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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this quick self-help segment in about ten minutes I am going to cover how to stay motivated to lose weight so if you're struggling to lose weight and you've gotten on track and then you fallen off track like so many of us do then this is going to be the thing for you and I'm going to give you some practical tips and why am i qualified to talk about this well one of the reasons besides the fact that I study a lot of personal development material is that I used to be overweight my whole life since I was a kid growing up through high school and through college I was 65 pounds overweight you can't tell that on me right now because after college I lost it all because I got that part of my life handled and I use some of these techniques to keep myself motivated to lose weight so that's what I'm going to talk about and I think I have some valuable insights for you here so first let's talk about why you're doing this in the first place I think the initial motivation for why you're losing weight is critical critical critical critical to getting you to stay motivated because so many of us lose weight for the wrong reasons and it's not really for the wrong reasons but it's just that the way that we justify to ourselves is not inspiring enough you need to be inspired by what you're doing because losing weight is challenging and of course it's going to depend on how much your weight you're trying to lose if you're trying to lose 5 pounds of weight that's not a very inspiring motivational goal and in fact you might struggle to lose 5 pounds of weight more than you'll struggle to lose something like 2030 or 70 pounds of weight because when you set a goal for yourself to lose let's say 70 pounds of fat that's that's a big undertaking but on the other hand it even though there's a lot of work involved there and a lot of willpower has to go into a lot of dedication and diligence and discipline the reason that you're doing all that is big because you can see the difference that's going to make in your life 70 pounds off shed off of your body that's going to make such a big difference in so many different areas of your life right in your relationships maybe at work maybe your self-confidence how you feel how you look how you look in photographs so many different things your health a million different things will be affected if you lose 70 pounds so you're going to be very motivated to do that if you're only trying to lose 5 pounds that's going to be a little tricky because 5 pounds not going to make a big difference 5 pounds is something that most people probably won't even notice if you take 5 pounds off you you won't really register it and it'll be really easy to just gain those 5 pounds back so the point I'm trying to make here is not that you shouldn't be trying to lose 5 pounds you should try to make that goal for yourself as well if that's what you're looking to do but make sure that it's inspiring the goal did you have to set for yourself has to be inspiring and more than just a goal it has to be a vision what is the vision that you have for yourself the vision here is something that like you can see you can picture very clearly how you're going to look in the mirror 5 months from now a year from now make sure that you're making a sustainable change and that you see yourself making a lifestyle change not just a quick little change for example bad reasons to lose weight because you have a wedding coming up or a high school graduation or reunion or some other kind of event where you need to go and try to impress others that's not never going to work that's a horrible reason to try to lose weight because even though in the short run it kind of gets you motivated in the long run it does nothing for you nothing inside changes you need to work on the psychology of why you're overweight and why you keep falling off track so that's really really important I want you to sit down and to say what are some maybe the top three things that are really going to change in my life if I lose this way sit down and write them down what's really going to change and paint a picture in detail vividly I remember when I was getting motivated to lose 65 pounds I needed to summit everything in myself to do it because I've tried many times before in my life to do that and I always fell off track very very quickly within like the first week and so what I had to do is I create a creative vision for myself and for me that revolved around relationships and I wanted to get into the dating scene and I hadn't had much success there and I said you know what if I can lose 65 pounds and get to the fit shape that I'm at right now then I'm gonna have the confidence to go out there and get really involved heavily in the dating scene and I like I pictured in detail all the benefits that would come from that including the amazing sex and the relationships and when I had that picture I got very very motivated I was so motivated that I was double motive I would go to the gym double time I would clean up my diet and and abstain from from eating too much double time and that was really really important of course even though you have that initial rush of motivation which is nice you also need to be able to sustain it because losing weight takes time takes really months if you're talking about losing any serious amount of weight you're not going to be losing any more weight than about 1 pound maybe 2 pounds per week that's about all you're going to be losing anything else that you lose beyond that is water loss it's not actual weight loss and it takes a couple of weeks of just getting on the diet for that to kick in so how do you keep yourself motivated well your vision is the core thing I want you to actually write down this vision and I want you to spend some time spend 5 10 minutes every morning or every evening whenever you have some quiet time to really close your eyes and visualize what you're going to look like how you're going to look in the mirror how are you going to look in photographs how are people going to react to you how are you going to feel about yourself how is your health going to change how are you going to be taking fewer medications how are you going to be setting a better example for your kids whatever your motivations are picture that in vivid detail you have to picture it because what's going to happen is it's going to start to get your subconscious mind geared and on track because right now you have a conscious intention to lose weight and that's well and good but then you've got your unconscious mind which is very comfortable with the point that it's at right now which is your kind of weight setpoint and for that to budge something has to change in here it's not so much about the actions you're doing although you're gonna have to go take actions it's about changing the psychology because when you get the psychology right then the actions will correspond to it in in a certain number of you know in a certain number of weeks the actions will then align with what your subconscious is ultimately trying to