If you are wondering why it is so hard to lose weight, you are not alone.

Weight loss may be difficult, but the rewards that come with a successful transformation are immense, and make all of your hard work and dedication pay off many times over.

Everyone who goes through a successful transformation experiences the struggles that weight loss presents, and so if you find yourself struggling to stay on track or see any results at all, don’t give up just yet.

On the other side of conquering the things that make losing weight difficult for you, is your success, your ideal body, and the life that it will afford you.

But overcoming the things that make losing weight hard is not all about perseverance, it’s also about simplifying the things that don’t need to be complicated, and focusing only on the most effective methods.

With healthy diet and exercise combined, paired with a strong mindset, you may be surprised to find that losing a significant amount of weight is entirely possible, and right around the corner for those who decide to start today.

So why is it so hard to lose weight?

There are several factors that make both starting and sticking with your weight loss plan a difficult endeavor.

Each one on it’s own has the power to hold you back from making progress, but often we experience many of these factors all at once, which when combined can make moving forward very difficult.

Here are all of the things that make losing weight hard, and how to adjust your mindset and method so that they no longer stand in the way of you reaching your ideal weight.

Finding the right weight loss advice

Sometimes the first challenge you face in your diet, is actually finding the right diet and advice that is effective, is healthy, and also suits your personal style.

It’s easy to come across information that doesn’t make sense, is over-hyped, seems too good to be true, suggests taking pills or restricting essential nutrients and energy… or even good information that just doesn’t resonate with you and your situation.

Here at TheShapeWithin it’s all about doing things the healthy way, changing your life and habits forever, and ultimately embarking upon the journey from obese to fit.

A good system should include whole, healthy foods and should be paired with exercise to get the best possible results.

If you want to learn everything you need to know about healthy weight loss, including what to eat, what exercise to focus on, how to stay motivated, and how to start your journey with confidence, check out “The Ultimate Guide to Losing 100+ Pounds”.

If you want to learn exactly how weight healthy weight loss works with support from lots of research, and to gain confidence in the power and simplicity of clean eating for weight loss, read my article, “Escaping Obesity in America with Healthy Foods”.

If you want to start losing weight right away and want a clear, healthy plan you can follow to success, join the 8-week weight loss challenge!

Transforming your eating habits

The most important part of losing weight is eating healthy foods, and so one of the most difficult things you’ll face will be completely changing your eating habits from unhealthy, to healthy.

First of all, before most people come to understand how powerful clean eating is for weight loss… they have likely already tried restrictive diets and discovered how horrible it is to starve, only to realize that you can’t live that way and would rather be fat than hungry all the time.

Even when people discover the right and healthy way to lose weight, transitioning to a healthy diet still isn’t as easy as it seems, even though you don’t need to be hungry.

Your diet represents a lifetime of habits, flavors, preferences, culture, and connections made in your brain. Changing this is no small feat. This is why is it is so hard to lose weight even when you know exactly what to do, and that doing so will lead you to your goals.

When we start a diet and our mind is so perfectly connected to what we want and what we’re willing to do for it in the moment, it seems like changing your diet is a very cut and dry thing that can happen easily overnight.

For most people including me, this is far from the truth. Many of the weight loss success stories you hear about were people just like me who changed one step at a time.

Finding healthy foods that you love

It takes time to find a full diet full of healthy foods that you love. It took a lifetime to discover all of the foods that are a part of your life now, and so you can expect to take a few weeks at least to find (and get used to) new healthy foods.

But the great thing about it, is that if you stick to it you truly can build a healthy diet that you love and that leads you to your weight goals.

I used to think that healthy food could never compare to unhealthy foods as far as taste went, and I never imagined that one day eating a healthy diet wouldn’t be a struggle, but rather a natural source of enjoyment in my life.

When I changed my diet from junk to healthy, I did it one step at a time and focused on making healthy additions rather than restrictions.

As I added more and more healthy foods into my diet, they became a normal part of my habits, the junk food fell out of my life with very little stress. Soon enough my perception of healthy food changed completely, and I lost 80 pounds by replacing junk with natural foods.

