4 Must Do Strategies To Lose Weight

By: Patrice Ruggieri

Learning to take bite-size chunks is much more manageable than taking on larger and sometimes overwhelming weight loss goals. Take small incremental steps towards your goal. Concentrate on just losing small amounts of weight at one time. Five pounds is a great incremental goal. When you lose the first 5, celebrate, then decide if you want to work on the next five right away or do you want to practice using your maintenance tools for awhile and let your body adjust to its new weight. Practicing maintenance throughout your dieting program will help to instill habits that will keep you from backsliding when you get to the goal. It also helps push back the all or nothing diet or binge mentality that many of us have. So when it comes to the size of your goal keep it small enough to chew on.

Another reason not to focus on a large amount of weight to lose at one time is because it can be overwhelming and defeating. Learning to take bite-size chunks is much more manageable and allows you to be creative as well.

Sack Sabotaging Thoughts.

"It's OK to eat this because I'm celebrating." "I don't have time to work out." " I'm too tired and had a bad day at work. My family is really bugging me and picking on me so I deserve some cake." Do these excuses sound familiar? These kinds of thoughts can derail your best health and weight loss efforts. When you catch yourself making self-defeating excuses, squash them down by saying or thinking, "I really will enjoy being thinner, healthier and more energetic this summer, especially in my bathing suit at the beach" or ask yourself a question to put your mind to work in a manner that supports your efforts. You can do this by asking "What can I do to keep with my exercise and nutrition today when my day gets hectic and I start to make excuses?" By asking ourselves these types of questions our brain starts to go to work to find the answers that support our weight loss efforts. Our brain reacts to our thoughts so when we send it a message like "I deserve a quarter pound hamburger with cheese and French fries" it will start to process the information and search for answers as to why you deserve it. It will come up with images of the things that took place to drive you to eat the cake or ice cream. It will pick out pictures and thoughts that support our bad day, giving us the permission we seek to go off the program. Everything is cause and effect and if we can feed ourselves with the right thoughts our brain will search for the answers that support us.

Ditch That All-or-Nothing Mentality.

Instead of ditching your diet and exercise plan when things go out of sync, have a plan 'B' ready and waiting in the wings. Being flexible can be your greatest ally in a wellness and weight loss program. When things go amuck and schedules need to change, look over your upcoming week and learn to tweek it and restructure how to make everything fit. Make flexibility part of your lifestyle and ditch the rigid attitude. Learn to be happy with a shorter version of the big picture on the days when something comes up. If you find you have had a little too much birthday cake at the office then pull back a little at dinner or add some time to your workout. Don't use it as an excuse to blow the day. Having an all or nothing attitude can defeat you before you're even out of the gate. If you can look at your weight loss program as being successful, with 70 percent of your goals achieved on any given day, then you can call it a win. If you can do that then all the little things add up to big results. Nothing in life is perfect so don't hold yourself to an unrealistic standard. Instead take a steady route to your success. Everything we do, when broken down, is done in small steps.

Don't Let Curve Balls Throw You.

Everyone plans their dieting and workouts around the perfect day and as soon as something goes off course they ditch the diet and exercise first. Instead, assume the non-perfect day and have plan 'B" ready, willing and able to be implemented. If you get stuck at work late one day and won't have time to cook healthy, then just keep some healthy frozen dinners at hand in the freezer or a list of healthy take-out in your glove compartment. If you have to go to your son's baseball game and can't get to the gym, then walk laps around the field with light hand weights while he is not at bat. If it's raining out and you can't go for a walk, pop in a light exercise walking tape. For every curve ball there is a home run waiting to be hit. Think about how great it will feel to hit it.

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