Whenever you are following a weight loss plan, are trying to follow a healthy eating plan motivation is one of the key factors in ensuring that you are successful in losing your weight.
But even though you can be full of good intentions at the beginning these can often start to fade as time goes on and life gets in the way – especially as a busy mum with children to look after!
So what are the best ways to keep your motivation strong and keep your weight loss on track?
Top ten tips to staying motivated
- Write down your reasons for wanting to lose the weight in the first place. Be as honest as you can be and be brutally honest about the reasons why as it is this deep emotional desire which will keep you on track through the tough times. Keep this in a safe place to refer back to each week.
- Post a picture of your pre pregnancy goal weight on the fridge to help inspire you when you are feeling demotivated and are tempted to eat everything in site
- Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Weight loss is a long term process and is permanent weight loss is rarely achieved when you try and lose weight quickly with fad diets. It can take months and months of following a healthy eating plan to lose weight and yes this includes slip ups and bad weeks which are inevitable for anyone – especially for a mum dealing with the pressures, stress and sleep deprivation in motherhood. Aim for a steady and healthy loss of 500g – 1kg a week and if/when you have a bad week don’t beat yourself up – you are human, you are normal just focus on being better next week.
- Limit damage when you are having a bad week by NOT keeping really bad foods in the house. Having a blow out on healthy foods or a bigger dinner size is a LOT better than munching through a family sized bar of dairy milk or tim tams.
- Set small goals to achieve such as ‘in 8 weeks I want to have lost 6kg or fit back into my jeans” and when you reach them celebrate. See the small goals as legs in a relay race and if you have 20kg to lose break it up into 4 legs and give yourself a non food reward when you reach each one
- Keep track of your daily exercise, steps and weekly measurements by using our free members area tracking tool where you can look at a graph of your progress which will really help to motivate you if you are having a tough week
- Don’t compare yourself to other people. We all lose weight differently and have different body types so focus on your own goals and your own achievements
- Aim for small bits of exercise during the day rather than thinking you have to do a big 45 minute session all at once – and click here to see easy exercises you can do at home too
- Focus on being healthy rather than thinking “I must lose weight”. If you live a healthy life weight loss will be a bi product of this life
- If you need some extra structure then try our 28 Day Diet & Exercise Plan which can be done on its own or in conjunction with the Lose Baby Weight smoothie plans.
An an extra tip is to make sure you take your measurements too as the scales can be deceptive – see why here
