Whether you are wanting to start losing weight, or you are right in the middle doing so, it’s inevitable that doubtful thoughts will sometimes come into your mind and make getting in shape harder, or even cause you to give up for a while.

To reach your goal weight, you don’t need to avoid these doubtful thoughts altogether, but learning not to let them completely stop your momentum is essential for reaching your weight loss goals.

Simply knowing that we all have these thoughts at one time or another, can help you to gain confidence in your efforts, overcome doubt, and make your healthy diet easier to stick to.

“I failed…”

This is a detrimental thought, because convincing yourself of it is actually what makes you fail. You haven’t failed until you decide that you failed, which is why so many people start a diet over and over… because when something doesn’t go as well as expected, and it feels like they have failed.

In reality, most situations where you feel like you messed up your diet are not even worth worrying over, but end up spiraling into guilt, doubt, and decided failure.

No matter how you frame it in your mind, the important thing is to see that one junk meal or a missed workout is a tiny piece of the big picture.

If you can gracefully move past making a mistake and resume your healthy habits quickly, you have what it takes to succeed with a major diet/ weight loss transformation. Everyone slips up a little… as a matter of fact I encourage imperfection!

Not pressuring yourself to be perfect will allow you to make lots of consistent improvements without the stress of feeling that you are always failing or coming short of your expectations.

Use these difficult times as an opportunity to show yourself that you can stick to your goals even when things don’t go perfectly, and you’ll know that you have what it takes to make it the whole way.

Don’t pressure yourself to be perfect, because you don’t need to be anywhere close to perfection to succeed with weight loss.

Consistency isn’t about never messing up, it’s about never giving up.

“I’ll start again tomorrow, or next week”

This goes right along with the thought mentioned above. Starting over goes hand in hand with telling yourself that you failed.

This constant starting over is what can cause you to lose weight and gain it over and over again, or to simply lose weight much slower than you want.

You’ll be amazed at your results if you resolve to make a little progress each day, without giving up completely and starting over at a later time, even if you give in to your cravings here and there.

“I can’t imagine myself being thin”

This thought is one of the first that may affect your progress. If you have never lost a significant amount of weight or had any success with dieting, you may find it difficult to actually imagine yourself reaching your ideal body or even losing weight at all.

You might wonder this directly, or it may silently take away your confidence subconsciously… if you don’t yet clearly envision your future, healthy self.

It’s important to both visualize yourself losing weight in the present, and to visualize the body that you ultimately want. This is an extremely powerful thing to focus on.

Imagining myself waking up thinner and stronger each day made a huge difference in helping me stay on track, to make healthy decisions, and to keep myself in the mindset to lose weight.

I couldn’t mention visualization in the weight loss world without mentioning Jon Gabriel, a weight loss expert with an amazing weight loss success story. Jon is most famous for his 220+ pound weight loss transformation, which he did without restrictive dieting or extreme exercise.

Jon’s message of ADDING healthy foods into your diet rather than restricting, is a vision and experience that I share, which I am extremely passionate about spreading.

Food is just a part of the method that is now so famously known as, “The Gabriel Method.” Jon gives amazing advice and techniques for having a positive and effective mindset for weight loss, among which is his evening visualization audio exercise, which is an amazing tool to help you visualize your success. I have been listening to it over and over since I downloaded it.

It’s an amazing way to visualize yourself becoming fitter, and burning fat on a daily basis. It’s also great to listen to when you are having doubtful thoughts, or had a stressful day. I find it to be super relaxing, and it helps me gain the confidence that I need to stick to my diet, to push through plateaus, and to actually connect my mind/confidence to the image of my future self… to actually see the healthy food that I am consuming going to work and bringing me closer to my results.

Take the time to really envision yourself both losing weight day by day, and to connect your mind to the fact that the healthy changes you make, will lead you to a healthier body and happier life.

“Is it even worth it?”

On some days you may believe that you can lose weight, but begin to doubt whether it will actually make an impact in your life. You wonder whether the reward will be worth all of the efforts… but this is just your mind tricking you.

When this thought enters your mind, remember how badly you want to lose weight, and why you wanted to start in the first place.

Take the time to reconnect with the fact that getting in shape is extremely important to you, and the fact that the rewards of having a healthy body will be way more than worth your efforts.

“I have so much weight to lose… it’s going to take me longer”

If this is technically true for you, don’t let it bother you that your journey will take longer than for some other people.

Being bigger means that your transformation will be greater, and that you will appreciate your healthy life even more after you reach your goals.

Each time you go down a shirt size… every time you lose another 5 pounds… is a whole new reward.

Along the way, you will discover many new levels of feeling and looking better, so look forward to it!

Last but not least, when you are bigger, you will lose weight faster. When you have 100 pounds to lose, your first 20 pounds will come off 3 times faster than someone who only has 20 pounds to lose in the first place.

