In this video I’ll be talking about how to keep yourself motivated during your weight loss journey, why it’s not good to be weighing yourself every day and what’s the best thing to focus on to keep you on track.
When you first start a fitness routine you get on the scales every day to see the weight, go down, check that what you are doing is right and to see that all your hard effort is paying off. When the numbers go down your happy and you keep making good decisions with your food & exercise but when the numbers go up or you hit a plateau you give up.
One of the reasons why most people never reach their ideal weight and don’t look and feel the way they want to, is because number one they weigh themselves every day and number two the weight scales dictates their actions.
It’s an emotional roller coaster.
First of all it’s normal for our body weight to change daily because of many factors such as water and food intake, water retention due to sodium and carbohydrates, excretion of urine and stool and other factors like medication, alcohol intake and menstrual cycle in women.
With so many variables that affect our weight it doesn’t give us a true result on whether or not you’ve lost weight.
Secondly people are emotional beings and when we focus on our health & fitness it does have an emotional connection because we want to improve either how we look or how we feel about ourselves or both which changes how we think about ourselves.
Our actions (what we do) change depending on how we are feeling, so by focusing on the weight scales it acts as a judge on the choices you make and how you will perform that day or that week or even longer.
Your actions will dictate what you do and what you do will dictate the results you get, so my advice is don’t let the weight scales decide what you’re going to do.
It’s great to use it occasionally to have an idea on tracking your progress, I’ve created a separate video called “Are you seeing any weight loss results? If not here’s, why” which talks about how often to weigh yourself and how to measure your progress, you can see it on brigopt.com.
To keep yourself motivated it is important to keep focused on making good choices with your food, exercise, stress levels and sleep as often as possible.
So, let’s break it down for each one.
With food what are the food choices that you are making in each meal? What are your food portions like? What is the quality of the food that you’re eating?
Look out for processed food, snack food, eating too many refined carbs which are found in snacks, take away meals, readymade meals, if you do have readymade meals are we choosing the healthiest choices? Overall, in your diet ask yourself if what you are doing fits in alignment with the goal you want to achieve.
Next is exercise, are you regularly playing sports or doing exercise workouts? Are you making a conscious effort to move more during the day or are you sedentary? Do you have a fitness routine in place?
Look out for sitting down too much especially if you have a job that requires you to work on your laptop for most of the day, when you do a workout ask yourself I’m I really pushing myself and making the most of it, also are you consistent with your exercise routine on a weekly basis?
Next is stress, the more stressed someone is the harder it is to make good choices and stick with a fitness plan. People respond to stress in different ways but if it’s causing you to gain weight then look for signs of emotional eating are you responding to stress or anxiety by comfort eating? If you are not sleeping well due to stress you will be tired and reach for food for energy when what your mind and body actually needs is rest and what you need is good sleep.
Finally, is sleep, I know this is a tricky one if you have little children, but do you have a good sleeping pattern by going to bed and waking up at the same time? Do you have good quality sleep? If not is it something you can improve such as avoid eating late at night near bedtime, drinking alcohol or reducing artificial light from using mobile or laptop devices.
So, to keep yourself motivated, and get the best results to look and feel better it’s much more effective to focus on your food, exercise, stress levels and sleep as consistently as you can rather than losing motivation or giving up entirely because your focusing on what the scales say.
If you want to look and feel better, lose weight, and have more energy visit brigopt.com to find out more.
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