I thought it was so funny… the day that I discovered that I was stress eating an apple. Rather than going to get pizza or fast food when I got stressed, my mind attached to an apple. Half way through eating it I realized why I had grabbed it, and just had to laugh at how very different my habits were from years ago.

Giving up junk foods that you like

Letting go of junk food is one of the things that makes losing weight really hard. It’s even more difficult than adding the healthy foods… But again, this doesn’t have to happen overnight.

Instead of cutting foods out of your diet, reduce them at a pace that you can handle, and that you know will keep you on track.

In addition to changing gradually, try not to focus so much on restriction, and focus on making healthy additions and replacements.

Focusing on what you add, replaces junk food on a physical level, and mental as well.

The more healthy food you eat, the less you’ll be hungry for other unhealthy foods, both because your hunger is being satisfied and because you’re not struggling with the idea of restriction all of the time.

In with the good… and the bad naturally falls out of your life.

Staying motivated for weight loss

Lack of motivation is the biggest reason why losing weight is so hard for most people.

Motivation is what drives you to start your journey and stay on track for the long run.

Without it, making healthy decisions on a consistent basis is extremely difficult… but that doesn’t mean that you should expect to feel 100% motivated and excited all of the time to reach your ideal weight.

Not only should you expect to go through phases of low motivation, you can actually plan for it.

Nobody stays so motivated that they never have doubts or lose their energy, and everyone who transforms their body has to persevere in times of low motivation.

Instead of hoping that your energy will never go away, plan for it to deflate in certain times… and think ahead of time about how you will handle yourself so that you don’t give up or spiral back into old habits.

In these difficult times where you don’t feel motivated, it helps tremendously to have a plan to stay on track and motivate yourself again.

When you are struggling against a craving in the moment or struggling to make healthy decisions on a consistent basis because you are losing your motivation, make a plan to stay on track while dig deeper and find your motivation again.

Even if it means taking a step back and loosening your expectations, this is better than walking away and giving up altogether.

When I was losing weight, I went through several periods like this and I agreed with myself that I would not give up, and would embrace imperfection so that I could stay on track.

But most importantly rather than struggling endlessly, I decided that I would actively motivate myself and find a way to get my head back in the game… especially when I knew that deep down I wanted to lose weight more than anything, and one bad day or week couldn’t change that.

How motivated you are on a normal basis is something that you do have the power to change.

Take a little time up front to find all of the things that motivate you, from music, to transformation stories, to connecting with the reason you want to lose weight the most.

Keep these things that drive you forward close to you, meaning that you should remind yourself of them often and use them when times get hard.

Believing in yourself

Motivation aside, sometimes it’s hard to believe in yourself, and your ability to change. Even when you are feeling very driven, sometimes you may doubt your ability to lose weight, you may begin to doubt yourself, your diet plan, or you may just lose faith in weight loss itself.

This can be remedied by envisioning your success, and your end goal.

Truly imagine yourself being thinner, and believe in your ability to transform your body. Remember that you will be rewarded greatly for your hard work.

Think of exactly how you want to look when you reach your ideal body, what it will allow you to do, and how amazing it will feel.

Take time to strengthen this vision of the future you, not just when you need it most during hard time, but in each day so that you internalize the idea and it becomes a naturally powerful part of your thought process.

Taking the time to exercise

I was very specific not to say “finding the time”, because most people have the time to exercise, but find it hard to actually take action and put in the time.

Granted, some people have very busy lives and are very limited on time, but at the same time lots of people think that it takes an hour of exercise to get a good result.

When you find out how little time it really takes, especially if you make your workout intense, then the true difficulty with getting exercise shows itself… which is much more related to motivation, than time limitation.

It only takes about 15 minutes of good exercise to get great weight loss results, which means that almost anyone should be able to find a time slot that fits at some time of the day.

Weight lifting is ones of the best exercise option for weight loss. Lifting weights is amazing for burning fat in addition to building muscle, and when performed at a high enough intensity will provide amazing results with a very short amount of time spent per week training.

Getting regular access to weights can make all the difference, both in how much you enjoy your workout routine, and in the results that come from your efforts.

