Sometimes sticking to your diet can be really hard. Even when you’re doing everything right and seeing results from your efforts, it can still be tough to make changes and stick with them long enough to reach your goal.
Transitioning to a healthy diet can be hard, but sticking to it for long enough to reach your goals will be the true test that will determine your success.
Learning how to stick to a healthy diet is an exciting topic because it means that you already know what to do to succeed, and that all you need to do is find the mindset and motivation to stick to your diet until you have reached the weight you’ve been dreaming of.
Whether you’re about to begin your healthy journey and you want to make sure that this is the time you finally reach your goals, or even if you are already on your way to your goals and want to assure that you stay the course… it will pay off greatly later if you take the time now to set yourself up for success.
Knowing what you’re going to eat and what workout you’re going to do to lose weight, is just as important as knowing how to keep your focus and confidence, how to stay motivated, and how to stick to your diet for the long run.
Find your motivation
Motivation is a huge part of sticking to a diet… and although it’s not the only factor that determines long term success, it helps more than anything to have a motivated feeling/mindset as often as possible.
Motivation comes in many forms, and each of them can be used to your advantage by taking action. By this I mean that motivation isn’t just something set in stone that you either have or don’t, it’s a skill and state of mind that can be developed and triggered.
Any motivational method/tool can be used in the moment when you’re finding it hard to stick to your diet, but the most powerful way to use these methods is to familiarize yourself with them before times get hard, so that you become more motivated on a deeper level and so you also have a plan that you can follow when things get tough.
For example, I know that music motivates me to work out and reduces my stress levels. In a stressful moment, I won’t feel like listening to music, but because I knew that fact about myself of time, I will be able to take action in a positive way, and progress towards my goals rather than continuing to struggle. 10 seconds after music starts playing, all of a sudden, my thoughts are clear again and I feel my confidence returning. This is just one of the many motivational tools that I keep with me at all times and use to my advantage.
Taking the time to connect with all of the things that motivate you personally, won’t just inspire you in the moment… but with continuing awareness of these things that motivate you, you’ll find that you will become more driven and consistent on a normal basis.
Listening to music, reading motivational quotes, and getting inspired by other weight loss transformation stories and photos… all of these things can give you instant motivation in the moment.
But the most powerful and long-lasting motivation, comes from within. What will drive you to succeed more than anything else, is your personal reason for wanting to lose weight. In the fitness world, this is commonly referred to as, “Finding your why.”
Connecting with your most important reason that makes you want to lose weight gives meaning to your journey, every healthy decision that you make, and ultimately gives you a very powerful and personal reason to constantly push toward your goals and feel excited about doing so.
When you take the time to unveil that one desire that drives you to change more than anything else, and you remind yourself often of how important achieving that specific thing is to you, you’ll have found your true source of motivation, and you’ll be much more certain that you are going to reach your goals.
Motivation is important… and there are lots of ways to motivate yourself both in the moment and on a deeper, longer lasting level as well, but when it comes down to it you can’t expect to feel motivated 100% of the time, and when motivation fails you’ll need to know what to do to stick with your diet until you feel better again.
Plan your success
As with any big task in life, there is lots of planning and preparation that you can do for weight loss to make things go smoother and assure that you succeed.
By saying, “plan for success” I don’t mean to simply tell yourself that you plan to reach your goal, I mean to take action in actually planning your success.
Write a healthy shopping list– Your healthy shopping list is the perfect place to start your plan, and to make sure that you start working towards what you want. Writing a new list or modifying your old one before you go to the store will give you time to think about healthy foods that you actually want, to decide which junk foods you will not buy, and prevent you from getting overwhelmed at the store.
Meal prepping– Lots of people swear by meal prepping and the convenience/structure that it gives them in their healthy diet. You cook lots of healthy food all at one time, and then prepare them into individual meals that will be ready for days or even weeks to come.
Meal planning– Even if you don’t prepare your meals in advance, it can help to plan what you are going to eat the next day or even the next week. Doing this gives you a clear path to follow for success.
Cooking in bulk– Again, even if you don’t go all out and prep your meal, if you at least cook your healthy food in bulk it will set you up for success. When you know you’re going to want more soon, you might as well save yourself time later by cooking as much as you reasonably can in one batch. Not only will this save time, but this makes food more convenient, and prevents you from getting hungry and having nothing around.
If you want to start losing weight right now and make sure that you are doing all the important things to set yourself up for success, the weight loss checklist will help you start taking action with confidence right away.
Most important of all in your plan for success, should be knowing ahead of time what action you will take when things get hard and you lose your motivation for a brief period. Though a couple of days or a week is very small when considering long term results, it’s the decisions that you make during these times that determines whether you’ll persevere or give up.
Find healthy foods that you love
There are tons of healthy foods and a limitless amount of combinations that you can put together with all of the different options and flavors available.
Don’t force yourself to eat the same old things that have either become boring to you or that you never liked to begin with.
In addition to finding some go-to healthy foods that you like to eat over and over, try new foods, flavors, and ways of cooking to keep your diet full of variety and choices.
I suggest keeping a wide variety of healthy foods available and convenient at home, so that you have something healthy to reach for in every type of situation or for each different type of craving. Be prepared to replace your unhealthy cravings with something similar but healthy, so that you can easily make the right choice, and your cravings actually begin to shift to foods that help you lose weight, rather than gain it.
