The Best Weight Loss Tips that Aren’t About Diet and Exercise
Hey Angels and Alphas,
Most people know what they need to be doing if they want to lose weight. Move more, eat less. And while it might not be that simple for everyone, the reality of the fact is that not knowing how to eat well or how to exercise isn’t really the biggest reason why people struggle with weight loss.
However, if you do feel confident that you know how to exercise and how to fill your plate with the types of food that will allow you to reach your goals… and you’re still not losing weight, then the problem might be stemming from your mental game.
As it turns out, our relationship with our diet, our body, and our goals makes a huge difference on how likely we are to actually stick to a weight-loss plan. Whether that plan involves counting calories, hitting bootcamps, or going keto is irrelevant.
Today, we’re taking a look at the 4 tips you absolutely MUST implement in your life to up your mental game and build a healthier relationship with your body, your diet, and your goals.
#1 STARVE YOUR DISTRACTIONS
More often than not, when we eat, we’re also multitasking. We’re either watching TV, scrolling through social media, answering emails, and more. These habits are not really productive when it comes to having a strong, clear, and healthy relationship with food, and they can worsen our ability to make the proper dietary changes.
If we want to truly focus on what we’re eating, why we’re eating it, and how we’re eating it, it’s important that we address how these foods make us feel. This means that when we eat, we just eat. We focus on food. We focus on the process it went through to reach our plate, and we focus on the ways it nourishes us. This is the only way food will actually satisfy all our physical and emotional needs.
#2 THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE NOT WILLING TO DO
While this might sound counterintuitive at first, it can actually help provide you with the motivation that’s either missing or waning from your life.
What you have to do is declare, in writing, what you are unwilling to do.
For example,
“I am unwilling to be the old mom who does not have the energy to play with her children.”
or
“I am unwilling to be the scrawny kid who doesn’t do any sports or pays any attention to his health.”
Your statement will hit you in your heart every day you wake up. Your statement will get you out of bed and on the road to the gym if you use it right.
It will allow you to choose healthy salads over junk food. Training over laziness. Moment to moment, you’re always faced with decisions, and success is all about being mindful enough to take the ones that follow your path to your “why.”
And sure, you may be willing to munch on a cheeseburger if you’re hungry and inconsiderate of the long-term effects. However, if you are unwilling to be the mom who is out of shape, you will have no problem keeping those long term effects in the back of your mind and opting for cleaner meals.
#3 STAP LABELING FOODS AS “BAD” and “GOOD”
How many times a week do you eat “bad” food?
Look – the problem with “bad” foods isn’t that they’ll make your abs disappear after a bite. The trouble actually comes when you start eating excessive portions of foods that are calorie-dense meal after meal, day after day.
Instead of labeling your foods as good and bad, think about all the foods you can actually eat a lot of… and which ones you should eat just a little of. Then, plan a few ways to eat the foods you truly enjoy in portions that don’t stop you from achieving your goals.
A good example would be to have a slice of pizza alongside a salad full of leafy greens. This is vastly different than just chugging down 3 slices of pizza with a soda. The key is in the balance!
#4 CROWD, DON’T CUT
Have you noticed most dieting strategies are all about cutting? Cutting down carbs, portion sizes, “bad” foods, etc. But this cutting will only put us in a scarcity mindset.
When we perceive something as being off-limits, even if we are able to avoid it for some time, we could end up overeating and binging later because we’ve gone so long without it. If you crowd your plate and then fill it up with veggies and protein, this will simply allow less room for the other stuff.
In other words, change your focus from what you can’t eat to celebrating the foods that will help you reach your goals and always try new things that will help you expand your nutritional arsenal.
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