Dieting and exercise are the two things everyone talks about when they wanna lose weight. You eat less calories and work out more to boost your metabolism. It’s a winning recipe for cutting weight and improving your fitness.
But let’s be real here, how many of us have tried this and just couldn’t get it to work? Maybe you were eating more calories than you thought or maybe you just weren’t working out hard enough. We look at our own progress and compare it to influencers on YouTube and we just feel bad. Bad enough that we give up, accept defeat, and forget about losing weight.
As simple as weight loss and fitness sound, it’s actually a lot more complicated than you might think. So to help you out, we’ve got some real advice that everyone needs to hear if they’re thinking about losing weight.
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Motivation is the key to sticking to your fitness and weight loss goals
It’s a lot easier to stick to your fitness goals if you have motivation, but the hard part is finding it. You could look at YouTube videos, read blog posts, check out magazines, or even think about your future with your partner and/or your family. Everyone’s got their own motivations and it takes a bit of trial and error to really lock in on them.
But here’s another source of motivation that you might’ve overlooked: other people’s stories. It’s easy to look at pictures or videos of others and see their weight loss transformation, but have you ever looked at their stories and how they got there? It doesn’t even have to be weight loss stories either. This article about Donnie Wayne Jackson of Cumming, Georgia, is a motivational boost because it tells the story of someone who’s trying to spread CrossFit and its benefits. You can be motivated by the most unrelated things at times, so it’s never a bad idea to go exploring and looking for something that gives you that boost.
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Small goals lead to big changes
The second piece of important advice is that small goals will lead to big changes.
Listen, you’re not going to lose a huge amount of weight in a short time because it’s just not physically possible. Even if you try to starve yourself, you won’t immediately lose all of that weight. It’s not healthy to do that either!
Work with any fitness trainer and you’ll learn that it’s all about making simple changes to your life to reach small goals. When those goals add up, you’ll realize that they’re making huge changes to your life that are actually making a difference.
Far too many people ignore this. They try to go too fast and they get bored or lose motivation. It’s a slow burn. Weight loss and fitness are life-changing goals, not temporary things. You need to stick with it and take pleasure in those small victories, even if it’s something small like cutting out a certain food or doing a bit of exercise each day. We all start somewhere!
