Train Your Brain for Weight Loss with 5 Simple Steps
Good news! You already possess the single most important ingredient for success. When it comes to getting weight loss results, the power of your mindset is even more important than eating the best foods and exercising.
Your mind controls all of your actions. So if you want to make long term changes, your mindset needs just as much focus as the food you eat and the exercise you do.
It’s a 3 part process – mindset, food and exercise.
You can train your mind for weight loss in five simple steps.
1) Decide what is most important to you. 2) Embrace your power. 3) Believe in yourself. 4) Change your strategy. 5) Get started.
1. Decide what is most important to you.
You need to be clear on why you want to lose weight if you are going to succeed at shedding the kilos and keeping them off. The truth is, there are two drivers that motivate human behaviour - the desire to gain pleasure and to avoid pain. In order to create lasting change, you need to change what you link pleasure and pain to.
Link pleasure to losing weight. Link pain to not losing it.
Will you choose the pleasure of eating that piece of chocolate cake for 5 minutes, or the enjoyment of achieving your weight loss goals? What is more important to you?
The benefits of losing weight outweigh the effort it takes.
Ask yourself what benefits weight loss will bring. Short term benefits, such as increased energy levels, improved sleep, boosted moods, or just feeling better about ourselves, can be achieved through weight loss. Long term benefits, such as improving your immune system, reducing the risk of disease, living a longer life and being active for longer in life, can all be achieved through weight loss.
The emotions behind your goals will truly motivate you.
Visualise the new you. How will you feel? Will you feel happier? More energetic? More self-confident? Now ask yourself what pain you will experience if you don’t lose weight. Do the benefits of losing weight outweigh the pain of not losing weight?
Now that you’re in the right head-space, make change a must for yourself and commit 100% to it. It’s not a question of whether you can do it, it’s a question of how badly you want it.
2. Embrace your power.
There are many internal and external influences on us that shape our behaviour. But at the end of the day, we are in control of what we put in our mouths and how much exercise we get.
Out of all people in our society, we mums have the most demands and challenges thrown at us. We are often juggling the needs of our young ones with managing a household, and all with a lack of sleep!
Get back in control.
By recognising that we have the final word in decisions on what to eat and in how much we move, we can realise a sense of power. When all else in our lives may feel chaotic, we need to realise we are the ones in control of this. Embracing that power can give us back a sense of control.
3. Believe in yourself.
Millions of mums the world over have lost weight and it is possible for you too. We are all human. Believing that weight loss is possible for you opens your mind and increases the likelihood of you taking the steps necessary to lose weight.
Believing in yourself makes it that much easier to shut yourself off to the temptation of cheating on your plan.
Dip into your huge human potential.
Regardless of any past failed weight loss attempts, recognise that you can take the necessary steps to lose weight. Don’t allow limiting beliefs to linger in your mind. If a defeatist thought pops into your head, kill it immediately and replace it with a positive thought. If you think “I might as well have the chocolate bar, I’m never going to lose the weight anyway” immediately eliminate that thought and replace it with something positive like “I can do this!”. One slip up is not going to affect your overall results.
Don’t get overwhelmed by your big goal.
Just take it one step at a time. You don’t need to think about your overall weight loss goals, just focus on the individual steps in the process. This allows you to break a big scary goal down into its many easy, smaller steps. You’re not saying no to chocolate cake forever, you’re just substituting that piece of chocolate cake with a piece of fruit for this moment. And don’t beat yourself up if you screw up. We are all human and we all fail sometimes. The trick is to pick ourselves up after we fail and get back to it with even more determination.
4. Change your strategy.
Realise that your current body is a result of your past behaviours and actions. Every day is a new opportunity to change your future. In Shape Mummy is your new strategy to achieve the change you desire. Life is challenging with a baby but this program is here to help and make everything easy for you.
5. Get Started.
You can’t wait for motivation to strike before getting started because you could be waiting a long time. The trick is to tap into your willpower to get started.
It takes far less willpower to motivate ourselves if we start small.
It would take heaps of willpower to get most of us out for a 30 minute run. But a 5 minute walk around the block is far easier to get ourselves to do. Each day you can build on it and before you know it you’ll have a new healthy habit.
Start small but get started!
Deciding what is important, embracing your power, believing in yourself, changing your strategy and getting started are the 5 steps to lasting weight loss.
Use each of these steps in your daily lives to help you achieve your goals and become the person you want to be.
You have the power and the time is now!
Our current bodies are a result of our past thoughts and actions. Our thoughts and actions are a direct result of our mindset. To achieve the body of your dreams, you need to change your mindset. Every day is a new opportunity to change your future. It’s never too late - you can do something about it. The fact that you’re reading this article shows that you are already well on your way to achieving the mindset required to lose weight.
Every week In Shape Mummy members will receive inspiring motivational tips to help them stay on track. We’ll motivate, educate, and support you all the way through. We help you adjust your mindset so that healthy choices feel right – and they don’t feel like deprivation, hard work or punishment. You have the potential to achieve the body of your dreams and In Shape Mummy will help you get there.
