ll let you achieve any goal.

Fitness Magazine encourages you to set attainable goals. This part is vital to setting up that big jackpot feeling you get when crushing a goal.

If you’re starting from a point, where you cannot run for more than 20 seconds without feeling winded, or stand for more than 10 minutes, set a goal that you can track and achieve your progress.

For the next week try to stand for 11 minutes at a time, or run for 30 seconds each interval. Whatever it is, make it hard, but achievable. This way you are giving yourself that amazing “I crushed it” feeling, which encourages your motivation to grow and continue.

4. Know You Aren’t Perfect

Nothing makes you want to quit more than feeling like a failure. Therefore, the way to avoid this feeling of utter defeat is to come to an understanding with yourself, that you’re not perfect.

Going into an adventure like weight loss with an attitude of acceptance for mistakes means you’re less likely to throw in the towel when you make a mistake.

Staying motivated when eating too much, forgetting to exercise, or having a bad weigh in is hard. Knowing that these things will happen from the beginning will help you deal with setbacks and keep your motivation.

5. Check In With Your Emotions

The last element of staying motivated is to check in with your emotional health. Sometimes you can’t do this alone. Try enlisting the help of a professional if you are struggling with things like negative thoughts, emotional eating, or lack of motivation while trying to lose weight.

A psychologist, life coach, or weight loss counselor can be a powerful ally when trying to stay motivated.

You now have 5 amazing tools to help you stay motivated while you make your way through your weight loss journey. Use them and see which ones work better for you.