After eight months, AL lost a total of sixty pounds and dropped her body fat over 10 percent. She has a totally new attitude toward eating and exercise and is confident in her ability to keep it off for good!
Defining Your Motivation
First, it is important to define your motivation for losing weight. Why do you really want to lose? For your upcoming class reunion? To please a spouse or parent? To meet a potential mate or become a parent? To fit into the jeans you wore in high school? To feel good about yourself? To be a role model for your children? For health concerns, current or future?
Take some time to identify your motive for losing weight.
Write down a few reasons. People with short-term or external reasons for losing weight, like a reunion or to please a spouse, are often not successful in the long term because they fail to adopt the lifestyle changes critical for long-term weight loss. If your reasons are external or short-range, perhaps you may benefit from thinking more internally.
Health reasons are often the strongest motivation for weight loss, but most people, including many doctors, do not truly appreciate the strength of the association between obesity and disease or do not believe in the ability of weight loss to treat or decrease the risk of many obesity-related diseases. While there is undoubtedly a genetic component to many diseases, poor eating habits, inactivity, and obesity play a huge role as well. Even a 5- to 10-percent weight loss can significantly lower your risk for many of diseases.
If you are trying to lose weight to please someone else, be honest with yourself. Is this really important to you? Would you feel better about yourself if you lost weight? Would you be more confident? Try to find a reason to do this for yourself, and you will experience more lasting success. Take some time to list your reasons for wanting to lose weight and the negative consequences of being overweight that apply to you. It is a good idea to refer back to these periodically during both weight loss and maintenance.
