Create a Weight Loss Plan and Stick with It

Chances are you started working on your New Year’s resolution feeling highly motivated about reaching your weight loss goals. Now, you are faced with temptations that threaten your confidence. Seek help from a weight loss professional before your resolution starts to dwindle. Some New Year’s resolutions are simply too vague or too broad. Focusing on one specific goal makes creating a daily action plan easier to do and successfully establishing a new behavioral pattern will make your resolution more achievable. Having a good support system in place can help you stay motivated for months not weeks. Moreover, professional support mechanisms add a support layer of people who can help you achieve your objectives. The likelihood of long-term weight loss success increases with each success.

• Set a Realistic Resolution - Your best bet for achieving your resolution is to listen to yourself every day and make adjustments to better define what you want to achieve.
• Stay Persistent but Be Patient - Set goals that are doable and meaningful for you. Plus, be clear about your intentions and avoid setting resolutions that have a vague time interval.
• Track Your Progression - Measuring your weight loss achievements will help identify areas where there is still room for improvement and allow you to fine tune your path to success.
• Recruit Healthy Support - Hitting a plateau can cause your progress to stall. Having a good support mechanism in place provides an accountability partner to help you overcome emotional barriers.
• Hold Yourself Accountable - Rather than engaging in self-judgement, develop compassion for yourself and your weight loss journey. Setbacks are going to happen, so learn how to look past your mistakes.
• Plan on Keeping Your Resolution - When setbacks occur, focus on what went wrong and learn from your mistakes. Giving yourself the leeway to make adjustments means you are less likely to completely give up on your resolution.

Since how you talk to yourself impacts your actions and your behavior. That’s why it is important to define your goals using positive self-talk. Resolving to make changes while using negatives like “not” tends to affect your critical thinking. Moreover, any resolution you make regardless of the time of year should reflect exactly what you want to accomplish. Goals setting should be specific to the individual and not influenced by his or her friends and family. Creating a timeline to go with your resolution is helpful, as it allows for short-term and long-term benchmarks of goal achievements. Timelines let you know if you are on track and allow you to make finite adjustments to your overall plan. Most resolutions fail because the individual set a tentative goal to lose weight and exercise more. The most common New Year’s resolution as well as the most common failure.