Your Dieting Motivation
Controls Your Success

Your dieting motivation will determine, to a large degree, your success or failure with your overall fitness or weight loss plan. Let's look at some tips and techniques for maintaining your drive and losing weight.

It's important to approach your diet in the right way, as part of your lifestyle, with your overall fitness goals in mind. It's not just enough to utilize techniques to keep yourself motivated.

If not, you'll have to make a constant effort to keep up with your diet.

Some would say that diet is the most important aspect of fitness and weight loss (you are what you eat).

Although highly important, dieting is obviously just one aspect of weight loss and fitness.

We've talked about the bigger picture of weight loss motivation, as well fitness motivation, now let's specifically get into how to create and maintain your dieting motivation.

Create A Calorie Deficit

Here's a quote from motivational guru Zig Ziglar:

"For 24 years of my adult life, by choice I weighed well over 200 lbs. I say by choice because you see I have never accidentally eaten anything."

Anyone who has ever tried to get in shape or lose weight will tell you the same thing. You can exercise until you're exhausted, you can pump iron like crazy, and still, somehow, the fat stays on.

In fact, you sometimes end up gaining weight, and sometimes it seems like it's not just muscle that you're adding. It's hard to ignore this effect, and it's one of the things that can kill your dieting motivation. I know, I've been there.

Whether you want to lose that last 10 pounds, trim down your thighs, or lose 100 pounds or more, the rules are the same. The key to losing weight is to create a calorie deficit.

In other words, burn more calories than you consume, and you'll lose weight. Here's more information on how to calculate your caloric needs.

Calculate how to create that deficit, and trust that this principle works.

Choose Your Plan

Ideally, you want a rounded approach to fitness, including a diet that works together with an exercise plan to create that calorie deficit.

You also want to track your progress (monitoring), and have some kind of support system to help keep you on track. You also want to have some kind of reward set up for when you reach your goals.

If it were enough to propel your dieting motivation along just to know that better health, feeling better, and better fitting clothes were just around the corner, you would have accomplished your goals already.

In addition to the weight loss and all those benefits that go with it, you'll need something more. So, plan a reward for your successful efforts.

In short, your plan should include:

• A diet based on creating a calorie deficit (with an exercise plan)
• Monitoring (make adjustments as needed)
• Support and follow up
• A reward for your success

And one more thing... set a written goal. Review the connection between motivation and goal setting, including what SMART goals are, and then write down your goal. This is extremely important.

Tape a piece of paper with your written goal to your bathroom mirror, or some place where you will see it daily.

Two Approaches (Support)

There are two ways to approach your dieting. You can either go it alone, or go with an organized support system (Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, a personal trainer, a doctor's program, LA Weight Loss, etc.).

If you go it alone (you don't have to be totally alone, as you can rely on friends and family), you can buy a system or get a free diet plan online, buy a book, etc.

You can get a free diet plan at SparkPeople.com.

The downside to friends and family as a support system is that it can be two edged... they might be too easy on you, or too hard on you, and the dynamic of the relationships may create some tension at times.

If you go with an organized support system, they'll map out your plan for you or with you. Then, they'll keep on top of you to make sure you stick with it.

One of the reasons for the success of organized diet programs, like Weight Watchers, at least in the short term, is the support they offer the participants.

I'm not recommending that you join Weight Watchers over any of the other programs. What I am saying, though, is that ideally, you want a support system of some kind.

If you're the kind of person who likes to go it alone, and that works for you, then you can be your own support system.

If you decide to self-support, then I have some suggestions for you. In order to keep your dieting motivation alive and well, I highly suggest you:

• Record your progress in a journal
• keep your written goal in front of you as much as possible
• Use pictures, images, and sound if possible to encourage yourself

Most of us, however, would probably do better to enlist the help of others. This can be friends, family, co-workers, or anyone who can offer support, including organizations and paid diet membership plans.

Support, however, can come in different ways. When we do something, it's either to move towards pleasure, or move away from pain.

Some experts on motivation will recommend that you tell others what you're trying to accomplish. Part of the reason for this is that it can have a similar effect to writing down your goals.

Somehow, telling others about your quest makes it seem more real, and provides some accountability. Sometimes it can be enough to simply tell others, and other times you need more than that.

When I took Anthony Robbins Personal Power II audio course, he said something about motivation that kind of surprised me. He said that people will do more to avoid pain (such as things you're afraid of), than they will to move toward pleasure.

So, if pain is a bigger motivational force for you than pleasure, it might not help as much to hear encouraging words from those around you as it would be say, to feel the threat of shame if you didn't accomplish your goal.

On that note, if you're the type who likes to keep your business to yourself and remain private, take heart. In 1926, R. H. Jarrett wrote It Works, a pamphlet for achieving life goals. The recommendation there is not to tell anyone what you're up to!

Make Your Diet A Habit

Famous weight loss and fitness guru Richard Simmons has been helping people to spark their dieting motivation for over 30 years.

One of his key points has always been that your diet is what you eat. In other words, you're always on some kind of diet.

Too many people experience the yo-yo effect. They gain weight, diet, and lose weight. When they go off the diet, they gain weight again, and the process starts all over.

This cycle will continue until you integrate your diet into your lifestyle and make your diet a habit. Extreme techniques work for the short term, yes, but for the long haul, a sensible approach is what's needed.

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