For many people during their fat loss journey, one of the biggest challenges is not physical but psychological. Fat loss not only requires hard physical work and a more active lifestyle, but it also requires patience, consistency, discipline, commitment, positivity, enjoyment and dedication – all huge psychological traits that are not always linear.
Throughout your journey, you will experience apprehension, doubt, fear, frustration and temptation, which will prove challenging to you as you aim to reach your goal of losing body fat, toning up and changing your body shape. So, it is important that you enter the process with a strong mindset, which you will need to maintain throughout.
But how do you achieve this? How do you gain a strong mindset so that you are in the best place to achieve great results? Here are three powerful tips which will be essential for you and your goals.
Believe You Can Do It
One of the biggest challenges you will face comes before you even start your first training session. In all likelihood, you will have come from failed training programmes, failed diets, and not experienced success when it comes to reaching your goals. Therefore, it can become very easy to lose confidence in yourself and start to doubt whether you can ever lose fat, tone up and change your body shape.
Of course, seeking the right help is important and you should aim to work with a professional who has a portfolio of results and is experienced in changing people’s body shape. Once you find that, it is then about placing confidence in your own ability and believing you can do it. As Matthew Syed’s book ‘Bounce’ discusses, anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it, do the work, and practice with purpose. When you then start to see positive changes, you will not want to look back.
Growth Mindset
During your journey, it is very important to see what lays ahead. If you turn up to every training session believing you can’t do it and end up ‘winging’ your workout, there will be no sense of progression and growth. You should be looking to improve with every single session you do, and this comes in two different forms. The first is with your body and fitness goals, whether that be fat loss, weight loss, muscle gain, or endurance. The second is in areas during the sessions themselves, such as increase in strength, more flexibility, better exercise execution and better recovery.
In Carol Dweck’s book ‘Mindset’, there is a deep analysis of the difference in success between fixed-minded people and growth-minded people in life. In this case, those with a fixed mindset don’t believe they can change and end up approaching each session in a half-hearted manner, with nothing to look forward to. By contrast, those with a growth mindset have the attitude of improvement and look to keep progressing with every session. If you can approach your goals with a growth mindset, you are setting yourself up for success.
Positivity
The last tip links in nicely with a growth mindset. Those with a fixed mindset will usually be negative, pessimistic, and lack a belief that they can change their body. However, those with a growth mindset will be many things, one of which is positity. Half the battle is believing you can do it and if you can start your journey in a positive manner, you are likely to come through the challenging first few weeks without many down periods.
As you start to notice changes to your body and see results, your positivity will increase because you are being rewarded for your hard work, discipline and consistency. Therefore, so long as you stick to the plan, it will be easier to stay positive and you continue to get better throughout your journey. Positivity is a vital mindset asset when it comes to fat loss and if you can maintain this, your chances of making progress and enjoying yourself will increase hugely.
Summary
So, while we talk a lot about the physical changes and improvements when you are trying to lose fat and change your body shape, having strong psychological assets will also play a big role throughout the process. Make sure that you start your journey believing that you can do it, ensure that you have a growth mindset and you are always looking to improve, and that you are in a positive frame of mind as much as possible. These key mindset tips will be vital in ensuring that you get the best results possible and start to feel happier with your body.
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