Habit Changing 1-0-1 for Weight Loss Success

​Losing weight and getting in shape can be challenging, but not for the reasons people often think they struggle. A very important aspects is often overlooked. If you'd like to achieve your fat loss goals and keep the weight off long-term, you will need to live differently from how you lived until now. That means you need to change habits that you've built over years, maybe even decades.

Changing your habits is a whole different story, requires commitment and consistency until the desired fitness goal is achieved and beyond. Losing weight is simple and often it's easy if you only need to focus on a new diet and/or exercise routine for a short period of time, like 8-12 weeks.

What happens though when you stop your plan once you achieved your goal and go back to old habits? The weight will eventually creep back on. Changes you make to your habits will need to stick because if they don’t, you won't be able to maintain the achieved results. This means you are better off picking habits you are confident you can sustain for the rest of your life if needed and take a slower progress, as opposed to end up sticking to a plan and losing weight, then getting off track and gaining the weight back and repeating this yoyo process on end.

​Let's dig in how you can prevent that int he future.

What is a Habit?

A habit is an acquired pattern of behaviour. Our habits are often carried out automatically; we don’t even have to think about them because they just happen. Think of bushing your teeth or for many Londoner women putting make-up on before leaving the house. Of course, we make these decisions but once they’re ingrained in our day to day lives, we tend to do them without having to think about them much.

Ideally, you'd like your new habits to become just as ingrained so it won't feel like a chore to eat healthier, complete a workout or relax. Often though we need to face those bad habits first, identify them and find ways and new habits to dodge them out of our lives.

How You Might Change Those Regular Bad Habits

The key is to recognise these damaging habits and transform them into better ones. That’s not easy but it certainly can be done. 

Examples:

• If you struggle getting enough sleep, you can start setting an alarm to 1 hour before you'd like to fall asleep and as it goes off, you drop everything you do, you go through your evening routine then head to bed with all electrics turned off reading a book
• If you feel you could make better decisions with your meals, try to plan your week ahead, make decisions on when and where you'll be eating at specific meals and which of the meals you'll be cooking and when
• If you find you keep bailing on the gym because of long working hours, schedule some time in for the morning and get a home workout done before hitting shower and heading to work. You can even ask for help through online coaching if you feel you need an expert to tell you what to do.

How to Avoid the Problems Associated with Habit Changing

Based on my personal training and online training clients, there are two types of people. Those who can go completely cold turkey, change everything all at once and figure out everything as they go. The other type is those who need to focus on one thing at a time before they can work on the next one. The key to success is to understanding how you work on this front and choose a route that keeps you motivated, committed and most importantly consistent.
 
Remember that it takes time for a habit to become part of your routine, so be patient, don't stress too much if a day doesn't turn out to be perfect and aim for progress, e.g. to be able to do more each day. You want these changes to last and to become ingrained in your daily lifestyle, so don’t expect instant results because that’s not necessarily the best way to keep yourself on the fitness track.
 
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you want to have a commitment-free chat about your goals and get tips on how to start changing your habits for the desired results.