Improving Your Weight Loss Motivation: 4 Tips

by Kurt Schmitt

Even if you’re ready for a dramatic life change, maintaining your weight loss motivation can be a challenge. If you follow a number of rules, however, you’ll find renewed motivation as you move toward your goals. We’ll discuss four of them below.

Keeping track — You must be aware of your personal numbers if you intend to be successful in your weight loss efforts. Knowing your weight is essential but don’t be obsessive over this. Jumping on the scale once is week is more than enough.

Use a simple tape measure and note the measurements of your upper arms, thighs, hips, waist, and chest. Be as accurate as possible with this. To maintain your weight loss motivation, you’ll want to celebrate even the smallest decrease in size.

Log it — Keeping a journal is the second rule for weight loss motivation. This is the place where you will keep an accurate record of the numbers we mentioned above. In addition, you will record your daily food intake along with your daily exercise.

This journal is essential to your lifestyle change in many ways. It is the perfect spot for you to keep track of the emotional aspect of weight loss. What are you feeling when you have the urge to overeat? Is there a behavior you could substitute for eating that would satisfy that need?

Knowledge is power — The third rule we’re going to discuss is to be a good student! What does that mean? Do your research! In order to lose pounds and maintain that weight loss, you must have an understanding of the USDA Food Pyramid Guidelines. You must also be able to judge recommended portion sizes. So, explore the Internet for suitable websites and read diet-related literature.

When you do your research, you’ll come across many interesting facts that you’ll want to keep. Your journal is the perfect spot for you to have them easily accessible. You’ll be surprised at how much your weight loss motivation is boosted when you read a new perspective on old information.

The power of the mind — The fourth and final rule that we’re going to discuss is that you must spend some time each day meditating. Call it what you choose, but to maintain weight loss motivation, you must have a vision of what you want to be.

Each day, spend time reflecting on exactly what it will take for you to reach your goal. How will you have to behave? What will you have to eat? How will you deal with temptation? It’s all in the details.

If you follow these four simple rules your motivation will remain high throughout your journey. You will have a system in place to fall back on when you feel weak. You will notice and celebrate your small successes and understand that they accumulate into a huge payoff!

Gail M. Davis has a growing resource on dieting including improving your weight loss motivation to assist you in your efforts. Kurt Schmitt writes about inspiration and other life changing topics.

An Inspirational Video – Life’s Little Lessons

This is an excellent video for romantic motivation, I found it browsing the other day and thought I would share.

Procrastination – Why Does A Person Procrastinate?

There are a number of different that can cause to fail in their lives one of them being that the procrastinate far too much. Unfortunately procrastination can be so severe for some people that it prevents them from achieving what they want by placing obstacles of their own making in their way. It is through procrastination a person will choose a particular path to travel in their results which will not allow them to achieve their desired goals.

Unfortunately although you may not realize it, but you could actually be a procrastinator yourself. In this article we provide you with some pointers which will help you to identify and hopefully understand what procrastination is and whether you actually are one yourself.

1. For the 20% of people who have identified themselves as being chronic procrastinators will know that it is a particular lifestyle and is going to intrude into all aspects of their life. For these particular people leading what would be considered a normal kind of life is very difficult.

2. Many people who tend to procrastinate do not actually have problems in managing the time they have available to them. What they actually find difficult to do is calculate just how much they will need in order for them to complete a particular task.

3. There are some people who believe that a procrastinator is actually born with their problem and this is not so. For many the problem will evolve over the years and will be related to the kind of upbringing they have had as well as how they interact with others. For example if a child is brought up by parents who are very controlling then the likelihood of them becoming a procrastinator is greatly increased. Simply because they will not have the chance to learn how to deal with situations and problems that any normal child would have to do.

4. A lot of people who procrastinate will generally consume more alcohol than those that don’t. This is simply because they use it as a way of helping them to avoid their problems and as a crutch to help them get through the worse times.

5. Quite a few people who like to procrastinate more than what would be considered to be normal will look at ways of distracting themselves from the task in hand. Often rather than dealing with the task that needs to be dealt with they will look to do something that is much simpler and therefore easier for them to complete. This then helps to alleviate the feelings of guilt they may have because they were not able to achieve the goals where the original task was concerned. Often they will avoid carrying out the much more difficult task because they do not feel they have the skills to complete correctly.

Yet for those who have identified that they do procrastinate there are certain things that they can do which can help them to make changes and fight procrastinating. Although it is important that when looking for ways to prevent yourself from procrastinating that the changes you make will take time to help you. A person can undergo cognitive behavioral with a trained therapist as a way of making the necessary changes in their lives as well as to understand better why the procrastinate.