Obesity has become an increasing problem in our fast-paced world that often keeps us too busy to fix and enjoy healthy foods and lifestyles. Lose weight fast is no easy task. It requires changing our habits and routines and is not about one quick fix.
If we want to be successful at losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight, we must persevere in changing patterns regarding what and when we eat as well as our physical activity.
Often times, though, it is not only what we eat and what we do for exercise that impacts our success or failure to lose weight. It is also what we think and believe. So many people meet defeat in their minds long before their new diet or exercise regime fails. Then, when the fad diet or exercise plan of choice does fail (or we fail at it), it drops us deeper into self-defeating attitudes.
Losing weight fast for women is especially difficult. It is so easy for women especially to suffer from poor self-image and confidence based on their repeated struggles to lose weight. But self-defeating attitudes, poor self-esteem, and bad expectations or misguided beliefs can all sabotage our best attempts to achieve fast weight loss.
If you are struggling with unwanted weight gain and are looking for ways to lose weight, keep reading. I’ll first address many of the mistakes people make when they do try to lose weight, many of them based on wrong assumptions or bad attitudes. Then I’ll discuss methods of how to lose weight fast and easy and keep it off.
Finally, consider how cognitive behaviour hypnotherapy as part of your weight management program may benefit you and give you the jump start and motivation to lose weight.
Mistakes to Avoid When Trying to Lose Weight
Unfortunately, there are many weight loss myths and attitudes out there that many of us believe. But which unfortunately are likely to have the opposite of what we’d hoped.
Here are some common mistakes to avoid when you are trying to lose weight and develop a healthy self-image:
- Weighing every day: This is one of the least helpful and mentally discouraging habits you could have while trying to lose weight. Remember that our body weight fluctuates by up to 4lbs on a given day. Also, remember that muscle weighs more than fat, so if you are exercising, the scale may not show the difference, but your clothes and profile certainly will. Do yourself a favour and avoid the scale except for occasional check-ins (maybe once a month).
- Obsessing over calorie count: Food and healthy eating habits are more than calorie counting. Furthermore, even if you are consuming low calories, if you are not exercising, you may still not be burning more than you eat. But if you are exercising with a low-calorie diet, the lack of sufficient calories could lead to muscle loss and a slowing down of your metabolism.
- Not exercising: Like it or not, exercising is necessary for a truly healthy body. Also, proper exercise is going to go a long way in helping you lose fat and excess weight. Additionally, because you can lose muscle mass as well as fat during weight loss. The best way to ensure that you keep muscle is by exercising. Of course, you can go to the other extreme and exercise too much, which could lead to potential stress and injury to your body. The biggest thing to remember is a healthy balance.
- Overestimating exercise: Many people make the mistake of assuming that if they run (or exercise) for 30 minutes a day. It will burn off whatever unhealthy food they decide to consume that day. This simply isn’t true. What takes seconds to consume can take over an hour to burn off. You need to make healthy eating choices and exercise, not one or the other.
- Diet foods: This is a tricky one. So many foods advertise themselves as diet or “natural”. But many of these products replace calories with sugar to help them taste better. This ends up being just as unhealthy and contributing to weight gain anyway. Additionally, while many of these foods may contain fewer calories up front, they leave you hungrier. Also, you may overeat later.
Steps to Take to Start Losing Weight Fast
Successful weight loss is often much simpler than we want to make it. Often, the following simple steps can go a long way to starting you on a successful weight loss journey:
- Stay positive: Do not allow negative thoughts and self-defeating attitude to creep in. When your inner critic tells you “I can’t do this” or “I’ll just quit again,” tell it to stop. Think about all of the positive long-term benefits and pleasures you will be able to enjoy by succeeding. Then tell yourself you can do it one small step at a time.
- Keep it simple: Don’t over-complicate the process with difficult meal plans and exercise routines that take hours a day. Start small and keep it simple. Choose whole foods over processed foods when you can, eat when you feel hungry but eat smaller portions and stop when you are full.
- Set realistic goals: Don’t start by trying to accomplish what you envision is the perfect, ideal diet and exercise routine. If you haven’t been disciplined in your eating or exercising habits before, jumping from nothing to body-builder plan will result in defeat. Set realistic goals, implementing just a couple of small changes at a time. Start with steps you know you can accomplish to build your confidence and momentum.
I love helping clients accomplish their weight loss goals. And helping them see it can be much easier and simpler than they thought. Please give me a call today to learn more about how hypnotherapy can help you accomplish your weight loss goals.
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