Real World Weight Loss Secrets: Learn to Love Your Weight Loss

Success in the real world of weight loss is all about attitude. Knowing you need to lose weight, even wanting to lose weight, is not enough if you want to succeed. If you want to succeed, you need to learn to love losing weight. There are three broad ways to do this and accomplish more than you ever thought possible.

Real Word Secret #1: Love Healthy Eating

Your diet is the basis of your weight loss success, but that does not mean you need to be 'on a diet'-quite the contrary!-what you need to do is love healthy eating and do it for the rest of your life. There are several ways that you can do this:

• You Make the Rules
  Diets don't work because you have no control over them. Rather than allowing someone else to dictate what you can and cannot eat, learn the basics-drink 2 litres of water a day, don't skip breakfast, etc.-and then draw up your own guidelines which you know will fit into your lifestyle and idiosyncrasies.


• Volume Matters
  You can trick your brain into thinking you ate more by playing around with the volume of your food. Obviously, a salad has fewer calories and more volume than pasta, but you can also do something as simple as cut up a piece of chicken and spread it over the plate.


• Preparation
  Real life is tough and there will be days when 'eating healthy' is more of a burden than anything else. That is why preparing food ahead of time is so important-you won't have an excuse not to eat healthy. For example, you can take a day each week to prewash and cut veggies, cook once a month and freeze healthy meals.

Real World Secret #2: Love Exercise

If pillar one of successful weight loss is food, pillar two is exercise. It is also one of the toughest for many people to topple over. Loving exercise means concentrating on its utility beyond weight loss. Here are some ways to do that:

• Change Your Purpose
  Exercise for weight loss alone is boring and hard to really understand. However, if you change the reason why you exercise you are far more likely to keep with it. Exercise is an excellent stress reliever, for example. Many people also enjoy playing team sports for the sense of camaraderie.


• Multi-Task
  Don't just exercise if you cannot stand it. Go to the gym, get on a treadmill and catch up on our favourite soap while you walk or talk on the phone or listen to a book on tape. There are many ways to 'distract' yourself from the fact that you are exercising.


• Exercise for Mastery
  Whether you are trying to do a perfect squat thrust or finally get your feet flat on a downward dog, trying to achieve a sense of mastery in exercise gives you a motivation far beyond weight loss. Also, studies have proven that reaching for mastery in exercise allows us to get 'in the zone' or create a sense of 'flow' which makes time go by more quickly as well as impact the pleasure centres in our brain.

Real World Secret #3: Love the Process

Weight loss is a process, it is a journey, and it is not a short one. If you cannot embrace the fact that this is a process, you are doomed for failure. Don't expect miracles. Here's how:

• Start Slow
  It is a proven fact that slow starts are as effective as 'go hard or go home' attitudes'. In fact, if you start slow and gently build your intensity, you are far more likely to stick with a program in the long term. Let's consider:
  3 weeks at 100% effort = 300%
  5 weeks at 80% effort = 400%
  BUT
  20 weeks at 25% effort = 500%


• Protect Your Willpower
  Your willpower is not endless, no matter what others may think. If losing weight were as simple as exerting endless willpower most of us wouldn't be overweight. This means you need to be careful about what temptations you do give in to or else you will end up overindulging and going for the whole cake rather than a small slice.


• Let Go of the Stress
  The stress in our lives leads to the creation of a hormone called cortisol, also called the 'fat storing hormone'. Therefore more stress = more fat. You need to consider your weight loss program more of a map than a strict set of directions. Look for the right roads to take, but realise that there is more than one way to get to the same destination. Also, remember that the fastest way you can lose weight is to do it only once.

Learning to love the process of losing weight and keeping it off is the foundation of my Love Your Weight Loss program. Visit me at http://www.sallysymonds.com.au to learn more and to join our community of like-minded people who know that the weight loss journey is long and treacherous, but worth it in the end.

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