“Go-vember”

by Jim

If one of your new year’s resolutions is going to be ‘to lose weight’, then I would urge you to get started now instead of waiting till January.

Successful weight loss is all about momentum, right? I’m sure you can all hark back to a time when you were dieting consistently and actually felt quite good, even excited about the process. But getting started is the really hard part, so why leave it till January when you are feeling bloated, hungover, and are facing a return to work?

I truly believe that if you want to lose weight in 2012, you will increase your chances of success dramatically if you get started now, and roll into the new year with much of the hard work done.

Imagine if you started the weight loss journey now, at the beginning of November. It wouldn’t have to be perfect, you could perhaps just focus on cutting down on the alcohol or eliminating the sweet stuff on weekdays. If you stuck at it, it’s quite possible you could lose 10 lbs or more by the time the new year comes around. And then when you do hit January, you will have momentum, a real headstart, some nicely formed habits, and your resolution will have real sincerity behind it.

Compare that to beginning in January – you’ll feel awful with all that excess holiday weight, you will have to create a new habit from scratch (“starting cold”), and that’s on top of any other commitments you may have. Generating weight loss motivation at that point is much, much harder.

I know that some may say that it’s harder to diet in November and December because of the holiday season, but I’d argue that the holiday season makes it easier to diet.

Remember, we’re not looking to hit a very low calorie diet here in order to shed 30 lbs in two months. All we’re looking to do is get an ‘edge’ in before the new year by shedding up to 10 lbs of fat and getting our minds and bodies used to the idea of dieting. What the holiday season allows you to do is diet more easily because you know you’ll have regular rewards along the way. How tough is it to lay off the sweet stuff from Monday to Friday if you know you have a big Thanksgiving dinner on the Saturday?

So give it a try. Don’t attempt to scorch the earth or anything here…just get into some good habits and look to go into January lighter than you are now.

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On Beginning

by Jim

“The beginning is the hardest part of the work” – Plato

It is such a simple statement that contains so much truth; yet it has been pounded into us so many times that its meaning has been lost.

There is nothing harder than beginning. Nothing.

Imagine that you are the person who has rock-hard abs, has just finished a session with the steel at the gym, and is about to go for a 10 mile run before settling down with a healthy dinner. Sounds like a lot of hard work, right?

But I will bet that it is considerably easier to be that person than it is to be that same person at the beginning of their quest. At the beginning, just trying to make one simple change, such as jogging in place for a few minutes, can be an incredibly stressful experience. The person with momentum and feedback, like the fit person mentioned above, has no such issues.

So throw away those motivation books that are designed to ‘pump you up’, because nothing can prepare you for just how hard even the ‘simple’ things will feel in those first few days and weeks. The only thing that can make you somewhat resilient to them is an understanding and awareness that they will be hard.

To that extent, try not to make too many sacrifices at once. Whether you’re planning to start exercising, or dieting, or making other tweaks to your life, they will all feel like sacrifices at the beginning. So start with one small change you can get on top of, whether it’s limiting your calories, or ditching junk food until a blow-out Friday, or doing session one of a fitness DVD a couple of times a week.

Just get started. You will be amazed at how a little success, a little momentum, a little feedback can leave you feeling so much more confident and optimistic. Then you’ll want to do things more intensely, and you’ll want more sacrifices in order to get more of this wondrous sense of momentum and rewarding feedback.

Keep your beginnings humble, and see how exhilarating it can feel in a short period of time…

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The irony of weight loss motivation

by Jim

Here is the ultimate irony for anybody in search of weight loss motivation: you already have it in buckets. Here’s a quick dictionary definition of ‘motivation’:

noun
the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a certain way

I’m sure that the average person is not short on such reasons for weight loss:

  • living longer
  • a healthier body
  • better sex life
  • more attractive
  • greater self-confidence
  • more energy
  • saving money on food (heh)
So in a way, even the title of this blog is misguided. Weight loss motivation isn’t about that ‘magic spark’, or that single success story that will kick your ass into action. Rather, it is about undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift – understanding what’s keeping you from making the long-term changes required, and then tackling them.
Try checking out a couple of my earlier posts to kickstart that paradigm shift:
  1.   the importance of accepting patience and playing smallball
  2.   embracing the challenges ahead

 

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Raven Symone’s weight loss

by Jim

Raven Symone Weight Loss

Raven Symone before her weight loss

Raven Symone has lost a whopping 35 lbs of weight according to reports today.

Despite always being self-assured about her appearance, the former Cosby Show cutiepie claims that the main motivation for her weight loss was ‘to be less stressed’.

Hats off to Ms Symone, who looks terrific in her new, slender form! What I particularly like about her weight loss story is how she kept it simple by reducing portion sizes. Faddy diets be gone!

You can watch an interview of her discussing her weight loss on the Wendy Williams show below.


 

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The Paradox of Choice (and Jared Fogle)

by Jim

There is something to be said for simplicity.

Have you ever heard of Jared Fogle, ‘The Subway Guy’? He was a 425-lb man who decided to do something radical to lose fat.

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Benjamin Franklin on patience

by Jim

He that can have Patience can have what he will
- Benjamin Franklin

You can immediately reduce the stress you feel about dieting if you decide to be patient about the weight loss process. I’ll bet that you are thinking in terms of one week goals, or perhaps two weeks, a month, six weeks tops.

I don’t blame you – we live in a quick fix culture. Come May we’ll be seeing magazine covers saying “get a beach-ready body in six weeks!”

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