We all know that substantial weight loss comes down to consistency. You need to stick to the actions that will lead to your weight loss goals. You need to keep your exercise routine and your diet food plan going until you achieve the weight loss that you are looking for. Even when you hit your target weight, you still need to stay weight conscious in order to keep the weight off.
All too often I see diets fail because of improper planning. Whether it is an impossible diet food plan, unsustainable exercise routine, or simple lack of motivation, poor planning will lead to a failed weight loss attempt. Even if the weight loss trial starts working, the diet may fail and result in gaining all the weight back that you worked to hard to lose in the first place.
Here are a few steps that you can take to ensure the success of your diet and weight loss attempt:
1. Create a solid diet food plan. If you simply tell yourself that you will just be counting calories, odds are that you will fail. Counting calories is more of a theoretical weight loss strategy, but is not a practical plan that you can easily follow each day without thinking. You need a more practical diet food plan, for example, create a huge list of different meals that you can prepare for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and snacks throughout the day. If you want to take this a step further, assign estimated calorie values to each meal. When you are trying to figure out what to eat, go to your list and pick something. This will make it a lot easier than trying to guess what to make each meal.
2. Create a list of exercises you enjoy. There are literally a million ways to get exercise. All you have to do to exercise is literally move. Thats it. Just get muscles moving for an extended period of time and you can call it a workout. If you hate running or going to the gym, forcing yourself to go will only be a temporary solution. Create a large list of specific activities that you enjoy. Here are some examples: biking, hiking, walking the dog around the block, tennis, swimming, dancing, jumping jacks, etc.
3. Make it easy to stick to your diet food plan. Get rid of all the junk food from your house. When you go grocery shopping, make sure that you are full so you don't grab a bunch of junk food. If you really can't help grabbing junk food at the grocery store, grab a bag of chips or a candy bar right when you walk in and eat it while shopping. You will satisfy your craving for junk food right there and won't be tempted to buy more for later. Just be sure to pay for the stuff you ate!
4. Make it easy to stick to your exercise routines. Join a gym that you really like. Involve friends and family in fun exercise activities so they force you to go with them. I have a stationary bike in my living room right in front of the TV. If I am watching something really exciting, I usually forget that I am even exercising! The time flies right by.
What do all these ideas have in common? They help make it easy for you to stick to your weight loss and diet plans. I believe that consistency is the key to successful weight loss, and making it easy for yourself to stick to it is the key to consistency.
