Your mindset affects every aspect of your well being, including your weight loss abilities. Maintaining a Wellness Mindset is vital to achieving wellness and maximizing the results of your weight loss. The thoughts you think have the ability to catapult you to success and amazing levels of wellness. However, your thoughts can also destroy your mindset, preventing you from ever reaching success in life and crippling your efforts to lose weight and achieve wellness. Your mental wellness is governed by your thought patterns, your self talk, your mental outlook, as well as your interpersonal relationships.
Let’s look at three key areas that help you create a powerful, wellness mindset for weight loss. Whether it is weight loss or achieving a higher level of wellness that you desire, this mindset will create a drive that propels you to amazing success. You may not have associated these habits with weight loss before; however, these three keys can be used in your daily life in such a way that your mind will begin to create a shift in your body’s metabolic rate. As you implement these, your mind will begin to impact your body’s hormone production to stimulate your metabolism and fuel the fires of fat burning. This will definitely maximize the results you attain for losing weight and achieving a lifestyle of wellness.
“The winners in sport, and in life, are those that think constantly in terms of, I can, I will, and I am. Losers, on the other hand, concentrate all their waking thoughts on what they should have done, or would have done, or what they can’t do, and why they can’t do it.”
– Nadia Comaneci, World champion gymnast, Olympic perfect 10 score.
3 Keys to Weight Loss & Achieving the Life of Your Dreams
Set Your Goals
The first thing to do on this plan is to set some great goals that will motivate you to success. I am a big fan of SMART goals for every area of life. A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. For example, if you want to lose weight, a great goal in general would be to achieve your ideal weight. However if you have a lot of weight to lose, you’ll want to chunk it down first into smaller goals. For example during the initial 40 days of your weight loss plan, it would not be Achievable to lose 75 lbs. Challenging, yes! Achievable, no. However, setting a goal of 15 or 20 pounds is achievable and challenging as well.
Remember to be specific. Don’t just say I want to lose weight. Say I want to lose 15 pounds within the initial 40 days of my weight loss plan. This goal is Specific (weight loss), Measurable (15 lbs), Achievable (challenging yet doable), Relevant (directly related to your weight loss plan), and Time-bound (40 days). This is an example of a perfect SMART goal. Take time to write down at least 3 SMART goals for yourself regarding your weight loss, physical body or other areas that you wish to change. Review and rehearse these goals daily. Read your written goals aloud twice every day. Including this in your morning routine will set your mindset for the day ahead. Rehearsing your goals a second time last thing before going to bed will set your mind on your desired results while you sleep. Your mind will automatically go to work while you sleep, helping you create this new reality. For maximum results, share your goals with someone who will help keep you accountable to your success!
Positively Affirm Your New Life
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…
Romans 12:2a
An affirmation is simply a declaration of what it is you desire in your life. We affirm our desires all day long, both positive and negative, through our self-talk and our statements to other people in conversation. For example, you may think “I will never lose weight. Everybody in my family is overweight.” This an affirmation. However, this type of self-talk creates a limiting belief in your mind. It prevents you from seeking out new information and new ways of living. The reason that everyone in your family is fat is because they all eat the same unhealthy, metabolism destroying foods and they probably all have the same excuses for why they cannot exercise. You can break this cycle. Realize that when you do something different than the rest of your family, you will get different results. When you stop eating metabolism destroying foods and start eating healthy metabolic boosting foods and start finding all the reasons why you want to exercise, you will find yourself naturally losing weight and feeling great!
Take time to think about your life and the limiting beliefs that you have affirmed to yourself over the years. Doing so is quite revealing. You’ll begin to see all the areas where you’ve held yourself back in your life. However, it is never too late to change! You can begin reversing those thoughts and removing those limitations from your life.
Identify 4 or 5 areas or thoughts that you want to change and write them down. Realize that when you change your thinking, you change your behavior and you will change your outcome. Take those 4 or 5 limiting thought and rewrite them as a positive affirmation of what do truly desire from your life. Here are some examples:
Limiting Thought: I will never lose weight. Everybody in my family is overweight.
Empowering Thought: I choose today to change the foods that I eat and the exercise that I do so that I can lose weight! I weigh my ideal weight of ________ lbs!
Limiting Thought: I hate my body.
Empowering Thought: I love the way I look!
Limiting Thought: I am too lazy to exercise.
Empowering Thought: I wake up early and exercise every day!
Limiting Thought: I am just not a healthy person.
Empowering Thought: I am the healthiest person I know!
You will notice that each of the rewritten, positive affirmations is stated in the present tense, as if you have already attained this goal. Phrasing your affirmations this way, sets your mind to work to help you achieve it and opens your eyes to see opportunities that you were blinded to in the past. For example, you may have skipped right past a website like this in the past, thinking “That’s just a bunch of idealistic notions. Nobody can really change their health condition or lose weight like that.” However, now, your mind is open to new ideas, accepting that it is possible for you as well.
You will also notice that each affirmation is written as an exclamation. That is because they are meant to be exclaimed with energy and passion. I am sure that you have noticed how differently your body feels when you begin to talk about something that you are very passionate about. Your voice gets a little louder and you become a little more animated. You feel excited about sharing your passion. The thoughts you think direct the words that you speak and both of these have a direct impact on how your body functions. Speaking with excitement and energy versus a melodramatic tone of voice will literally begin to change hormone production in your body. Your body will begin releasing endorphins (feel good hormones) and growth hormone (which stimulates fat burning). Your body is preparing itself for action!
Now, write down your 5+ positive affirmations as energetic, passionate exclamations of the life that you truly desire. Add these to your list of goals that you are rehearsing every morning before you start your day and last thing at night before going to bed. If you are married or have a significant other, writing affirmations together will really maximize your results. My wife and I recite affirmations together about the strength and vitality of our marriage and family. This adds passion and energy to your marriage just as your personal affirmations ignite passion and energy within yourself. If you and your spouse are accomplishing a weight loss plan together, you may want to write some goals and affirmations together about how you want this lifestyle change to affect your relationship and your family.
Visualize Your Desired Results
Now that you have set your goals and written down your empowering new thoughts and affirmations, take a a few minutes in the morning and evening everyday to visualize the life you desire. Close your eyes and visualize accomplishing your goals. In your mind’s eye, see yourself as you have just exclaimed in your affirmations. Think about how you will feel when you achieve your ideal weight. Visualize how your new body will look. Think about all the amazing compliments you will receive from friends as well as perfect strangers. Think about all the things you will be able to do that you couldn’t do before. Think about taking a vacation to the beach and wearing the bikini or bathing suit that you really want. Think about how great you feel being able to keep up with your kids and grandkids. Let your mind linger on these things for five or ten minutes.
“What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
– Napoleon Hill
Visualizing your success has been shown to directly impact your success. Maxwell Maltz, in Pscho-Cybernetics talked about the effects of visualization on athletic performance. He told of a basketball team who practiced everyday. Some members of the team practiced physically just as they had everyday, while others of the team did not practice physically but visualized their success with lay up shots, while others practiced both physically and rehearsed mentally. As it turns out, the team members who visualized their success achieved more improvement than those who did not. Even the players who did not practice physically but only visualized showed more improvement than those who physically practiced only!
The body can achieve whatever the mind believes. Implementing goal setting, positive affirmations and visualization will create a new mindset for your body to achieve. These 3 keys work together synergistically to produce out-of-this-world results! Start today!
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Additionally, I am a husband and father of a Deaf son. I am passionate about the Word of God, building strong families, Chiropractic Health Care, Optimal Nutrition and Exercise, Deaf Culture and American Sign Language.