achieve so you need to program that subconscious and the best way to do that is with about five or ten minutes of visualization on your goal every morning and then also some affirmations also help so when you app when you do affirmations it's basically a short phrase or a statement about what you want and you say it as though we already have it today it sounds a little bit silly but I'm telling you this really works as long as you do it consistently so a little bit of affirmations and visualizations every morning will keep you motivated and keep you coming back to that vision and by affirmation I mean something like you know whatever your ideal weight is let's say you want to weigh for me it was 170 pounds and I used to weigh 200 like 35 I think so 170 pounds so I would you would say to yourself and I didn't know about affirmations at the time but now I do so now I would use the technique I would say to myself I'm at 170 I'm at 170 I look great at 170 I look great at 170 and picture that - while you're saying it and you're going to have that image and that is going to inspire you because you are gonna have some hard work ahead of you you have to go to the gym bust your ass there you have to be consistent with that you're gonna have to watch your diet maybe count your calories cut your calories change what you eat eat something healthier more Whole Foods rather than processed foods maybe cut out certain foods that you like maybe you're going to cut out dessert so you're going to cut out soft drinks if you're going to cut out grains all those are great ways to start losing weight fast and I talked about that in other videos but here I'm talking about just the motivation aspect so get yourself get yourself in gear get yourself gear with the vision and it's not enough to do it once having a vision initially is great but to really solve that problem of staying motivated you have to reconnect with that vision on a daily basis because you're just going to forget you're going to fall back into old habits of course the other point here is that you need to build a habit and you got to recognize that to build a habit takes about a month to two months thirty to sixty days to build a habit and what that means is that that first 30 days are going to be tough they are you're going to be very disciplined if you want the results but what you have to look forward to and what you should be reminding yourself in those first 30 days is that whenever you feel like you're Gipp about to give up you have to remind yourself that this is the first 30 days and this is as hard as it's going to be it's only getting easier after each day so let's say you're two weeks in and you're about to give up and you think about breaking that diet or not going to the gym and you're going to have a some sort of mental and there's gonna be a conversation in your head one part of you is going to be like I really you know I really feel so tired I can't keep up with this routine it's too difficult it's never going to work and so that's the part of you that's going to get you to drop off right and to go back to your old ways to keep your weight or to put your weight back on then there's going to be that other part of you that says well but you know what if it could work what if what if I actually made it work how would that make you feel and so that's like the higher part of you and there's going to be this this this dialogue going on and you want that higher part of you to be armed with some good logic some good reasoning that it can use against the lower the lower half and that higher that higher part one of the things you can say is that I remember vividly doing this when I was really feeling down is I would say to myself this is as hard as it's going to get I've already gone through the worst of it and it's long getting it easier because I'm building a habit and what's happening as each day of the habit building process is going forward and and I'm doing it successfully I can be confident in the fact that the next day is going to be a little bit easier because what's happening is that my subconscious mind is rewiring itself to get out more with the new habit so if I've been going to the gym for two weeks straight I've been doing that really consistently and now on the third week I'm having some difficulty I'm going to start reasoning with myself I'm going to say it like something like along the lines of well we've done two weeks we need to do one more week this is gonna be the hardest week if I can do this week the next week is going to be easier and then the week after that it's going to be a little bit easier because I'm going to get on board my subconscious getting on board it's becoming a habit and what happens is after you pass that 30 to 60-day mark is that it becomes much easier you become a lot less tense and anxious and you don't have to be so disciplined to stay on track you're not going to really have to motivate yourself as much you're going to find that you just kind of fall on a groove and that's exactly what happened to me is I spent about a month or two getting myself really disciplined and hitting it really hard at the gym and cleaning up my diet and then what I found is for the remaining four months I did this for about five months for the remaining four months it was it was pretty much just just kind of going through the motions and it wasn't that difficult I mean it was difficult in the moment but when I think about it those four months just like flew flew by they flew by and losing those 65 pounds on some level was one of the hardest things I've ever done I'm not alone it's kind of easy after that initial hump so keep reminding yourself that that initial hump the other thing I'm going to tell you is a technique that I used if you're at the gym only think about one day at a time so baby step it don't think about the fact that oh I have to go to the gym today and then have to go to the gym tomorrow and then have to go to the gym the next day and then go to the gym for a month don't think about it like that focus just on completing today because the fact is that to lose the amount of weight that you want to lose all you have to do is take the right actions every single day and only have to do is focus on that one day because here is going to happen is that your willpower throughout the day it's going to diminish right and at the beginning that you're gonna feel good and then middle of the day you're going to feel a little bit tired and at the end of the day you're going to be you're gonna have an urge to not go to the gym or to to pig out or to break your diet eat unhealthy grab some fast food whatever when your willpower has waned at the end of the day and it's dropping off which you got to do is kind of just remind yourself that this is the hardest part of the day and that if I could just make it through and just focus on today I don't want to add any more pressure on myself by thinking about how I'm going to do it tomorrow or the next day or the next week just think about how I'm going to get through a day and if you can get through today then the next day you're going to have a renewal of energy