Many people know that they need to exercise and eat healthy to lose weight. In fact, many of us know what to eat and what not to eat, but we fail to lose weight.
While many people focus on exercising,. continuing eating unhealthy thinking that exercise will outperform poor eating, others are having a battle trying to control their eating without success.
The truth is that making the right choices in the beginning is not easy. This is the reason why I am writing this article. This article will help you develop a strong will and say “no” to the foods you know are unhealthy and say “yes” to the healthy foods.
If you are able to make the right choices about eating, weight loss will be easy for you.
First let me tell you how strong will work…
You know when a person has a strong will because when she means “no” it means “no”. When she says she is going to do something such as buy a house, change carriers, stop drinking or anything like this, she means it.
I remember when I often did not follow through my word and many times lied to myself. My will was so weak. I never knew why my will was so weak until I discovered that the reason was because my mind was weak. Anything can grab my attention, distract me and any pleasure could break my will.
Strong will works just like muscle strength…
If you know about weight lifting you probably know that your muscles adapt to the resistance you are putting your muscles to work with. For example, if you are weak and you struggle to squat your body weight, if you do at least 10 squats everyday by the end of the week or two weeks after, you probably can squat with no hesitation. Now you can probably use a barbell and make your muscles stronger. Squat with the bar for a couple of weeks and now you can add twenty pounds to the bar and squat with it. You can repeat the process each time you become stronger.
You do the same with your will. If your will is weak, then to make it stronger you need to put it to work harder. Just like weight lifting, it will take some effort, but as you become stronger, the decisions you are making become easier. So start making small decisions about your eating such as eating breakfast or stop drinking sodas and eating candy. Then you can make bigger choices such as completely getting rid of processed foods.
I practice habits that make my will stronger...
Unconsciously when I decided to improve my life, I started to practice habits that were strengthening my will and this is what I am going to share with you. Take note, nothing that is going to bring you long term results will be easy and fast. So keep in mind that you are going to relapse many times. But each time you practice the next tools I am going to give you, your will will become stronger.
1. Start taking lonely walks and focus your mind on any task you want to improve. See the work you are doing in your head progressing and come to a satisfactory end. For example, I like to think about how Custom Body Fitness is full of people thanks to all the body transformations we contribute to. I see myself assessing our members and find areas where I can help. I see our CBF walls full of before and after pictures. I see all of our members motivated to exercise and lose weight.
You can do the same, you can start seeing yourself making the right choices like what to eat, going to your exercise sessions and hanging out with active people.
All of this takes effort. You need to fight your mind to think positively and to stop distracting with other negative thoughts. Practice. Don’t forget that you need to work at it. Do this everyday.
2. Remember that you need to control your mind and to do that it is very important that you feed your brain the right information for you to succeed in your goal. Candy is junk food with no valuable nutrition that will make you gain weight if you eat it, develop diseases and take your energy. It is addicting. Eating a small candy everyday it can see like nothing can happen. But if you add all the candy you may eat, by the end of the week, you notice that it is causing some serious damage.
The same you can think of on social media, television, surfing on the web and texting just for texting. The brain releases dopamine with both candy and technology distraction. This is the reason why it is so addicting. So this distraction makes your mind weak and won’t give you the information you need to take control of your mind.
If you want to make your will strong and take control of your mind, keep track of your technology behavior and limited to just what is necessary. Do not lie to yourself and make it necessary for your life.
3. Meditate for at least ten minutes every morning and focus on gratitude and your goals. By doing so, you are controlling your body and its desires. There are two parts of you, your mind and your body. For most people, their body controls their minds. You want to make sure your mind controls your body. Your mind will always make good decisions for you and your body will always make wrong decisions for you. Your mind is the human side and your body is the animal side. Be aware and behave like a human to have a strong will.
4. Focus on one thing only. When you are focusing on one thing, you are teaching your brain to decide to finish one task. When you are finished with one task, then move to the next one. By trying to do two or more things at one time, you are letting your brain get distracted. Remember that if you want to make your will strong, the last thing you want to do is be distracted.
5. Learn how to use your brain. Now that you know that distractions, social media and television are for a weak will, you can spend your time learning new skills such as needling, playing the guitar, painting and many other skills. This will allow your brain to focus and develop.
6. Doing a list of things that you need to do during the day will give you a map of decisions that you need to make. This is a good beginning to start training your brain, what to eat, what time to eat and where to eat leaving less space for relapse.
7. Learn how to control your emotions. Many people make decisions with emotions. When you start paying attention to your emotions and understanding why you feel the way you do, you make better decisions. For example, if you are angry because you lost your job, understand that that is making you angry. You can’t go to a new interview angry at your lost job because that won’t help you get the new job. Control your feelings and make decisions without emotions.
How to develop a strong will...?
For you to strengthen your muscles, you need your muscles to adapt to a more difficult resistance. If your resistance is weaker, your muscles adapt to the weaker resistance. For your muscles to stay strong, you need to exercise consistently. This is a lifestyle not an event.
The same with your strong will. If you want to make important decisions and practice it as a lifestyle, your will will become strong. This is the key to make good choices about eating healthy.