9 Strategies For A Successful Weight-Loss Journey | Weight Loss slideshows | Well Being center

What Are Your Goals? Set Out Your Plans In Advance

The first thing you need to decide on is your destination. A journey with no destination is unlikely to end well, after all. Be as specific as possible. Your goals don't have to be permanent. Once you reach them you can change them. But a goal like 'I'd like to be fitter in the future' is unhelpful. There's no firm intention, no time limit and no measurement. A goal like 'By Christmas I want to lose 2 inches off my waist,' by contrast, is achievable, specific and definite. So you're much more likely to reach it. Try to work your feelings about your weight into something you can actually measure. Try baby steps: 'I want to lose 4 pounds in the next 2 months' is a small step, but here's the most important thing about a small step: it's 100% bigger than no step at all. Every time you set a goal and achieve it, you make it more likely that you'll do the same thing again.

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Start With Small Steps And Build On Success!

Start by setting goals you know will be easy to achieve. Very easy goals to achieve will help to build your confidence and keep you focused. After you have some experience of the process of setting a goal, making a plan, following it and achieving your goal, it will be easier for you to achieve more difficult or complex goals. This is true in every area of life, but in weight loss it's even more the case. Rather than try to go straight from where you are now to where you'd like to be, plan out some intermediate goals and take small steps.

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Focus On Your Everyday Habits To Change Your Life

John Lennon famously said that life is 'what happens while you're busy making other plans.' Well, that's even more true of weight loss. You have a coffee on the way to work, a pastry at lunchtime, a bar of chocolate on the way home. After dinner you settle on the couch with a beer, just one, and a small bag of chips. That could be as much as 1100 calories a day that you aren't even thinking about! Two of the biggest sneaking calorie stuffers are coffees from coffee shop chains, with their fantastic menus of chocolattes and frappacinos, and alcoholic beverages. But chips and chocolate come a close second. To lose a pound a week you'd only need to drop the coffee and the pastry from the list above; you could start with your unexamined habits and begin to lose weight without noticing it!

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Cook At Least One Meal A Day At Home

Home cooked meals have a lot of advantages. They're almost always denser in nutrients and lighter in calories than prepared foods. You can see exactly what goes into them. And you can 'make a meal of it,' getting the family round the table and making dinner an event. That has psychological benefits, because it makes you feel fuller than if you snatched some food on the run, and it adds to your support network too. If you're eating a restricted diet because you're trying to lose weight, a cooked meal once a day is a good way to take on board some real nutrients.

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You Can’t Out-Train A Bad Diet

This should be written on the wall of every gym in the land. However great your training plan, however much commitment you bring to the gym, however steadfast you are in pursuit of your goals, if your diet isn't giving you the nourishment you need and it's jammed with empty calories, you'll fail. Go over your eating as well as your training. Figure out how many calories you're eating a day (don't forget how many you're drinking!) and adjust your intake up and down in 250-calorie blocks until you find the right level for your goals. Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables. Give yourself a chance to succeed.

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A Winning Body Is Made In The Kitchen As Well As The Gym

The phrase 'you are what you eat' is so familiar that most of us have almost forgotten that it is literally true. Every part of you is made of food. Your body doesn't grow, or change, in the gym. That happens at home, when you're asleep, and in the kitchen. Think about the body you want, then take a look around your kitchen and ask yourself, are these the materials for creating that body? If your fridge is full of soda and cakes and your cupboards are full of chips and pastries then the answer has to be, 'no.' However uncomfortable that is, it's true. For some of us, the best fitness equipment we'll ever buy is a cookbook. If that's you, don't feel bad, just take the step.

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Have Fun! Don't Forget How Important It Is To Enjoy Your Life

When you're tired and hungry and the list of things to do seems to get longer the more you try to shrink it to a manageable size, the idea of having fun in the gym seems ridiculous. But you should try to find a form of exercise that is effective, and that you enjoy. Be prepared to make an effort to learn to enjoy something, but be gentle with yourself as well as firm. Don't approach training like it's a prison camp or your sentence will be short. And remember that there's more to you than your weight, and more to life than trying to fix your problems. Go out, watch a movie, goof around with the kids. It's good for you, officially.

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Put It On Paper - And Go Back To It Periodically

Try keeping a journal of your progress. Put anything you think is relevant down on paper. Then you're better prepared to look back over your weight loss journey and figure out what worked, what didn't, what made you feel great and what made you feel like giving up. It can also help you to have more of a sense of control. Try making daily entries. Some people find a highly detailed plan, with day-by-day tasks and tick boxes, gives them a sense of control, while others find it gives them a sense of being controlled and prefer a set of principles and a weekly journalling session. Experiment, but remember that writing it down helps almost everybody.

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Find A Weight Loss Buddy For Mutual Support: You'll Be Surprised The Difference It Makes

A weight loss buddy can be the best thing that ever happened to you if you're trying to lose weight. Their support can make you feel better when it seems hopeless, and their nagging can get you off the couch when you just don't feel like training today. Your weight loss buddy will have interests in common with you. The steps of your journey might be mystifying or even boring to outsiders, whether it's an extra mile you've run or an extra rep on your squat session. But someone who' in the same boat as you can enthuse over the details and commiserate on the tiny setbacks that seem to fill the horizon when they belong to you. Find someone who has similar goals to you and is in a similar place; you don't want a teacher or an example, there are plenty of those around. You're looking for someone to take the journey with you. Their reinforcement can be the difference between success and failure.