Fast Weight Loss Tips to Stick with

1) Visualize Your Success

The more realistic and believable your target weight feels, the more likely you’ll be to keep up the motivation to reach it. Every day, spend five or ten minutes visualizing your success. You can do this while you’re waiting at a red light or for a teller to open up at the bank. Use your imagination to fill in every last detail to make your visualization as vivid as possible.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to get started on your visualization:

• How will you look once you’ve reached your target weight?
• How will you feel? Will you be more confident? Will you have more energy?
• What clothes will you wear? How will they feel?
• What will others say about your weight loss? How will you respond?
• What activities will you enjoy once you’ve reached your target weight. Imagine yourself doing them.

2) Plan Weight Loss Milestones

It can be hard to maintain your focus over the long term, especially if you’re trying to lose a lot of weight. Choose significant milestones that you’ll reach over the next couple of years: birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and vacations are good choices. Set realistic goals for the amount of weight you’d like to lose before you reach each milestone. This can help make your overall weight loss goal less intimidating by breaking it up into a series of smaller goals. You can also use this strategy to maintain your weight loss once you’ve reached your target weight.

3) Reward Yourself

You can make losing weight a little more rewarding yourself for reaching your weight loss milestones, or even for adhering to your diet and exercise plan for a specific period of time. For instance, reward yourself for two weeks’ of regular exercise by buying yourself a book, a pair of earrings, a special beauty product or some other small treat you’ll enjoy. Just make sure you don’t use food as a reward.

4) Remember Why You Wanted to Lose Weight in the First Place

If you want to lose weight and maintain the weight loss, you’re going to need to make major lifestyle changes. It can be pretty daunting to change your exercise and eating habits so drastically, and it’s easy to get discouraged, especially after some time passes and tedium sets in. Keep a list of all the reasons why you want to lose weight. Start the list on the day you start your new lifestyle, and keep adding items as you think of them. Whenever you start to feel discouraged, take out your list and read it.

5) Keep a Record of Your Weight Loss

You’re probably doing this anyway, but simply writing down some numbers in a journal isn’t as effective as keeping a photographic record. The day you begin your new lifestyle, have someone take a photo of yourself in a swimsuit. Take new photos every two or three weeks. As time passes, you’ll be able to see with your own eyes how much closer you’re getting to your goal.