If you want to lose 100 pounds, any one of these three articles will be perfect for you:

“How Long Does it Take to Lose 100 Pounds?”

“The Absolute Best Way to Lose 100 Pounds”

“How to Lose 100 Pounds: The Ultimate Guide”

“I’m too big to exercise”

It’s common, and understandable to fixate on the things that we can’t do or that are hard for us. When your knees hurt you, might fixate on the fact that jogging is painful, and when it’s hard for you to get up and down off of the floor you might fixate on how hard push-ups would be.

My advice to everyone wanting to lose weight, especially bigger people, is to take advantage of how amazing lifting weights can be for weight loss.

Resistance training, working your muscles… is an incredible way to burn fat. Lifting weights doesn’t require you to jog or be limited by your own body weight, and doesn’t require you to exhaust yourself with intense cardio. As a matter of fact, lifting weights doesn’t even require you to stand.

We all know that lifting weights builds muscle, but not so many people know how powerful it can be for burning fat as well.

Working your muscles enough to build them up, actually increases your metabolism for an extended period after your workout, in addition to the fat you burn during the workout!

If you are carrying around lots of extra weight and want to learn how to go from obese to fit the healthy and easy way, you might love either of the articles below:

“Weight Loss Tips for Obese People”

“Escaping Obesity in America with Healthy Foods”

“I don’t have time to exercise”

This is usually due to thinking that exercise takes much longer than it actually does. When you think of exercise, do you think of it as a task that will take up an hour of your day?

It doesn’t have to be.

10-20 minutes of exercise a few times per week is all you need to reach your goals. Everyone has 10 minutes, right?

Whether you are lifting weights or doing floor exercises, home workouts are a great way to save time. If you can time your workout for right before your shower, you won’t even need to spend the extra time to shower and change clothes an additional time just because you worked out.

“Healthy food doesn’t taste good”

This was a big one for me, and I eventually found it to be absolutely untrue. It takes time to discover healthy foods that you love, and different ways to prepare and flavor them, but eventually your diet will be filled with foods that you actually look forward to eating, and that also bring you towards your weight loss goals at a pace that excites you.

In addition to all of the amazing healthy recipes you can find online, one of the best things you can do is be creative and experiment with healthy, nutrient-dense foods in your kitchen. Sometimes it doesn’t turn out the best, but often you will discover a dish that is almost too good to be true/healthy.

“I’m just not disciplined enough”

I have two thoughts on this one…

First, a part of the weight loss experience is becoming more disciplined, and being able to make decisions that will lead you towards your goals.

Being disciplined isn’t something set in stone at birth, it’s a skill that can be developed.

But second and maybe even more importantly… when you get into a positive weight loss mindset and think of a healthy diet not a task or a burden… but an opportunity to live a better life… changing yourself becomes much easier.

Discipline is a very valuable trait, but if you can keep yourself motivated more often you won’t always have to rely on being super disciplined, and you’ll be excited to make healthy decisions.

Then as time passes you’ll get used to your healthy routine, and staying on track with weight loss will become easier overall.

Losing weight can become easy and enjoyable, and living healthy eventually becomes a natural part of your lifestyle.

“I can’t go without my favorite food…”

You really could go without your favorite foods if you wanted, and eventually that may just be the case… that you actually want to and are happy to be rid of your former favorite junk food. I once said that I would never give up soda completely, but here I am today, and I won’t touch the stuff.

Another thought on this, is that you can lose lots of weight by being way less than perfect, which means that you can indulge every so often, as long as the big picture of your diet stays healthy and you consistently make improvements.

If you are just starting out and you normally drink a six pack of soda per day, why not cut back to one until you are ready to kick it for good? That’s about 1,000 junk calories less in your diet every day, without being perfect.

Also, you can cook or prepare a healthy version of your favorite junk foods. Think of the food that you feel would hold you back the most in your weight loss efforts, and then think of how you can replace each ingredient with a healthy version.

Don’t think that you will have to compromise on taste either, healthy foods can taste amazing! It just takes a little patience to find the things that you love.

“My diet is really bad, I can’t just start eating healthy overnight”

So many people find it too hard to stick to their diet because they make too big of a change in a single day. You don’t have to change overnight, and if you read a lot of weight loss success stories you’ll find that many of them made gradual changes, even if their resolution to change began at a definable time, just like me.

Making changes in steps allows you to get used to the changes, as well as gives you time to discover super healthy foods that you truly love, that can replace the unhealthy foods in your diet.

The worse that your eating habits currently are, the more opportunity there is for change, and therefore the more empty calories you can cut out fairly easily.

Again, it’s inevitable that doubtful thoughts will sometimes affect your confidence and efforts, but if you can push them aside and dismiss them as untrue, and even turn them into something positive, you will find that keeping your focus and energy consistently high can become a natural thing.