If you’re sick of starting a new diet every Monday, here’s how you can finally break the cycle!
Having tried pretty much every goal setting strategy over my years of trying to lose weight/get fitter/drop three dress sizes/give up chocolate, I thought today I’d share with you a couple that actually did help me greatly.
These tips have also resulted in very high levels of success for my personal trainer clients and many attendees of Boot camp, regarding their personal goals and what they wanted to achieve when they first contacted me.
Yes you will hit obstacles and there will be times when you contemplate giving up. For example, you start a new diet on Monday, feeling totally pumped for it, telling yourself THIS IS IT THIS TIME!
By Wednesday afternoon, you’ve hit the 3:30pm slump, you’re starving and have no idea how you’re going to keep going. Sarah at work has bought cakes and you’re just going to have half of one.
Guilt completely takes over your whole body. You can’t believe you’ve caved in already! What a failure you are. The negative self-talk is rife.
So now you’ve messed up, you may as well just give up. You’re never going to lose weight anyway. You pick up a takeaway on the way home and stop at Tesco Express for a bag of Twirl bites.
Guilt takes over by Sunday, when you decide it’s time to decide which diet you’ll start tomorrow…
How long have you been stuck in this cycle for? Despite what you might think, and just because everyone else you know is doing it too – it’s seriously bad for your physical and mental health.
The good news is it doesn’t have to be like that!
You can learn how to quit yo-yo dieting, here’s how:
When you encounter one of these moments it’s REALLY important you DON’T let emotions take over. Identify the problem’s root cause and put together a plan to overcome it. Is it something you can solve on your own or do you need to ask for help? Then implement the plan!
I’m not saying you need a personal trainer to help you, you might just need someone you can open up to and talk things through openly with. Perhaps you need to move around a bit more in day to day life or start some meditation practice, in order to de-stress and enable yourself to think clearer.
Most people either:
– don’t set any goals and continue yoyo-ing
– set goals that are way too easy
– set crazy unattainable unrealistic goals based on their previous actions/experience and knowledge
– set goals that are about right as far as how challenging they are, BUT then give up when they hit major obstacles (such as cakes appearing in the office.)
So my top tips to remember, when setting your personal goals are:
- If you set a goal that you KNOW you can achieve then you’re not challenging yourself enough.
- Any worthwhile goal will be hard. It will test your resilience, patience and discipline.
But like anything to be proud of, it will be 100% worth it! Good luck 🙂