Don’t think of it as temporary
One of the things that makes staying on track with your diet difficult, is thinking of a healthy diet as a temporary change that has to be endured.
When you lose weight the healthy way by eating healthy and exercising rather than restricting, you give yourself the gifts of being able to achieve fast results without hunger and being able to easily sustain your healthy habits not just until you reach your goal, but as a part of a lifestyle that keeps you healthy forever.
Once you begin to think of the changes that you make as a permanent lifestyle change, rather than a temporary burden, then sticking with your diet and exercise routine will become less of a task, and more of a natural and easy habit.
Stop starting over
Starting over with your diet is one of the main reasons that people fail to see the weight loss results that they want.
So often people do all the right things and are actually seeing results… but for one or more reasons decide to start over at a later time.
This isn’t quite the same as giving up altogether… starting over is the tendency to constantly push the reset button on your diet, week after week.
There’s nothing wrong with renewing your efforts, but deciding that you’ll start over poses one serious problem, which is that it assumes that you’ll let everything go until you start again. This is a killer of consistency, even for those who are on top of their game as far as method goes.
When this happens… when you can’t seem to stop starting over, this is usually due to perfectionism, unrealistic or unclear expectations, or simply not realizing your progress.
The cure however is a lot more exciting than all of those unappealing things… the cure is simply to realize that you are doing it right, and that all you need to do is repeat what you are doing (consistently but not perfectly) and you’ll be successful.
Don’t try to be perfect
Nothing ruins a GOOD diet like perfectionism.
Think of that classic image of an artist who constantly crumples his work and tosses it in the trash, only to start over and over because of some tiny error. Someone else walks into the room and unravels one of the wrinkled papers and thinks of how beautiful the picture would have been if it hadn’t been thrown away.
Don’t let this represent the way that you go about dieting and be the story that holds you back from reaching the weight that you want to be at.
So often people will give up on their journey, feeling that they have messed up by having a bad day or unhealthy meal, or feeling that their results are not what they should be.
The reality is that you can make huge changes by being way less than perfect, and if you just give it time you’ll likely find that you’ve been starting your diet strong and actually seeing results, but that you hadn’t been giving it enough time or the results to add up.
With my personality, I am naturally inclined to start over when things aren’t perfect. It’s something that affects almost everything I do, but with my health especially I have had to learn to realize that doing my best is all I can do, and that I would never get anywhere for long if I couldn’t let the small things go and appreciate the pace of imperfection.
Soon enough I realized that being perfect wasn’t all that powerful anyways. I realized that I’d rather accept most of the rewards with a fraction of the stress.
When you meant to have a fully healthy day…. and gave in to a craving… or you have a full bad day out of a healthy week, don’t focus on that tiny unhealthy piece of your life.
As a matter of fact, if your current habits are significantly improved from your previous habits when considering the whole picture, simply consider giving in to your cravings once in a while as a reward, or just a part of living in moderation.
Celebrate the small things
When you see even the smallest result, always let it encourage you. Seeing change means that you’re moving forward, and that continuing to do so will lead you to your dreams.
Appreciating these small things as the big deal that they are, will take you from disappointment to excitement, and will help you move forward with confidence rather than wanting to start over all of the time.
When you step onto the scale, don’t worry about how much it moved so much as the fact that it did move.
When you usually eat unhealthily all day long, but you begin to have one healthy meal per day, focus on the improvement and not the imperfection.
When I wake up each morning, I still ask myself the same question that I have been asking myself since I started losing weight, which is… “Am I stronger, thinner, and healthier than the day before?” If the answer is yes, then everything else including my weight is mostly irrelevant.
Be proud of every little success and improvement that you make, because these “little” things are exactly what add up over time to yield huge, life-changing results.
Give it time
Great things take time. When you first start your healthy diet it may feel like you aren’t seeing the results that you want, but if you stick with it for long enough to see what an impact consistency makes, you’ll be very happy that you did.
One conversation that I love to have with people, is when they feel like they aren’t losing enough each week, but then come to realize how much their results would add up to in a few months or a year.
Here’s how that conversation goes, and you’ll see why I love to be the bearer of good new when this topic comes up.
Them: “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I’m only losing 3 pounds per week.”
Me: “How much do you want to lose altogether?”
Them: “50 pounds”
Me: “When were you hoping to reach your goal by?”
Them: “I don’t know… 6 months?”
Me: “Well… 3 pounds per week is amazing. You might slow down when you get closer to your goal, but if you kept up at 3 pounds per week on average, you’d be 50 pounds lighter in over 4 months.”
Them: Light bulb comes on, eyes sparkle, jaw drops… “Wow!”
So many people don’t realize that they are actually doing really well with their diet, and never give it long enough to see significant results.
It’s hard to connect your mind to the fact that you’re doing well, when you can’t see a noticeable difference after a few pounds. But as you lose a few pounds over and over, combined your results add up to losing 10, 20, 50 or even 100 or more pounds!
Just stick with it and soon enough you’ll see that those few pounds make a huge difference, and all of the noticeable change that you’d been hoping for will be right there for you and everyone to see.
If you want to start a plan that is easy to follow and stick to, try the 8-week diet! It will help you change your diet and lose weight one step at a time so that you can get used to the healthy changes, and be confident that you’ll stay on track this time. Sign up below for your free PDF diet and exercise plan, or read more about it here!
