Your Mindset Can Sabotage Your Weight Loss Efforts

By:Nina Greene

Achieving your weight loss goals will not only require a change in your diet, increased physical activity, but also a change in the behaviors and beliefs that may have blocked you from reaching your goals in the past. Your mindset and motivation are just as important as food and exercise in achieving your weight loss goals.

What are the first thoughts and feelings that come to your mind when you think of yourself going on a diet or going to the gym? The first thing you need to do is throw out your old dieting mentality and think of your journey as a lifestyle change. Do not think of it as something that starts and then stops. That type of thinking does not serve you.

Let's look at some ways your mindset can sabotage your weight loss efforts.

All or Nothing Thinking
Do you think that being on a diet means you must strictly follow a diet plan perfectly? Do you take dieting to the extremes and follow rigid rules dictating what you will eat, when you will eat, and when and how hard you will exercise? Studies have shown that this type of behavior commonly ends up working against you. You can start to become obsessed with thoughts of what you have deemed forbidden. This leads an overwhelming urge or craving to do exactly the opposite of what you are denying yourself.

Self-Sacrificing Thinking
Do you put the needs of others before your own? Are you too busy attending to everyone else that you neglect your own needs? While your lifestyle may be hectic, you will find that daily exercise and proper nutrition will actually help you get through your day easier. You will feel less stressed and actually have more energy to perform your daily tasks.

Dieting Means Deprivation Thinking
Do you avoid any attempts to lose weight and improve your health because you think a change in your diet means you have to give up all your favorite foods? This could not be further from the truth. You will achieve long term success through eating in moderation and that includes all your favorite foods. A plan that includes foods you enjoy will help you stick with it.

Negative Thinking
Have you engaged in multiple attempts to lose weight in the past that did not give you the results that you were intending? Have you lost and regained weight repeatedly or engaged in yo-yo dieting? Do you feel pessimistic or negative about your ability to ever reach your weight loss goals? This mindset is a definite roadblock to you reaching your goals. Instead of thinking thoughts of failure, give yourself credit for trying to do something to improve your health in the first place. Make an effort to always stay positive in your weight loss journey.

So what are you thinking right now that might be holding you back from reaching your weight loss and fitness goals? Take a moment to examine the beliefs that you hold that may be preventing you from reaching your weight loss goals and make an effort to change these beliefs to your benefit.

Digg del.icio.us Blink Stumble Spurl Reddit Netscape Furl

Article keywords: weight loss, healthy weight loss mindset, weight loss challenges, fitness challenges

Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Nina Greene is owner of BennettHealthArticles.com and writes on a variety of subjects. For more information to help you achieve your weight loss goals and get healthy, visit http://www.bennetthealtharticles.com

