Firstly, we need to allocate just a few minutes of our time to look at our current lifestyle; visualise where we are heading and decide what we want to change. We can become experts at the art of distraction and putting things off until tomorrow, especially if something appears to be hard work or near impossible to achieve.
For many, it can often appear simpler to live with unhappiness than to make changes but making changes has a far better outcome. So make the first step and write down your thoughts and how you are going to achieve these changes; ensuring they are realistic.
Don’t just think about the changes you will make, write them down in a simple format, so no lengthy sentences – keep it simple.
So the secret is to break up anything that looks too challenging, too big of a task or too many things to deal with in one go. So literally taking one step at a time, no matter how small.
When you have the list in front of you, pick, perhaps, just one task to deal with and have a set day that you will accomplish this; so put it in the diary. Once its been achieved, cross it off the list and move onto the next one; if it’s a task that requires maintenance then ensure this is scheduled into your week and becomes part of your routine.
Ensure that you don’t take on too much too soon as, again, this can become overwhelming. Allow yourself time to get used to a slightly new pattern of behaviour or lifestyle change – once this is ‘normality’, then take on the next step.
Remember positive lifestyle changes take time.
There are lots of ‘sayings’ around reaching goals, for example enjoying the journey and not just the destination, which perfectly illustrates that if we concentrate solely on the end goal we aren’t appreciating all the obstacles that we have overcome along the way.
By acknowledging the journey as well as the end goal we gain strength, character, self worth and confidence, embracing the highs as well as the lows. This focuses our attention to the importance of how we feel about ourselves and what we do with our time before we get to that final destination.
After all, our end goal is comparatively short lived when considering the time and effort it took to get there. The end goal maybe the product of our achievements but it was the journey we took that got us there and this is fundamentally far more important.
It is about focusing on your strengths, building character and getting to know yourselves again. So focus on your own individual journey, experience the bumps along the way and feel empowered when you have managed to overcome these.
End goals often require further maintenance, especially if this end goal is regarding weight loss. If you have enjoyed your time getting here and gained confidence, then you also have a much better chance of maintaining the achievements made along the way.
Look at the positives throughout and keep reflecting back on the progress already made, no matter how small.
If we aren’t progressing on our weight loss journey as quickly as we would have liked then it’s a question of allocating some time to ourselves to figure out what exactly is halting or slowing that progression.
Pinpoint the cause, for example, this could be a lack of motivation, stress, slipping back into old patterns of behaviour, our weight loss journey becoming too hard if trying to fit around other commitments, lack of enjoyment or just simply being too hard on ourselves.
If we know what the cause is, then we can work on how to resolve it. Ultimately, it is the empowerment of understanding and self-awareness that creates choice and how we can utilise this to make and maintain change.