Connect
To Top

The Best Mental Strategies to Help Lose Weight

lose weight

Losing weight and getting into better shape is a big goal for a lot of people.

And for good reason.

Being at a healthy body weight contributes in a big way to better overall health and wellness.

And being even just a little bit overweight can put you at an increased risk for many different diseases and conditions.

Simply put, if you want to live your best, healthiest life, it’s in your best interest to maintain a healthy body weight.

With that being said, losing weight isn’t always that simple. To be honest, it can be a really big challenge to lose weight once you’ve gained it.

So in this post, you’re going to learn six mental strategies that you can use to help you lose weight and achieve your fitness goals. Let’s dig in and get started.

1. Replace Bad Habits With Good Ones

For most of us, the vast majority of our daily activities actually fall under the ‘habitual behavior’ category. Experts working at weight loss can explain how most clients come in because of a habit they’ve developed over time. For example, eating unhealthy snacks while watching TV or stress eating after a long day at work.

In other words, we do them without really thinking about it.

But here’s the thing.

Some of our habits are good, and some are not so good.

And when it comes to losing weight, one of the best things you can do is remove a few of your worst habits and replace them with habits that will contribute to your weight-loss goals.

For example, remove the habit where you eat a doughnut for breakfast, and replace it with the habit where you eat two eggs and an avocado instead.

This is an example of a habit replacement that’ll contribute in a big way to helping you lose weight.

2. Replace ‘Bad’ Foods With ‘Good’ Foods

Most of us fall into regular dietary habits where we tend to eat the same things on a pretty regular basis.

Take a good look at the types of foods you tend to eat, and replace a few of the worst ones with a few healthy alternatives.

This can do worlds of good for your weight loss plan.

3. Small Changes Add Up To Big Results Over Time

One of the biggest mistakes people make with trying to lose weight is going all-in on extreme fad diets.

Here’s the thing about extreme diets.

They create so much pressure that you’ll usually end up breaking them and then going back to your old habits as a result.

This might even leave you worse off than you were to begin with.

For best results, make small consistent changes that you can keep up over time. At first, they may not seem like they’ll add up too much.

But over time, these small consistent changes actually make the biggest difference.

4. Think About Effort In Terms Of Manageable Daily Doses

Instead of completely overhauling every single aspect of your life in order to try to lose weight, think about your time in smaller, more manageable doses.

For example, instituting huge four-hour workout sessions will probably quickly leave you burnt out and giving up.

But if you Institute two small 15 minute workouts every single day, that adds up to a total of 30 minutes.

That’s much more doable, and you’re much more likely to stick with those shorter workouts in the long term.

5. Keep Yourself Motivated On A Daily Basis

It’s crucial to keep yourself motivated.

Remember, these are mental strategies.

You’ve got to keep your head in the game.

Try printing out some pictures of what you would like your body to look like, and hanging them up over your desk at work.

Or, start every day with a journaling habit and write down some motivational messages for yourself.

Keeping yourself motivated is really important when it comes to the mental aspect of losing weight.

6. Write Down Your Goals

There are almost limitless possibilities for weight loss strategies.

If incorporated correctly, many of them will work.

It’s in your best interest to find a strategy that’ll work well for you.

order to make the most of it, consider writing down your weight loss goals (a plan of action) every single day.

Not only will this keep you motivated, but it’ll help you to create a meaningful, easy-to-follow roadmap for success as well, as long as you stick with it.

Conclusion

There you have it.

6 of the best mental strategies to help you lose weight.

At the end of the day, losing weight may inherently be a math problem, but you can’t escape the fact that it’s also a mental hurdle.

But if you utilize these goals, you should be able to give yourself the leverage you need to overcome the challenges and achieve the results you want.

Just remember to stick with it and not to give up.

You’ve got this.

More in NEWS

The Rx Review is an independent fitness website, reporting on the Sport of Fitness, functional fitness news, The CrossFit Games, health and diet related information, and also provides reviews on sports performance products.