Top Weight Loss Articles
1). Every Diet Gets Harder - The Self-fulfilling Prophecy Of Failure By : Helene Desruisseaux The two reasons why every diet gets harder, and what to do to about it.
2). How To Drop Weight and Become Healthier Using These 7 Simple Everyday Life Tips? By : Monty Lee These days more and more people are getting intellectual instead of physical jobs. Sitting in the office chairs all-day long has become a norm for many of us. Stress, busyness and rush make us forget about regular food and stuff our stomachs with cheeseburgers and sodas, which don’t do anything good for our bodies. As a result of such crazy life rhythm, we rarely find time for exercises, gyms or balanced nutrition.
3). Is there Any Hoodia in that Hoodia Weight Loss Product? By : Richard Keir Copyright 2006 Richard Keir Gotten any email spam lately with a 'warning' about buying fake Hoodia products or Hoodia products with a variety of fillers? Of course, they assure you that THEIR product is 'the original product.' It may be the original product, whatever that might mean, but the chances of it containing Hoodia are pretty close to zero.
4). The Difference Between Liquid Hoodia And Hoodia Pills By : Rand Hanes For those interested in taking hoodia, they will be presented with a choice between pill and liquid forms. As with any natural supplements taken, there are certain distinctive differences between liquid and pill forms of consumption. Similarly to taking multivitamin supplements, hoodia in liquid form is more expensive but has been shown to assimilate into the body system faster and have a greater amount of the substance used by the body than when it is taken in pill form.
5). Can Hoodia Help You Lose Weight ? By : Ken Black How can Hoodia help you lose weight, or is there more to it than that?
6). 8 Ways To Create Balance To Achieve Lasting Weight Loss By : Meri Raffetto Need to lose weight? Dreading the thought of another diet program? You don’t have to follow diets to lose weight. There are many people discovering this for themselves and they are the ones who are finding long term weight loss apposed to short term fixes. The key to weight loss is finding the right balance of what you eat, what you think, and what activity you do.
7). The Secrets of Long-Term Weight Reduction and Disease Prevention By : John Savage The Mediterranean Diet is probably the most realistic and safest way not only to lose weight, but to also prevent serious disease.
8). Weight Loss Myths Exposed By : Kim Beardsmore It probably won’t come as a surprise to hear there is a great deal of confusion around nutrition. In fact, many people reading this article will have only a scant idea about the different food types and what our body actually needs to keep healthy. One of the simplest systems I’ve encountered is this. If the food tastes good, then it has to be ‘bad’ for you! And then there’s its counterpart, “If the food tastes ‘bad’ then it must be ‘good’ for you”.
9). Your Anchors & How They Keep You From Your Weight Loss Goals By : Kelly Burris Anchors are the reasons that attach you to any behavior. Your anchors originated from extremely strong repetitive memory associations, which are triggered by your five senses of hearing, vision, smell, taste, and touch. You are constantly being anchored in different ways through out your life. For example, when you hear a certain song and it brings back a memory of a certain person, or a place in time, this is an audio anchor or an anchor triggered by your sense of hearing.
10). Overweight and Dying - Mummy Stay With Me A Little Longer By : kacycarr Scientists have now discovered that skeletal frame humans are more vulnerable to bouts of anxiety than that of oversized happy porkers that at the time of study were found to be less prone to depression in their recent research. Then in the same article a snippet revealed how a 16 year study stated that slim people are more confident and content, surely this is a great factor for happiness denoting a safe healthy life.

New Weight Loss Articles
1). What Everybody Ought To Know About Doctors, Diets And Weight Loss By : Glenn Freiboth The truth of why a record number of doctors are prescribing drugs for weight loss to put a quick fix on very complicatied problem.
2). Fat Consequences In Children By : Mark Kimathi As the world battles with an epidemic that is proving difficult to manage and showing signs of becoming a costly affair, our children are getting caught in the cross fire. Adult onset diabetes, weight loss surgery and weight loss medication for children is not exactly what parent had in mind when planning for their posterity.
3). Exercise Is The Winding of a Spring to Help Your Body/Mind Clock Beat the Eroding Effects of TIME. By : Johan Tonsbeek Regular daily exercise, especially for Baby Boomers, can be compared to the winding up of a spring in a watch or a clock to help it display the proper time.
4). Some Healthy Tips To Lose Weight By : Abbas Abedi Learn about a few important tips to lose weight easily.
5). Weight Loss Tips Without Losing Your Appearance By : Casey McCarthy The top 7 weight losing tip are all here. If your looking for the best weight losing tip in a sure cut way to lose lots of weight you must read on.
6). How Your Big Stomach Is Breaking Your Heart, Literally By : Gregg Hall If you are anything like me you told yourself over and over that you would never let yourself get out of shape like your parent; totally inactive, major overweight, and also having the health problems that come along with it.
7). Why Herbal Weight Loss Is A Highly Effective And Natural Diet By : Clive Jenkins Before ingesting any herbs as part of a herbal weight loss programme it is important to check they are recognized medically as been safe for human consumption. There are some substances which should not be consumed, as they contain highly toxic properties which are potentially very dangerous for our vital organs.
8). Using the Safe and Natural Method of Self Hypnosis for Weight Loss, You Can Be Slim & Trim for Life By : John Leogue The strategy of slim people remains a mystery to anyone who battles their weight. Could it be that slim-and-trim folks simply approach food and eating with a different mindset?
9). Hypnosis For Weight Loss Works By : Joyce Jackson Learn why losing weight with hypnosis is not only effective but offers long term permanent weight loss results.
10). Before Considering Gastric Bypass Surgery Be Sure That It Is Covered By Your Insurance By : Gregg Hall The gastric bypass procedure can be very expensive; it can also have many complications. But the big question for so many is, "Will my insurance cover a Gastric Bypass operation?"