Feeling Hopeless About Weight Loss? Weight Loss Mindset in 5 Simple Steps!

Feeling hopeless about weight loss? There is a direct, scientifically proven correlation between stress and weight gain. And few things are more stressful to most people than worrying about weight gain.

In other words, how do you lose weight when you’re gaining weight from stressing out about gaining weight?

That is the ultimate Catch 22!

A weight loss mindset has nothing to do with your bathroom scale. Toss it.

Lisa and I have both uttered those fateful words, “I have no motivation to lose weight, even though I know I should.”

Wow! “Should” is an evil word, especially for those of us, like you, who are working to change our lives.“Shoulds” pile up in our subconscious and overwhelm us with guilt and/or toxic shame. And that’s what keeps us from accomplishing important things like adopting a healthy lifestyle so we can lose weight. Or, to put it in more positive terms, Get Healthy!

Every “should” creates cognitive dissonance in our mind. In other words, we tell our minds that this is what we ought to be doing but our behavior shows something different. Tell me that isn’t the mother of all stress puppies!

(Just follow the link and read the first sentence of Wikipedia’s definition of cognitive dissonance. It’ll blow your mind.)

What Lisa and I eventually learned is that focusing on weight loss is a guaranteed losing proposition. And by losing, I don’t mean weight!

Mental preparation for weight loss.

Instead of “tacking on” weight loss as an addendum to our unhealthy lifestyle, we chose to build a healthy lifestyle as the core of our relationship and our lives.

We developed a weight loss mindset and built our new lifestyle around that. Additionally, we both found therapists we were comfortable with and started working on all those background issues that had kept us from “full realization.” (That’s woo-woo speak for getting our stuff together!)

And I gotta tell ya, we can both live with that for a very long, healthy and happy lifespan.

So if you’re feeling hopeless about weight loss, we’re going to help you with some weight loss psychology tips to help you get the stress out and let the joy in.

Here’s how to kick “feeling hopeless about weight loss” to the curb in five simple steps…

Step One: Develop a weight loss mindset – Love what you eat.

Sliced kiwi fruit – Vitamin C, tons of fiber, and oooooh so sweet!

I can hear you now, “That’s the problem you lunkhead! I love eating too much.” But that’s not what I said. I’m talking about embedding love into the whole ritual of eating.

This is one of the best weight loss psychology tips we’ve handed out:

Make eating a joyful experience.

Treat food preparation as an almost spiritual ritual. Appreciate all the love, care, and dedication that went into growing this food as you prepare it:

–   the months it took to grow;
–   the rich blackness of the loamy soil;
–   the moist green scent of living things;
–   all baking in the warmth of glowing sunlight.

Isn’t it wonderful?

Eat slowly.

As you eat, savor the rich aromas, the mouthfeel and textures of the food. Put love in every bite. When you do that, your body gets love with every bite.

Step Two: Be grateful for what you eat.

I’m as agnostic as you can get, but I take a few moments before every meal to feel grateful for the food in front of me. I’m not thanking any god, man, beast, or devil for the food. I’m just feeling grateful.

And remember: gratitude is a feeling, not a doing. Really let gratefulness flow throughout your body. I do this every day as part of my morning ritual, my 20-minute meditation. I just open my heart and feel grateful.

It’s a great way to start your day and a fantastic way to start every meal!

Step Three: Spend a lot of money today or a whole lot more tomorrow

And by tomorrow, I mean when you get to be my age (65 as I write this) and you’re watching friends breaking down or dying.

And if you aren’t eating organic, you’ll be breaking down right there with them.

If you’ve read my other posts, you may have heard this before:

Buy good food.

If you’ve ever spent time in a hospital, you know that’s not how you want to spend your later years. Buy healthy food now!

And by good, I mean organic: free from hormones, antibiotics, and commercial fertilizers. Food raised locally at small farms where the farmers are closer to the soil than to the cash box.

That also means grass-fed and grass-finished meat and dairy. Pastured animals live in a low stress environment. The way nature evolved them to do.

Animals who live in industrial farms where they are treated like things and spend their lives in cages, get horribly stressed.

Those stress hormones get embedded in their meat and you ingest those stress hormones when you eat those animals.

Remember the old adage: You are what you eat.

Yes, responsibly grown food is more expensive but it’s way healthier and more importantly, it tastes amazing. Why go through life eating food that tastes like the box it came in? Blech!

And if you think healthy food is expensive, try having to pay for a constant stream of surgeries, horrific treatments, and handfuls of pills you must ingest each day, because you didn’t care enough about yourself to eat the very best.

Who wants to live like that when they retire? That’s your FUN time! Believe me, I know. Lisa and I are 62 and 65 at this writing and we are having a blast!

