When you begin a journey towards a healthy lifestyle, your attitude can determine whether you succeed or fail. Exercise and maintaining a healthy diet are essential, but even more important is the role your attitude plays in achieving your goal.
1) Write Down Your Reasons for Wanting to Eat a Healthy Diet
Keeping your goals in mind can help you stay on track. What is your motivation for improving yourself? Do you want to lose weight or reduce the risk of health problems later in life? Do you want to be able to pursue an active lifestyle? Write down your goals and review them and your motivations at the beginning of each week and review them whenever you feel your commitment beginning to wane.
2) Move Your Focus beyond the Scale
Wanting to lose weight is a great goal, but it won’t keep you motivated. Give yourself mini goals such as a commitment to work out at least three times a week, eat more fruits and vegetables, or achieve a new personal record at your next event. Take a 360-view of your health goals, so that if the scale seems stuck, you’ll know you are succeeding in other areas.
4) Surround Yourself with Health
Keep your refrigerator full of healthy food, or have healthy meals delivered to your home. Move berries, cut fruit, and vegetables to the front of your refrigerator in easy-to-grab containers, and display fruit in a pretty bowl on your counter so you can choose a piece for a healthy snack. Keep your running shoes handy, right by the door so they are a constant reminder of your goals.
5) Avoid Perfectionism
No one is perfect, so don’t expect yourself to be. Sometimes we eat more than we know we should, sometimes we skip a workout. A healthy lifestyle is a balanced lifestyle with room for indulgence, so don’t give yourself a hard time. Explore the reasons you lost focus so you can develop a plan for the next time. If you eat a healthy diet overall, you can’t ruin it in one day.
6) Be Patient
Weight loss plateaus happen to everyone, so it will probably happen to you. You may find that some days the pounds don’t seem to come off or you don’t seem to be getting faster, and you may struggle to stay motivated. This is where focusing on your entire healthy lifestyle will help. If you stay on track, you’ll be making positive changes, so be patient and you’ll end up seeing them not only on the scale, but in your attitude and your performance.
When you do hit a plateau, change it up. Try juice cleanses, add some exercise, or change from running to spinning or strength training to confuse your muscles and metabolism.
7) Recommit Yourself Every Week
Begin Monday by renewing your commitment to yourself and your healthy diet. When you do this, it is easier to stick with your diet and exercise habits throughout the week. Do this on a regular basis and before you know it, you’ll have a strategy for success.
At Deliver Lean, we provide everything need to stick with a diet through healthy meal delivery, fresh to your doorstep.
