Be motivated and stay on track

Many people have struggled with trying to lose weight. Sometimes the struggle continues over and over again. So how do these elements: motivation, consistency, exercise, weight loss and others combine to help you with your goals?

The first thing you need to do is to have it clear in your mind why you want to lose the weight. You have to be doing it for yourself, not for anyone else. Whatever the reasons are such as health, feeling better about yourself or a wedding dress to get into, you need to know what they are so you can use that to motivate yourself.

Then you need to find a way to remind yourself every day of those reasons. Making the effort consistently is what makes the difference. You need to keep working at losing weight every single day. It is a lot easier to take on bad habits than good ones. The things you are doing to lose weight need to be done daily in order to make those good habits stick.

So, put up pictures where you can see them that remind you of the reason you have your goal of losing weight. And, speaking of goals, make them specific. You need to have a goal in mind of exactly how much weight you want to lose. Then, you need to break this goal down into smaller increments. An important way to keep yourself motivated is by making smaller goals and achieving them, therefore, they should be challenging but realistic.

Put together a plan for how you are going to reach those goals such as exercising. The amount that you do should be increased gradually and this too can be put in the form of smaller, realistic goals. For example, if you plan on running as your way of exercising, make goals of how much you are going to increase your distance, speed or both each week.

Another great way to stay motivated is to work out with someone. This could be a friend that decides to lose weight as well and makes a commitment with you to a plan for exercising and diet. Or it could be a fitness trainer that you hire.

If you can do both, that will be even better. Get together with a friend and hire a trainer for the two of you. You will end up spending less money on the training sessions and you will have two people to help you stay motivated.

Trainers are your best friends when it comes to motivating you to lose weight. With their experience, they have a much better idea than you of how much you can do each day, how much you can step it up and at what point. Having an appointment to meet a trainer at the gym may be the only thing that gets you there when you are first starting out. Part of their job is to keep you motivated and they have many tools for doing so.

The key to getting it all started, however, is to decide why you want to lose weight and commit yourself to it. Losing weight is hard work, especially because it usually comes down to changing your lifestyle. You are not going to be able to stay motivated if you do not honestly want to do it and know why. Once you have those reasons in mind, remind yourself every day that the work is going to be worth it in the end.