“I can’t maintain motivation for my weight loss”

After showcasing my six year transformation of losing more than 50kg, there’s one request I’ve gotten a lot: Gimme the best motivational tips please!

It’s one thing to hype yourself up on the New Year’s that this year for sure you’ll change everything. It’s another thing to maintain that motivation when participating in social events, getting hit with cravings for that oh-so-delicious oven fresh pizza, or feeling that there has not been any progress. Or just had a rough day at work and thinking about anything extra, let alone weight loss, feels like an insurmountable task.

From my experience, you shouldn’t rely on motivation for long term change. Motivation in general is short-lived with a huge burst of energy from, for example, New Year’s resolution, inspirational quote or video, or realization how out of shape you are. But, that energy fizzes out typically within a week or two, or at maximum a month.

Habits over willpower

Instead of willpower that you can and will deplete, try making what you want into a habit that you eventually do semiautomatically. To maintain a habit for long time, you should focus on strengthening the reasons you would continue to do it and weaken the reasons you’d quit doing it.

Ways to strengthen habits around weight loss

Over the six years of losing more than 50kg, I’ve built multiple smaller habits and cut out others, which have made weight control require no energy or decision-making. To encourage keeping up with a habit, I’ve worked on three aspects in particular.

First, I’ve learned to appreciate the progress I’ve made and do every week. You should give yourself credit that you got results every week, even if weekly changes are small. This has helped me keep up the consistency with which the small wins compound to large wins.

Second, I’ve worked to accept what my body looks with all the flaws. By accepting the reality, you are fine with the present even if you might work on improving. This has been important to me, because it is so slow to lose 50kg. Even now, I will struggle to have a noticeable six pack, because my skin around stomach has loosened too much. Either way, I’m OK with the situation even if I work to improve it.

Third, I took coaching on lifting and nutrition both for external accountability and for receiving professional answers to questions I’ve had. Discussions with the coach have, for example, helped me keep on track after binge eating streaks with friends or on holiday seasons.

Weaken reasons to quit weight loss

Simultaneously I have worked to weaken the reasons I could have quit on primarily four areas.

First, I’ve worked hard to learn to cook mealprepped microwaveable foods that I enjoy eating every time even if it’s twice a day for five days straight. With these mealpreps, I always look forward to eating while never losing mental energy to deciding what I should eat.

Second, I have removed any restrictions on my food selection and ate anything, e.g. pizza or ice cream, as long as I could fit it into my macros. This has helped me to squeeze in foods I love and crave whenever I want them, which removes the temptation to quit when cravigns hit.

Third, I have often felt I wasn’t progressing because I just couldn’t see the weight loss progress in a mirror. To combat this, I started logging the weight and waist circumference daily and compare weekly averages to see the progress. I also took progress pictures every two weeks which usually presented the small changes better. The accurate numeric data and comparing pictures helped me see that even if I don’t notice the progress in the mirror, progress is happening.

Last, life happens and I often had periods like travels, holidays and celebrations when I was relaxed with my food and alcohol intake. These inevitably led to huge fluctuations in my weight, which multiple times lead to fear that did I screw it up. In the past I actually have quit multiple times because of these fluctuations. But now I know that the spikes are fleeting which helps me not quit.

Which one should you focus on?

Personally I’d say working on weakening the reasons to quit has been more useful compared to strengthening the reasons to continue. Working on things that might make me quit have kept me on this journey, while the reasons to continue have been more relevant on improving the pace at which I improve. Because consistent actions are the key to any large change, just not quitting is infinitely more important than the rate at which you improve.

Try reinforcing a habit yourself

So, sit down and list habits that help you continue weight loss and what push you to quit it. If you can’t come up with habits, take inspiration from my realizations above or from other sub-skills weight control is built out of. Pick one to work into a habit, and follow your progress on that habit with e.g. a habit tracker app or a diary. Remember, slipups don’t matter as long as you get back to it. Consistent habits over a long time period bring forth the results you’re after.