Making permanent changes to your lifestyle, diet and exercise routine can be very challenging and I know it is easier said than done. However, there are ways to beat the reoccuring excuses. There are ways to transfer fear into action. And there are ways to stop saying “I wish” and start saying “I will”. Today I wanna share 5 tips that helped me to lose 15kg!
I’ve dreamed about losing weight for so long, before I actually started. I’m truly surprised by myself, how often you can tell yourself you really (!) want something and next Monday you’re really going to to things differently. And instead, I started eating again, because I’m an emotional eater. Failing time after time did no good for my negative self-esteem and lack of self discipline.
A couple of years later, I can finally say I DID IT. I did lose 15kg, I did obtain and maintain a healthy lifestyle and I did achieve my weight-loss goals. Have you missed my transformation photo’s and the story behind it? Click here and here to read all about it.
Now it’s time to help others achieve their weight-loss goals! I want to use my weight-loss journey and all it’s lessons learned to help you. Not only to help you commit for a couple of weeks to a healthier way of life, but to stick with those healthy changes in the long term. Because that’s often the most difficult part..
Step 1: focus
The first magical step I have made when I started my weight-loss journey is to obtain focus on ONE goal. When you’re feeling as depressed as I did, it’s impossible to maintain focus and energy on two or more goals at once. I knowingly forced myself to make my health a priority, set one goal and to not ask more of myself at that point of time. By making my health a focus point, I gave myself all the freedom and space I needed to focus on the solution (for once!) and not the problem.
Step 2: Step-by-step
No matter what you want to achieve, it can probably be broken down into smaller and goals. And though it’s ok to dream big and ambitious, you need to be kind to yourself by setting realistic and measurable goals in manageable sizes. How? By breaking down your big dreams into smaller dreams. Otherwise you’ll be intimidated by your own dreams, but I want you to be excited for it. For example, I did not tell myself to lose 15kg. No, I told myself to break down my goal in do-able chunks by losing 50% of the weight first, by only focusing on my diet. Second goal: to lose the other 50% of the weight and making sports a priority too. This way it did not become to much for me at once!
Step 3: Timeline
The difference between people who set lofty goals and people who actually achieve them? Time management! By making a timeline for your goals you will map out your journey. A journey with milestones and a start and finish date. As you’ll meet each milestone on your timeline, your steady progress or success will reinforce you to desire more succes. You’ll become more motivated, excited and strong. What I did, was motivating myself to lose the first 7,5 kg before I went to University. I wanted to start a new adventure with a new body.
P.S. Don’t forget to make a timeline that keeps delays and setbacks into account!
Step 4: Self-discipline
My weight-loss journey tells me that self-discipline is the most important thing to achieve any goal. Self-discipline is a learned skill, so we all can get that! What helped me to work on my self-discipline along my weight-loss journey is to: visualize the long-term results, recover and learn from mistakes, deal with my emotions, remove temptations, keeping an eye on my timeline and acknowledge my weaknesses. Oh and always look forward and never look back! Also, making progress photo’s and looking at it gave my self-discipline an extreme boost!
Step 5: Rewards
Rewarding myself after I’ve achieved my goal(s), really helped me to stay motivated and reinforce the behavior along the way to keep on shining. And the type of reward is personal. So the only person who knows which reward will motivates you most, is you! Treat yourself like a princess and celebrate your milestones!
There is more…
Achieving your goals is seldom easy and maybe you’ve made some resolutions in the past that you did not stick to, but you don’t now why? I might have something great for the Dutch Foodie-ness girls! With the new year ahead of us, comes the opportunity for a fresh start. If this is your goal, why would you wait for the new year if you can start today?
I’ve teamed up with my gym to get people excited for the “Why wait?” campaign! Click here if you want to start (just like us!) earlier this year with working on your goals. And beat the Christmas-weight-gain-struggle on forehand 😉 Take this opportunity to take a more constructive approach to achieving goals this time!
Hopefully you have enjoyed reading this blog post and hopefully you have found what you are looking for! Always remember this girls: what you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. Why? Because along the way you will grow into the person who can achieve these goals!
With love,
Carolina.
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Erika Reply
Really like reading your blog. I find your story always inspiring. I would love to know what type of smaller goals you made for yourself? I’m always trying to do everything at once and it can be really hard to stick to the plan when I hit a bump in the road.
Lola Reply
Surinpsirg to think of something like that
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