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Apr 17, 2011

Losing Weight: Your 4-Step Plan Towards Success


Losing weight the right way involves more than a change of diet or working out every day for hours and hours—losing weight is a combination of the mental and physical that work together with your emotional and spiritual side helping you lose weight successfully.

The Plan:
You’re overweight and you’re not happy about it. You’ve finally put your foot down and decided that you’re going to change the way your body looks and, more importantly, the way you feel about your body. People should never lose weight so that they can look like those slim models that grace the catwalk and appear on the covers of all the latest fashion magazines, but rather, they should be losing weight to be healthier and happier in their bodies and lives.
Being overweight really does take its toll on a person; it’s both physically and emotionally draining. Setting out a plan before you embark on your weight loss journey makes it all the more stress free and likely to succeed. There are four parts to an effective weight loss plan: spiritual, mental, emotional and finally, physical.

Spiritual:
The first step in your weight loss journey involves your spiritual side; you cannot lose weight successfully without first finding peace within yourself. Health professionals from the world over are all in agreement that there is an obvious link between faith and good health. Though commonly confused for one another, religion and spirituality are actually two different things. When I talk about spirituality and being spiritual, I mean having faith—having faith in yourself and in the world around you.
In order to embrace the spiritual side of weight loss, you have to believe that in the end, everything is in God’s hands. God will help you reach your goals, overcome any obstacles that you may face on your journey to get there and, finally, to reach that point of success and taste the sweetness of your hard work.
One of the most stressful aspects of weight loss is when a woman begins to obsessively compare herself to all those around her. Just because someone is skinnier than you doesn’t automatically make them prettier or better than you. Be confident—confidence is one of the most attractive qualities a woman can have—and keep telling yourself that you ARE beautiful, that you ARE intelligent and strong. Like I always say, ''You are you own woman, your own beauty and your own glories''.
In order to move forward in your weight loss journey you have to accept yourself and you have to love yourself. A woman who doesn’t love herself is constantly filled with negativity and bound to fail on her weight  loss journey, either give up half way there or give up after trying and trying but with no results.
When I talk about spirituality, I mean acceptance, love, motivation and optimism. Accept yourself, love yourself; there’s nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight but make sure you are losing the weight for YOU and not for anyone else. When you do that, you’ll look at your weight loss in a different light, a new sense of hope will be born and you will find yourself motivated to meet your full potential.

Mental:
I want to lose weight. I want to lose weight. I want to lose weight.
Be affirmative. Tell your mind and body what you want and go for it. Keep your attitude in weight-loss mode. Make sure you don’t get caught in the vicious cycle of sulking over your weight and then taking comfort in more junk food which will only have a bad effect on your health and weight.
Believe it or not, your attitude and outlook to life and your weight loss journey plays a huge role in your weight loss process. By staying positive, you are telling your body that you CAN lose the weight, that you DON’T have to stay overweight and that you CAN overcome any obstacles because you believe in yourself. So, do you need an attitude adjustment?

Emotional:
It’s not all clear skies from here; there are going to be days where you look at yourself and wonder whether it’s all worth the hard work after all. You’ve cut back on your comfort foods, your sugar intake is considerably less and you look at the scale one week later and are disappointed, if not shocked, to learn that you have only lost a pound. Some people even gain weight!
The most important trait a person can have when trying to lose weight is patience. This is your golden key. With patience, everything is possible and as the cliché goes, only the sky is your limit.
We live in a ‘’fast-paced’’ society where people want to see results instantly; in fact, they expect to see results instantly. Healthy and long-lasting weight loss is too slow to satisfy a lot of dieters; even though it could have taken them years to put on, they expect to lose the weight overnight. Not possible. Save yourself the emotional drain by coming to terms with this fact and realize that your journey is going to be a long, effort-filled one, but the rewards are well worth it.

Physical:
You’ve cut back on the junk food, you’ve substituted those French fries with baked potatoes and those extra fudge brownies with low-fat fruit yogurt…but is that enough? No. Healthy weight loss is not complete  without some physical effort. You don’t have to do anything extreme, but you do have to make a physical effort to move your muscles, burn calories and fat and speed up your metabolism rate. Let’s not forget to mention all the other benefits regular exercise has on your body too (including your heart).
The biggest mistake most dieters make when trying to add exercise into their routine is doing too much too soon. You’ve been inactive for a while, you can’t expect your muscles to do full workouts as though you’ve been doing it for years. Baby steps—by taking things slowly and gradually, you’re not putting any unnecessary stress on your muscles and you’ll be able to last longer. No one wants to wake up the next day, hardly able to get out of bed! The way exercise is most effective is by doing it consistently.
Don’t put yourself off by pushing yourself too hard. Enjoy your exercise, do something fun. If you hate jogging, go swimming instead or play tennis. The number of activities you can do are endless; some mothers encourage their children to join in too. The most important thing is to keep at it and be consistent; you don’t want to work out one day and sit out three.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this first article. In my upcoming articles, I will be going in more detail on the four steps of weight loss individually.
Having troubles sticking to your diet plan? Need some help setting your plan up? Looking for an extra pair of ears or some extra support and motivation? I’d love to hear from you! Let me know how your weight loss plan is going, how many pounds you’ve lose to date and anything else you want to share with me. Please don’t hesitate to contact me or leave a comment here with your questions or comments and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

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