Keeping It Off -- A Mindset

Keeping it off and dieting is a mindset.  Like everything else in your arsenal of dieting tips, tricks, and tools your mind is the key to achieving what you desire in weight loss and lifestyle change.   

Get It Out Of Your Head

In the past after I lost pounds on several popular diet plans my mindset was that I could go back to my old ways.  The old me would start eating everything in sight and the exercise would be put on the backburner.  Lose the thought that things will be this way and you will move forward.

Now, after my last attempt at taking off the weight and keeping it off my mind tells me that this is my life.  Everything I did wrong is a thing of the past and new habits have emerged and will remain. 

Look At Your Food

Dieting means you never get to eat good food again, right?  You give up everything you love either foodwise or how you go about your day, right?  WRONG!  Lifestyle changes in diet and exercise are not a life sentence.  For me, I still eat all the same meals with my family only now I watch portions and choose healthier options for my recipes.  Ground turkey for tacos,  whole wheat pastas for our Italian nights, turkey bacon for breakfast or veggie sausages.   Life and the grocery store have so many wonderful options now.  Food is a delight when I try new fruits or healthy recipes.  My taste palate has learned to love new textures and colors on my plate at every meal.  Feeding my body with better things (and I'm still learning) are exciting not boring.

Exercise is fun because I make it fun!  I ask family and friends to join me and I do things I love like bike riding and walking. 

The Pollyanna Principle

Research indicates that, at the unconscious level, our minds have a tendency to focus on the optimistic while, at the conscious level, we have a tendency to focus on the negative. This unconscious bias towards the positive is often described as the Pollyanna principle.

In dieting and keeping it off we need to focus on the positive and truly believe it.  Recite to yourself how important you are and how great you are feeling and looking.  Believe it, walk it, make it real! Some of the ways I keep the positive is by reading positive quotes from others who are in the same place as myself.  I have friends who motivate and believe in me and I only surround myself with those positive people.  I gravitate towards powerful, positive pictures, stories and places.

Exercise The Mind

Taking time out to just be is so important to staying on track.  Meditating, listening to favorite tunes, writing down your thoughts, taking walks in nature and listening to the birds and feeling the sun on your face, listening to your own breath without the background noise of life always heading towards you.  Take time out and you'll feel refreshed and ready for whatever gets thrown at you.  You'll realize how important you are and why you're doing what you are doing for your body and soul.

Thinking positive and telling the negative to go away is so important.

Everybody gets stressed, bored, depressed, discouraged.  Our hurried world hands us these things everyday.  It wasn't always easy for me.  Changing my mind took time and practice.  These everyday idiosyncrasies still creep up on us when we least expect it and when we wish they wouldn't at the worst times.  They have taught me perseverance, goal setting, and hard work all over again.

Change your mind, change your life!