One of the key components to eating right is getting motivated. While it's easy enough at first to have grand plans, if you don't have enough motivation to do the follow through, there's just no point. In order to make sure that you're successful with your diet, you're going to need to make sure that your priorities are in order and that you have the right kind of motivation.
Before you even start your diet, we recommend making a list of all of the things that you hope to accomplish. Divide these into three columns: Physical Appearance, Body Health, Activities. Now, you'll be able to see all of the things on one sheet of paper. This makes it a lot easier to keep your goals right in front of you. Once you have them all down, redo your list and prioritize the things that are the most important to you. For example, if lowering your blood pressure is a high priority, move that to the top of the health list.
Once you have all of your items prioritized in each column, make a master list that contains them in order of importance. You'll be referring back to this as you start to meet your goals. By putting it on paper, you're giving yourself that visualization that makes it a lot easier to see your goals and meet them. While it's fine to keep it in your head, most people prefer having a hard copy. When you start to check those items off as goals attained, it really is a great feeling.
So, now that you have your list done, you're ready to start on your diet. Make sure that you select one that will make it easy to keep your goals at first. Rome was not built in a day and a good diet takes time to work. Don't doom yourself to failure by going on an extreme diet that you have no hope of keeping. Start small and work your way up. You'll be a lot less likely to call it quits after a few days and you'll be able to keep motivated.
One great way to start small is simply by cutting out a few of the foods you eat or drink every day that contain empty calories. Soda is the best place to start since you'll usually see pretty quick results. Try cutting out one or two a day at first, and then increase the amount until you are no longer drinking it. The results you see will keep you motivated and you won't be depriving yourself of it all at once.
Whenever you feel as though you want to quit with your diet, pull out that list and re-read it. See what you've crossed out and remind yourself that these are important goals that will change your life. It is easy to quit and walk away, but you will be paying the price for it for the rest of your life.
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Originally posted 2008-05-21 05:33:02. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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2 comments ↓
Great tip. Having tangible goals to refer to seems like a real plus.
Great post! I kind of did something like this when I started working out seriously but wasn’t seeing good results. It wasn’t as thourough as this model. I’m gonna try this though because positive reinforcement is the best way to stay motivated. I’m referring to your point about wanting to quit and pulling the list back out to get re-focused. Again, great post.
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