5 reasons why you’re not getting the weight loss results you want!

You know the drill. You get excited to exercise, and maybe even join a gym or a new program. You go well for a while and get some good results and then your motivation drops. Why does that happen? Your mindset is the KEY that determines your results. Here are the 5 mental mountains that prevent you from being motivated!

1. You’re only motivated by NOT being fat

When you think about your body you focus on the fat bits, and wish you could squeeze them out, to get rid of them pronto. You look at slim people and wish that you were like them and could easily stay slim. You desperately want to change your body and hate it the way it is now.

The thing is, motivation works in two ways. You are either motivated to get away from something painful that you don’t want (being fat), or move towards something pleasurable that you do want (becoming slim). If you are only focussing on losing weight and being less fat, you are only using half the motivation equation. If you’re only motivated by what you’re moving away from then the slimmer you get, the more your motivation will wane ( because you’re not fat anymore). The key to keep motivation up as you get slimmer is to focus on the slim, healthy you that you are moving towards and becoming more every day. Get really clear about imagining in vivid detail your moment of success.

2. You think “all or nothing”

When you get started you do everything perfectly! You keep your food diary, weigh your food, count your calories and train like a demon. Then you have a crisis at work or with your family and don’t go food shopping, get caught out somewhere starving hungry and eat a giant muffin, then say to yourself; “I’ve blown it” and go home and eat a packet of biscuits. You want your program to be perfect and so when you slip up it’s all over.

The truth is you don’t need to be perfect for it to work. In fact, it works better if you accept it’s not going to be perfect and just do the best you can at each and every meal and training session. Aim for 80-90% of your plan and accept sometimes you slip up, that way you can stay on track and get back to it straight away.

3. You replay your past failures and beat yourself up

Whenever you do something wrong, you tell yourself you’re a failure and remember all the other times you did stuff wrong and replay those memories over and over and over, on a loop until you feel bloody awful.

Remember, your past cannot affect your future unless you let it. You are in charge of your thoughts. Instead of replaying and visualising all the ways things went wrong, play out in your mind and imagine all the ways things could go right and you can succeed.

4. You don’t feel worthy of success or slimness

Every time you get close to success you sabotage yourself with a binge or a blowout, because deep down inside you’re a bit afraid of what would happen if you actually got this. It would change things in your life and even though you want it, there’s a part inside that’s afraid of that change and what it would mean for the other areas of your life. These fears are often unconscious, but if you sabotage yourself and have been struggling with your weight for a long time, they’re there.

Investigate what’s really behind these fears, think about them and analyse it critically. They are not true. You have just been believing that it is, based on your past experiences or decisions. You could simply decide today that you are worthy and that you will have the life you deserve. You can overcome any obstacles and you will enjoy the new slim life that is ahead of you. Let the past go and create the future as you want it to be. You have within you all the inner strength and courage to overcome these obstacles!

5. You haven’t connected with your core reason WHY you’re doing this

When your trainer asks you why you want to lose weight, you reply, “to feel better”, or “to fit into my jeans”, “look good at my sister’s wedding” etc. These reasons are ok, but they’re not the real reason why. They’re not a core, emotional reason that will help you get up and train when it’s raining, or when you’re tired and you don’t really feel like it. The truth is, sometimes you’re going to need to overcome that inertia to make a change. To do that you need a powerful reason why.

You need to discover your true motivating reason. What is it that you really want? How would your life change when you have overcome this and can be slim and healthy every day, without thinking about it? What other possibilities will open up for you? What else can you achieve after that? Write out 100 reasons why you want to get slim and healthy and discover the core reasons that make you emotional when you think about them. That’s a start. If these sound familiar to you then you need to make a change to your mindset in order to begin getting the results you really want and the most out of your Personal Training sessions and Gym Memberships.

You can change your mindset and release these negative thinking habits with Mindset Coaching. I am a specialist Weight Loss Motivation Coach. I utilise Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Meta-Coaching, and Hypnosis to help people overcome their self-sabotage, cravings, emotional eating and lack of motivation. When you change your mindset then it becomes easy to follow your trainers’ advice and keep yourself moving toward your goal. You will find that your lifestyle changes become effortless when you have a clear goal, a strong compelling reason why and you have cleared out all the negative and sabotaging beliefs and thoughts.

That’s what happened for me when I lost 25kgs over 8 years ago, within 3 months, after struggling for years with my weight. I found the key to changing my mindset and once I did, everything changed. The fat just dropped off because I was finally doing all the things I knew I should do all along!

Article by Kylie Ryan. Expert Weight Loss Motivation Coach.

Get your Free Massive Motivation E-book and hypnosis session www.MyMindCoach.com.au