Let’s assume you want to lose weight. To achieve that goal, you must consistently motivate actions like buying healthy foods, skipping dessert, and exercising.
Part of that motivation is the story you tell yourself. Your underlying reasons for weight loss — and your self-talk around them — can fuel or douse your efforts.
But if you want consistent motivation, you need consistent routines to foster it. This article will give you the necessary tools to develop those routines.
First, though, let’s double-click on motivation itself.
Understanding Motivation
Motivation is what drives us to fulfill our goals. The more motivation we have to do something, the more likely we’ll act to make it happen.
For instance, if you’re being chased by a lunatic with a tennis racquet, you’ll be highly motivated to “take a run.” Removing the lunatic from the equation will lessen the motivation.
This dovetails nicely into the two types of motivation:
- Extrinsic motivation - driven by external punishments or rewards.
- Intrinsic motivation - driven by internal factors like enjoyment or pride.
Running from a maniac (or because your trainer tells you to) is extrinsically motivated. Running because you love the runner’s high is intrinsically motivated.
Ideally, you want to combine both types of motivation to achieve big, tricky goals like weight loss. You want systems that remind you why you want to lose weight while fostering habits that inch you toward your goal.
We’ll talk about these systems soon. First, let’s hit on the “why” part.
Top Motivations for Losing Weight
When Carb Manager asked users why they diet, the top responses involved physical appearance, health concerns, and confidence. Let’s explore these motivations in more detail.
#1: Physical appearance
Losing excess fat can make you appear more attractive to yourself and others. It’s a reasonable motivation to lose weight.
The trick is to set sensible expectations. Don’t shoot for Chris Hemsworth from Thor. Shoot for incremental improvements you’ll notice in the mirror.
#2: Better self-esteem
Closely related to physical appearance is the confidence that comes from looking and feeling trim. This confidence bleeds into everything you do, creating an upward spiral in other facets of life.
But be careful not to make your self-esteem contingent on weight loss. If you’re not happy with your body, be patient with your weight loss system.
Meanwhile, call to mind your other successes — family, professional, spiritual, etc. — that prove your capabilities. Create a list of life wins and read it as needed. We all need this self-validation occasionally.
#3: Health concerns
Perhaps heart disease, cancer, or diabetes run in your family. You want to minimize your risk of developing these conditions and stay healthy as long as possible.
Part of minimizing that risk means avoiding obese and overweight status.[*] This can be a powerful weight loss motivation.
#4: Enhanced energy and functionality
Another motivation is how you feel. You want more energy, and you know weight loss will help.
Similarly, maintaining a healthy weight increases physical functionality. Hiking, running, swimming, and daily chores become more effortless without excess fat on your frame.
Building Systems for Motivation
We just explored the stated motivations for weight loss. These are the stories people tell themselves to light a fire under their goals.
Some stories are worse than others. For instance, one study found that people motivated by physical appearance were more likely to regain lost weight than those motivated by other reasons, like health or social concerns.[*]
But while it’s good to know your story, don’t rely on it to motivate daily actions. For that, you need a system.
A system is a routine you do consistently (every day, ideally) to serve a goal. Repeated action makes the system habitual, allowing your actions to run on autopilot.
Here are some examples of weight loss systems:
- Limiting daily food intake to 2000 calories (or whatever number is appropriate)
- Buying the same healthy foods and prepping the same healthy meals every week
- Exercising daily
- Never ordering dessert out (you have healthier options at home)
- Playing tennis weekly, ideally with someone who won’t chase you with their Babolat
- Logging foods with Carb Manager daily
The early stages of habit development will require effort on your part. You’ll need to take some deliberate steps. Read this article on building habits for a deeper dive into that topic.
But after a few weeks, your routine locks in. Then, you don’t need to worry about motivation anymore.
That’s a good place to be. Your system (not willpower) will do the heavy lifting as you gradually shed pounds.
And if you hit a plateau, don’t panic. You don’t need to change your persistence, drive, or any other personality trait.
You need to tweak your system. This mindset lets you relax, let go of the outcome, and focus on the process.
Using Carb Manager to Motivate Weight Loss
Building your weight loss system requires effort. How can you make it as effortless as possible?
Enter Carb Manager as a one-stop system for sustainable weight loss. Actually, it’s many systems in one.
Food logging is a system that keeps you honest with dietary choices. Food tracking is a system that provides instant accountability. And meal planning with Premium recipes is a system that keeps your menu clean and healthy.
Sure, you could wing your dieting system. But if winging it worked, nobody would need help losing weight.
Or you could get scribbling with pen and paper. But while journaling is effective for relieving monkey mind, it’s not suited for detailed tracking.
Carb Manager is. Our user-friendly tech makes it easy to implement your weight loss systems. Then, you can proceed smoothly toward your weight loss goal.
