You want to lose weight.

You want to eat better, feel fitter and healthier, build good habits and stick to them.

You want to feel more confident, wear clothes you love, and live a longer happier life.

But it’s so bloody hard sometimes isn’t it?

Life gets in the way. Motivation drops. Chocolate and cake (and chocolate cake) taste way better than fruit and vegetables.

Change is hard.

It feels like you’re at war with the voices in your head. One says “you want to lose weight – eat the healthy dinner you planned!”, while the other voice says “it’s been a long hard day, you’re tired, let’s get a takeaway and crack open the wine. Mmmm remember that chocolate in the cupboard too?! That will taste sooo good right now…”.

Why your brain doesn’t want to ‘try to lose weight’

To our primitive brain (the oldest part of the brain that hasn’t evolved much since we roamed the plains of Africa), staying as we are is safe. It’s what we know.

The brain loves to make predictions, and it will do this based on past events.

If your weight loss attempts so far have resulted in hunger, restriction, missing out on foods you love, and regaining the weight back, it won’t want to risk going down that road again.

Especially if you start the process with doubt, and keep remembering those unhappy experiences. More on this later, but…

To dramatically increase your likelihood of success, feed your mind with positive determined thoughts, and a vision of you feeling amazing having made it happen.

When you say you’re ‘trying to lose weight’ because it feels safer than fully committing, that’s a sign to your primitive brain that you don’t believe you can do it.

Your brain will always go for whatever helps you feel better right now – immediate comfort, pleasure, and avoidance of pain.

That usually translates into saying YES to the tasty high-calorie foods, and NO to going out in the rain to get your steps in.

Of course, instant gratification makes you feel good in the moment, but then it backfires. You feel guilty, don’t see the progress you’re after, and beat yourself up.

So whether you’re making healthy choices and keeping on track, or you’re finding change hard and keep falling off track, you experience discomfort either way.

To help you lose weight and keep it off, we need to make those healthy choices easier to go for, and the self-sabotage choices more difficult.

You don’t need more willpower to lose weight

We think willpower and motivation are keys to success, but they’re not.

They’re both soooo flaky. And when you’re tired or you’ve had a bad day, they’re the first things to go.

Willpower gets drained easily. Good habits and a helpful environment make healthy choices SO much easier to stick to.

Healthy habit ideas for easier weight loss:

• planning meals ahead of time
• always keeping healthy staples in the house – fruit, frozen veg, frozen fruit, protein powder, oats, eggs are a few ideas
• laying out exercise clothes for the morning or when you get home from work
• keeping gym kit and a pair of trainers in your car
• hiding tempting foods in cupboards, on high shelves, with a healthier option in front of them
• having a list of easy healthy back-up meals (omelet, poached eggs on toast, stir fry, fajitas) and keeping the ingredients in stock
• cleaning your teeth half an hour after dinner so you don’t get late evening munchies
• only buying portioned out packets of foods you can easily overeat
• only drinking at weekends
• aiming for 10,000 steps each day (or 70k over the week, so you can do more at weekends if the week is busy)
• turning your phone off after 9pm

Adding in a handful of healthy habits can literally change your life.

This is a food day I really enjoyed, with favourite meals and staple ingredients we make sure are always in the house. Protein pancakes, poached eggs on a wholemeal muffin, easy low-calorie snacks, and chicken fajitas with extra veg. Staple ingredients from these meals – banana, eggs, protein powder, yogurt, frozen berries, frozen muffins, bits to make a salad, options hot chocolate powder, some kind of easy-to-snack-on fruit, chicken, frozen wraps, frozen veg, squeezy salsa. Bosh.

Creating habits and planning ahead of time vastly reduces the decisions you need to make each day.

And the more automatic your life is (because you made a healthy decision ahead of time so now just need to follow it), the greater your chances of success.

The weight loss success mindset

If you’ve ever lifted weights, you’ll know that it kind of hurts. It’s not that pleasurable in the moment, and the only noticeable effects are two days of pain after. No immediate toning, weight loss, or strength benefits. Just difficulty getting up and down from the toilet.

But the more you embrace the discomfort of it, and associate it with the positive outcome it will create (a stronger body, better posture, less aches, toned muscles, leaner figure, looking great in your clothes, etc) you can start looking forward to it.

It can become pleasure even though it’s hard.

That’s what life is like.

When you’re working to become the next version of yourself and seeing what you’re capable of, it’s usually not that pleasant. It’s hard… uncomfortable…. scary… and there’s often no immediate reward.

But the benefits of doing this consistently are incredible.

You are already enough

Change isn’t about becoming more worthy.

You are completely 100% worthy and acceptable, just as you are right now.

But us humans thrive on growth.

Change is about showing yourself what you can do.

Becoming fitter, healthier, stronger, more empowered, because you want and DESERVE to live a life you truly love.

It’s about embracing discomfort and growth. Valuing and loving yourself while striving to be more.

Because life is more fun that way.

Remember – your brain tries to decide what’s possible for you based on your past experiences.

You need to change that to what’s possible based on the future – what you can visualise for yourself.

Imagine the version of you that you want to become.

How will this new you be living, thinking and feeling?

A huge key to success is to start doing those things now.

Be the person who IS living the life she wants, not the person who WILL BE.

You don’t have to wait. You are already capable. You can literally start right now.

Are you willing to stop struggling with your weight?

A (sometimes harsh) but empowering realisation:

Every result you have… is the result of thoughts, feelings and actions that came from you.

Circumstances happen, but you always have control over how you react and what you do.

The clients I have who achieve life-changing results are the ones who take full responsibility for their actions, whether they’re ‘good’ or ‘bad’, helpful or unhelpful.

If they do something great, they’re proud. If they slip up, they don’t blame anyone (including themselves) – they just look at what they can learn from it, make their next choice a great one, and carry on.

To succeed – don’t see your life as at the effect of the world around you. The only person whose thoughts and actions you have control over are yours.

No matter what happens, you are in control of you. Take responsibility for all you do, and you will transform your life.

The best diet for your brain

We understand we have to consciously feed our body healthy foods, and train it to be fit, strong and do what we want.

But we don’t realise that we also need to feed our mind healthy thoughts, and train it to be fit, strong, and do what we want.

You have to teach and train your brain to help you become the best version of you.

It won’t do that by default. It will get scared and hold you back. It will tell you that it’s hard and try to convince you to give up, because it wants to keep you safe.

But.

If you visualise yourself being successful, and you feed your brain positive thoughts (rather than listen to the negative ones), you’ll start to get excited for what you can create.

Build healthy habits, adopt a positive never-give-up attitude, and be super duper kind to yourself… and you can do anything.

Remember you are worthy right now – you don’t have to change.

But if you’re uncomfortable where you are, you’re going to be uncomfortable whether you make changes or you don’t.

And if you’re going to be uncomfortable either way, you might as well see what you can do in this life.

Start being who you want to be, right now.

If you need any help, get in touch with me HERE.