If you have some free weights at home you can build a weight lifting routine right from the comfort of your own house…

Or you can join a gym, or participate in a program like CrossFit to help you get your weight loss workouts started. CrossFit is a testament to how powerful a 15-minute workout can be.

Just knowing that so much impact can be made in such a short time, should be enough to make exercising a much easier thing to initiate on a normal basis.

Waiting for the results

Even when everything is going just right on your weight loss journey, it can be difficult to wait for the results to start piling up.

Right at the start it may feel like you’re putting in tons of effort with little return, but as the pounds that you have lost keep adding up, it quickly becomes apparent that your hard work and energy spent are well worth the amazing rewards that just keep getting better and better.

Remember that good things take time, but if you are patient you will see great results!

Even if you are losing weight as fast as you can, it will take a few weeks for things to add up, and a few months to really make a significant change in your shape.

For example consider how long it could take to lose 100 pounds. Think of how quickly 2 pounds per week adds up… after a year it adds up to 104 pounds, since there are 52 weeks per year.

Whether you call it faith, or perseverance, or willpower, give your hard work time to start paying off and once you see yourself beginning to transform right in front of your eyes you’ll have more motivation to continue than you could imagine.

Because it means so much

One of the same things that motivates you, can make losing weight difficult… which is the fact that it’s so important, and that so much depends on succeeding.

Sometimes wanting something more than anything can make you realize how much is at stake, make you worry that things won’t work out, and prevent you from taking action at all.

Let the feeling of wanting to lose lots of weight drive you, rather than scare you. Don’t be afraid to fail, and don’t be afraid to succeed either.

Learning to say no

The social aspect of healthy eating is one that I often see affects people more than they realize. It’s not just that unhealthy, tempting foods are around when you go out with friends and family… but there is often a lot of social pressure to indulge in these foods.

-Your boss has a birthday and you feel obligated to have a piece of cake

-You meet your girlfriend’s parents and you feel obligated to have dinner

-Your friend makes cookies and you feel obligated to try one

-Your student brings you candy and you feel obligated to eat it

-It’s your own birthday and you feel obligated to eat your surprise cake

The list goes on, and it’s in these times that you have the choice to stick to your plan, or to break your plan to try and appease someone else, who may or may not even care about your journey.

There is nothing wrong with indulging once in a while… and to lose weight you can be far from perfect. I embrace this concept completely, but personally I never break my plan just because of social pressure.

It can be hard to say no at first, but once you learn to you’ll have a great feeling of having complete control over your own diet.

When someone offers you something that you don’t want to eat, be polite but firm and simply say no.

Don’t let people push you around or tell you that it’s “just a little piece”, or any other excuse that’s irrelevant to what you want, and what you are willing to work for.

It’s okay to be the odd one out, and if it ever results in a funny look, remember that it’s not about them, it’s about you… and anyone who is willing to ask you to break your diet after you have said no once, is trying to please themselves and not you.

I am very stubborn and will turn down junk food in any situation.

When someone shoves a glass of a sugary drink into my hand for a toast, or slides me cake when I didn’t ask for it… if I don’t want it then there is no debate, it will not be consumed by me, because it’s not worth stopping my momentum just to make someone else happy.

Breaking old unhealthy habits

There are so many things that change when you get in shape, aside from the food and exercise itself there are a number of habits that can be hard to break, as they have been deeply ingrained by time.

The convenience of stopping for fast food or just being able to order pizza… the habit of getting up to snack in the middle of the night, and the tendency to turn to food when you are bored or feeling sad.

Developing new healthy habits will mean letting some old ones go… but doing so doesn’t need to be stressful.

Fill your life and your time with good, healthy things and all of the unhealthy food and habits will be easy to replace, and sometimes you’ll find that it happens without even thinking.

Focus on all of the amazing rewards that come along with improving your habits, and remind yourself often that the ultimate prize, the thing you want the most, is right around the corner!

If you want today to be the day that you finally break your old habits, and start new healthy ones that will lead you to your ideal weight, join the 8-week challenge, which will bring healthy food into your life one step at a time, as well as build your exercise routine gradually.