Step Four: Integrate exercise into your lifestyle.

Well, you had to know exercise was going to come into this somewhere. Join a full-service gym like LA Fitness or better yet, a luxurious gym like LifeTime Fitness.

Heck, just walking in the door makes you feel like someone special.

And you are, aren’t you? Don’t you deserve to feel special?

You can join LA Fitness for less than $30 a month and some LifeTime Fitness clubs for less than $100 a month. I bet you pay more than that for your cable.

For instance, if you join Planet Fitness Black Card Club, for about $26 a month you can:

• lay in a suntan bed;
• stand in a full-body red light therapy booth with a vibration plate floor (if you turn the plate on);
• sit in a massage chair that has vibration, rollers, and pneumatic pressure pads. Unbelievable.
• and don’t forget the hydromassage beds. Lisa loves the massage chairs; I love the hydromassage.
• And that’s in addition to the weight rooms, cardio machines, and other “toys” you can play with.

Feeling hopeless about weight loss? Today’s gym equipment is sooo easy to use!

“I’m not athletic,” you say.

So what? I sucked at sports as a kid because I had no eye-hand coordination. But I learned that anyone can master lifting weights. Especially using the machines. The machine does all the work; you just provide the Oomph!

Three months into lifting weights, I looked at my body in the mirror and for the first time in my life I said, “Wow! I never thought I could look like that!”

How to get mentally motivated to lose weight!

To start, just go to the gym and hang out. Relax, read a book. Most Lifetimes have a small restaurant inside that sell only healthy food. It’s a good place to lounge.

Remember, you’re paying to be there. You’re a member. You can spend your time there any way you want.

Eventually, try out the sauna or the Jacuzzi or the lounge pool. Nobody says you have to jump in and start throwing weights around or do anything that makes you sweat.

Luxuriate. Make this your “I’m amazing” place; your “I deserve this” place.

Get the feel of the gym, of the people; begin to think of yourself as one of them. Someone who cares about their health and themselves. When you are ready, you’ll know what you want to try.

And most gyms have trainers who will teach you how the machines work and how to lift weights safely so you don’t get injured.

Are you more of a social type? No problem!

Find a club that offers lots of classes. Lifetime, LA Fitness, and YWCA are great options. Nothing will get you revved up like being surrounded by a bunch of people who are excited to be there.

Lisa and I had a friend who had never exercised before in her life. She was recently divorced, worried about her weight-gain, and had a lot of time on her hands.

She chose to be proactive.

She joined the YWCA, signed up for a high-intensity interval training class and got absolutely addicted to it.

She got svelte and strong, with gorgeous muscles rippling under her leotard. And the social benefits she got from both the women and the men she met there made for no more empty evenings!

And the ultimate motivator…

Find a friend, relative, or co-worker who wants to begin exercising (or already is and is looking for company). Promise each other to meet up at the gym at a specific day and time or go direct from work. Knowing someone else is counting on you being there can give you that extra boost when the couch, TV, and cheesy popcorn beckon.

Step Five: Value yourself, not your size

Be your own best gift.

Throw away your scale (yes, toss it in the trash, take it to Goodwill, or burn the evil little contraption in effigy). Your weight doesn’t matter!

How you feel about yourself does.

Appreciate yourself for every little step you make towards a healthy lifestyle rather than worry about how fast the weight comes off. Life is a marathon, not a steeplechase.

And if there are negative people in your life who are telling you that you have to lose weight, lose them. Healthy food, healthy friends, healthy thoughts, and healthy feelings will get you where you want to go!

Here’s my home pedal device; small, light, cheap, easy.

We hope you never again waste time thinking, “I have no motivation to lose weight“

This is your life, not anyone else’s, and they do not have the right to criticize you for how you choose to live it. Love, joy, and gratitude are the centerpieces of your new healthy lifestyle.

By the way, one trick that Lisa and I do to feel good about ourselves, even when we do spend an evening in front of the TV…

We bought these little pedal units and pedal them while we watch the tube. It’s just like pedaling a recline cycle.

Here’s what mine looks like (new ones look a lot cooler):

We completely forget we’re even doing it and the next thing we know, we have several miles of pedaling under our belt. Yeah, Go Team Lisa and Bob!

I’m getting another one for under my work desk.

If you want one of these pedal toys, here’s where you can get one: Home Pedal units

This “how to get mentally motivated to lose weight” blog post obviously has affiliate links in it. If you value the Fast Track to the Good Life blog and what I’ve shared with you about how to live longer and healthier, please support my work by using the links. They add nothing to your cost and Lisa and I get a small commission. Thank you in advance for your support!