Tips on Staying Motivated

When I first start a weight loss program (which I've done plenty of times over the years) I'm highly motivated and those first few weeks of great weight losses inspire me to keep on going. Things start to get tough though after a few months, when the excitement from the initial weight loss and newness wear off.

Reading logs, comments and community threads here on PEERtrainer certainly are helping me stay motivated. I've also got a CD of "self talk for weight loss" that I try to listen to daily. I've got it in the car so I catch it while I'm driving and I've also got it by my bedside so I can fall asleep to it softly playing in the background. It repeats inspirational phrases like "I have fun losing weight and keeping trim and I’m really proud of the great job I’m doing." and "I am good at telling myself NO to anything I should not eat and immediately replacing the desire to eat with a far greater desire to reach my goal, to live my dream, to like myself, to stay on target and make today count."

What do you do to help stay motivated in the long run?

Trish (spotlight Paris - 32 lbs lost so far!)

Tue. Jan 24, 2:10pm

Try posting pictures of yourself in your office or at home on the fridge. If you have a picture of yourself at your ideal weight you could use that, or a picture of yourself at your heaviest as a deterrent, that could also help.
I went to the Lands End website to create a virtual model of myself for my current weight and goal weight. By default the model is just wearing gray bra and underwear. The purpose of the virtual model is to see how you would look in their clothes, but I printed out the almost naked model of myself, from different points of view (backside & profile) and put it on my fridge. I look at it everday and see the skinny legs that I want.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006, 2:29 PM

to the above poster

That's actually a pretty cool idea but I can imagine what my friends would think if they saw half-naked computer generated people on my fridge. :o)

I'll probably do it but put them in the front of my weight-loss journal.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006, 3:48 PM

It can be a great conversation starter! ;-)

Tuesday, January 24, 2006, 4:32 PM

or you could post them on the inside of the door to your your bathroom cabinet...I've kept all sorts of motivational things there to study while I brush my teeth.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006, 4:43 PM

I read somewhere that getting daily health tips in your email can be really motivating. I currently get the RealAge tip of the day (I think it comes every couple of days)...I send it to a "throwaway" email address, so if it generates spam, I don't care, but it is motivating to read a new tip every day...it gives me something new to think about/consider/try every week. Check out this link to sign up.

Link

Tuesday, January 24, 2006, 4:45 PM

Motivation has been a really bad problem for me...after a few weeks (or if I'm lucky, months), I hit a nasty plateau and start playing with the same 3 lbs. It starts off not my fault, and then I contribute to it by sneaking extra food since "it's not working anyway". But in my mind I'm still dieting -- and failing.

To break that cycle, I need to lose consistently and frequently. While other factors inspire the effort, it's the results that keep me going in the long run. So I work out about 17 hours a week and have sustained that for 7 out of the last 8 weeks (I was away on vacation for the 8th week). I have a personal trainer who says that when I need it, he will call me every morning and order my butt out of bed and into the gym...kind of hoping to avoid that special service!

KatieMc80
(Rome Spotlight)

Tuesday, January 24, 2006, 5:09 PM

Last year (and again this year), I trained for the Breast Cancer 3-Day / 60 Mile Walk...

Things that helped to motivate me to train and exercise...

1) I made a pledge and had to raise money for my cause... (A Minimu of $2,100 last year and a minimu of $2,200 this year)

2) Because I had something I was striving for, I set my goal to try to walk the total number of training miles (if possible)... I ended up doing about 1/2 the miles (about 250 + 60 for the walk) vs. (600 + 60)... However, I kept an excel spreadsheet to list how many miles I had walked, and how many hours I had worked out as well. At first, it didn't seem like much, until I hit certain marks, like 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, etc. Miles...

3) Since I was asking people to pledge money, I needed to be true to myself and to also get them excited by telling them about the number of miles I walked... Therefore, If I wasn't making progress, the donations would be smaller--So... I tried to walk more to get larger donations! :-)

4) As I started to get more fit, I got lots of compliments from people who hadn't seen me in a while-- that really made me feel good and motivated me to walk even more! :-)

For 2006, one of my groups on PT has another person who is pledging to donate money towards my walk and to "walk with me" (from her location)... :-) just getting online and logging my food (and therefore being accountable to others in my group) helps to keep me motivated-- I don't want to disappoint myself or my group as I work on my own journey towards better health!! :-)

IrisSVB

Link

Tuesday, January 24, 2006, 11:49 PM

Awhile back there was a thread here on why we were all doing this. I wrote down my reasons and realized that I had never actually written them all down before. Once I sat down and really thought about it I had far more reasons then I'd ever conciously thought about. So I wrote them all out and taped them to my dressing mirror. Every now and then I'll notice the list and read a couple of the reasons. It's really inspiring to me to see my original reasons for starting especially since I'm seeing some of those reasons start to happen.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006, 1:32 AM

self takj

has anyone else tried the CD of "self talk for weight loss"

I am considering buying this but before I do, I wanted to see if anyone else has tried it.
Trish- do you still use it??
thanks

Thursday, September 4, 2008, 11:57 AM

2:29 how did you get to the virtual model? I just went to the site all excited to try it but couldn't find it!!!

Thursday, September 4, 2008, 7:18 PM

7:18
thry this link

Link

Friday, September 5, 2008, 7:03 AM

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