10 Ways to Stay Committed This Holiday Season - Part 2

10 Ways to Stay Committed to Your Diet and Weight Loss Goals This Holiday Season - Part 2

The holiday season is almost here, and this time of year can be especially tough for anyone trying to lose weight and get healthy. With so much good tasting yet unhealthy food in abundance, how do you stay committed to your diet and weight loss goals?

Steve Siebold, a psychological performance coach and author of Die Fat or Get Tough: 101 Differences in Thinking Between Fat People and Fit People, offers ten tips.

Yesterday we published the first five of his ten tips. Here are the second five:

• Seeing is believing: One of the best strategies for staying compliant to your weight loss plan this time of year is creating a vision board filled with pictures of lean, fit and sexy people. Hang the vision board in a very visible location. When you constantly see the person you want to become, it will reinforce your goals into your subconscious mind. If you feel like cheating on your diet or giving up, look at the vision board and it will remind you why you’re fighting.

• Expect a challenge: Be realistic and know that remaining compliant this time of year is going to be extra challenging. Expect to feel pain or suffer. Most people feel the pain or run into an obstacle and seek escape right away. Have a plan to push forward when this happens and don’t let it catch you off guard. If you’re not ready to suffer during adversity, you’re not going to be successful.

• Get really clear about your weight loss goals. Don’t just say, “I want to lose weight.” Get specific and say, “By April 1, I want to lose 15 pounds. I’m going to eat well, exercise each day and get really committed to doing this once and for all. The holiday season isn’t going to stop me.” When you set a timeline and have specific goals, you’re going to avoid procrastination.

• You can’t cheat and then start over: You can’t cheat whether it’s Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas or any other day. Stop telling yourself that you can just start over on Monday. Monday is never coming. This isn’t a game or a hobby; it’s your health. Until you’re at a healthy body weight, 99% compliance is failure. You wouldn’t cheat on your spouse in a committed relationship, so don’t cheat on something as important as your diet.

• It’s up to you: The mantra of fit people is: I am responsible. If losing weight and getting healthy is something you want bad enough, it’s up to you to make it happen. Nobody else is coming to the rescue. The choice is yours. Your weight is your responsibility. How bad do you want it?

“The holidays to the millions of dieters is like heroin to a recovering drug addict: it’s full of temptation and ultimately results in a negative outcome,” Siebold says. “It doesn’t take much to derail a diet and completely ruin the road to a healthier life and better body. The key to weight loss, getting fit and staying on track during the holidays is mental toughness.”