and it's going to be again it's can be able easier the next day you're gonna have more energy and it's gonna be a little easier so just focus on today this applies both to the gym if you're if you're cranking it out at the gym and you're feeling like givin up and then also with your diet you know sometimes you're going to have to abstain from food and just tell yourself all you have to worry about is this this day doing it right this day and then the rest of it will take care of itself and then trust that if you do today right and just worry about doing today right that is all you need to guarantee that you're going to lose your weight kind of cool huh you don't need to worry about tomorrow just worry about today that's what's nice about diets is that once you know what you should be doing every day then you don't need to worry about the next day all you got to do is worry about the current day same thing with the gym then of course the the last point that I'm gonna end on is I've been talking about it as though this is something you're going to do for like three months or four months or five months kind of the way I did I didn't really just do it for five months in the beginning when I decided to lose my weight I didn't say I'm just losing weight or I'm going on a diet what I said is that I'm making a complete life change I'm changing my relationship to food and in fact I accepted the cost and I remember I was rationalizing with myself and I told myself that I'm going to be going to the gym for the rest of my life if I want to keep this weight off so this was not a I'm just going to do this for five months what I said is I'm going to commit to going to the gym for the rest of my life but for the next five months because I'm going to be losing that weight I'm gonna work hard and I'm gonna be extra diligent because I'm just setting it up and I want to actually drop the weight and then after that I was honest with myself I was going to be going to the gym all the time and I was honest with myself that I would have to change my eating habits and those would be permanent changes so the other thing that you got to do is you got to start thinking about what which changes can you make that you're going to be reasonably satisfied with so that means don't make changes that are so radical that you could not live with them every change has to be indefinitely sustainable that means that if you're going to the gym you have to be able to do that along with everything else that you're doing in your life for the rest of your life that means just because you crank it hard for two hours every day for a week at the gym and you're able to manage that somehow by by not doing any of your other obligations in life and then the next week comes and all of a sudden you got to go back to work and you got to take care of the kids and you got all these other things that you got to be doing and then you don't have time for the gym anymore that's an unsustainable strategy what you want is a sustainable strategy so that means how do you carve out 20 minutes for the gym how do you carve out 30 minutes 40 minutes whatever you can manage how do you make a change in your diet so that you're now from now on through the rest of your life never going to eat some of those things that are causing you problems how are you going to not overeat so you got to think about that ahead of time and plan a little bit that planning just some of the practicalities of losing weight are getting important because a lot of times people would just say oh I'm losing weight and they don't plan it through and then they get caught up in that and then of course I'm going to say to stay motivated properly you need to have proper expectations and proper expectations here I'm going to really tell you you cannot lose more than two pounds a week any other diet that promises you that is full of [ __ ] and even losing one pound a week is is pretty challenging so I was losing about two pounds a week but I was hitting it really really hard I was literally starving myself because I had a large calorie deficit of probably close to 800 calories maybe even a thousand calorie calorie deficit so I was always feeling hungry I did that for five months you want to do that maybe you don't if you really want to lose two pounds a week then you're gonna have to do that you're going to need a calorie deficit you might also need to change radically change the composition of the food that you're eating so much less carbohydrates more protein what may be more healthy fats and then of course may be cutting out sugars things like that right so set the right expectations you can probably aim for one pound a week and be happy with that and give yourself for those initial three weeks don't expect any changes if you get them that's great but don't go in there expecting them because a lot of times I feel like the reason that people lose or motivation is because they set an expectation and then when they get on the scale they don't see it they get so despondent about that that they quit because they feel like it's not working I can tell you this if you change your diet clean it up and you start going to the gym it can't not work the only reason it's not going to work is if you don't go consistently and consistency is key so you don't have to worry about it not working it will work but you have to do consistently to have a little bit of belief you have to give yourself those first three weeks to put the habit into place and to get your body to start getting on board and to start making the physical changes and then you're going to see it you're going to see losing half a pound a week maybe a pound a week if you're really working it hard you might get to two pounds a week and it's really really exciting when you get that but don't expect too much too fast when I was getting to this I said that I would really be working at it for a whole year and to me I was happy because I said that you know what if a year from now I've lost 65 pounds to me that's totally worth it because my dating life is improved my sex life improves my self-confidence improved and that's how I did it and I think that's how you can go - so these are some practical tips I'm going to sign off now just to keep this one short and sweet I'm going to have more videos about keeping longer-term motivation because this is a really deep topic that I'm fascinated by that I can't cover in too much detail in ten minutes alright this is Leah I'm gonna be signing off please go ahead comment on this video tell me what your challenges are and if this helped you and then also share like this that's why I put these out for free so you can spread them around share them with your friends and then go to actualised org for more advanced personal development videos just like this one where we really cover the topic of staying on track with your habits and your motivations really really in-depth not just with fitness and weight loss but also with staying on top of your career your business other personal development things like that all right so go ahead and check that out and you can subscribe to my free newsletter there