So you’ve set out to make some big changes in your life. You want to follow a healthy eating diet plan, increase you daily activity and focus on some healthy lifestyle changes to not only help you lose weight but to make you a happier person all round.
You’ve set some great goals – big ones and smaller ones to get you to where you want to be. You’ve filled the fridge and pantry with healthy food choices and have scheduled exercise in your diary.
Why then do you keep coming up with excuses to prevent yourself from getting very far with achieving your goals and really getting started on your weight loss journey?
You can always seem to make time for the housework or work tasks but never time to do your exercise. You have the tools to make healthy meals but blame lack of time or that your partner won’t like changes in their diet as the reasons why you’ll just get takeaway today.
Maybe your biggest enemy is yourself and you’re an expert at self-sabotage.
Here are some tips on what to look out for if you think you are self-sabotaging your best intentions and how to get out of these negative ways of thinking:

Try and be yourself

Don’t try to impress others and try to gain their respect by changing your behaviour. Be yourself and be confident in that.
The higher your self-esteem about who you are as a person (a wonderful, beautiful, clever person), the more confident and happy you will become.
If you have plans to follow a healthy lifestyle then get started on that journey and know it won’t happen overnight but that every small change or step you make is helping you to become more confident in your skin.
Don’t make these big lifestyle changes because others want you to – make them because you want to, because you know it will improve so many areas of your life.
If you are improving your eating, your exercise habits and your overall health for you, then you will gain the confidence to keep going even when things are hard or you’ve had a few bad weeks. Answer to yourself, not anyone else.

Change your expectations

Often we have expectations about how things should be in our lives, from past experiences or how we’ve grown up.
You may have tried a number of times to lose weight or follow a healthy eating plan and not succeeded before and therefore you just expect yourself to fail every time.
When you commit to a new plan to change your lifestyle for the better, when things start going well but there is temptation around, you can often think things like “why bother continuing this healthy eating or exercise as I know I’m going to fail, I should just give up now.” And it’s at those times that you might more easily succumb to making the wrong eating choices or saying what’s the point in exercising.
Try and change your expectations. If you’ve failed in the past, that doesn’t mean you’ll fail again.

Be Positive

It’s so easy to be negative and talk yourself out of things. We often love to dwell on all the negatives in our lives like “I’ll never make it to my goal weight” or “eating healthily costs me too much money” or “I’m not a good cook so it’s much easier for me to get takeaway and/or pre-prepared meals”.
If we try and live in the moment a bit more and focus on the positive things then we can stop some of those negative thoughts from taking over and trying to make us fail.
So if you’re feeling negative and think you may as well give up on achieving your weight loss goals then think about something positive instead e.g. “I’ve lost 2kgs since starting my journey, how great is that” or “healthy food may sometimes cost more but it makes me feel so much happier and I love knowing that my family are benefitting too” or “I’ve learnt so many new cooking skills since making my own healthy meals and I love what I can now do in the kitchen” etc.
Even just thinking positively about anything in your life, not just your weight loss journey, will give you more confidence to continue and not make excuses. For example, if it’s a lovely day weather wise and you focus on that, you might end up saying “how great is the weather, it makes me want to go outside and take a walk or head to the park with the kids”. Before you know it, you’ve turned your positive thoughts into positive action towards making your healthy changes.

Fear

Often we self-sabotage because we have fear that we’ll fail. How embarrassing if we set all these goals and make all these plans but don’t achieve them. So rather than giving it a go we just set ourselves up for failure, make excuses and don’t even start our journey properly.
Does it really matter if you don’t achieve your goals exactly as you set out to? The only person you should need to answer to is yourself. Don’t worry about other people’s judgements, that’s their business.
If you have a goal of losing 10kgs in a certain timeframe and only lose 8kgs then the people who are really important in your life will be so proud of what you’ve achieved. If you have people who say things like “but you didn’t reach your goal”, maybe re-assess your relationships with these people and call them out on it e.g. “I’m happy with my achievements and the people who really care about me are too”.
Don’t let fear of failure stop you – it’s more important to try than to sit back making excuses and never even see what you can achieve.

Just Get Started

If you know you are self-sabotaging your healthy lifestyle journey by making excuses, never making the time to focus on yourself and listening to that inner critical voice that often says things like “you can’t do this, don’t bother”, then that’s one of the first steps in stopping these behaviours.
Recognise when this negative chatter starts in your head and just do something to get started on your journey – make a healthy meal for dinner, do some exercise etc.
The more you combat the negative thoughts with positive actions, the less often the self-sabotaging will happen as you’ll soon see that you have in fact started your lifestyle change, you are eating better, you are fitting in exercise.
All it take is one foot in front of the other and just keep going. The setbacks will come but dust yourself off and keep moving forward. Before you know it, you’ll be so much closer to your goals and feeling so much happier about what you’ve achieved.

Take part in the 28 Day Challenge

Don’t delay – join literally THOUSANDS of mums on the challenge with us who lose an average of 4-6kg (8 – 13 pounds) over 28 days – you can read all about it here and see how it works

For over 800 family friendly recipes with daily meal and exercise plans, join our 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge made especially for BUSY MUMS – plus you do the challenge with tens of thousands of other mums and chat daily – even hourly with them for constant support in our private group.

Results from mums on the 28 Day Challenge

Mums lose an average of 4-6kg (8-13 pounds) on our 28 Day Challenge and below are some of the amazing results from mums JUST LIKE YOU who are already using the 28 Day Challenge and losing tummy fat – make the change and join them today too!
You can see lots of more results and you can join here too
Lizzie lost 10kg (22 pounds) on 3 Challenges

Lizzie says: “The food is delicious and very easy to make. The recipes are very simple and don’t require a lot of ingredients.
I love that the menu plan for the week is all worked out and it can be customised to suit your family and the ingredients you may have on hand” Join here
Eliza lost 22kg (48 pounds) on 4 Challenges

Eliza says “I started in September with my first 28 Day Weightloss Challenge. I lost 8 kg that month. So far I have lost 22 kg. But it is what I have gained which will make me a supporter for life! Join here
Ashley has lost 22kg (48 pounds) on 4 rounds

Ashley says “To date I have now lost over 22kg since starting with the 28 Day Challenges. Back in September I never thought I would be where I am now in a short six months.” Join here
Lauren has lost 46kg (101 pounds) on 6 rounds

Lauren says “I’d highly recommend starting with a 28 Day Weight Loss Challenges. It’s such a great way to learn about healthy eating and exercise….. The Challenges are perfect as they run for 28 days, with so many different customizable options for every meal and day” Join here
Join now
You won’t regret it!