Stay Motivated: Count Your Way Down to Weight-Loss Success!

There are many fantastic ways to get focused and motivated to begin a diet or exercise program, but often the most difficult thing to do is keep that drive and ambition alive for more than a few weeks and see your goal through to completion.

Within just weeks of starting, many people have already hit their first snag or setback, and as a result, have slipped backwards in the mental focus and motivation department. Setting goals in writing is an essential step to success, but how do you stay focused on them?

One great technique I use and recommend is the “countdown calendar” which can be used for any weight-loss and/or fitness goal.  You purchase a desk or wall calendar – the type that shows each week stretching horizontally across the page with an open block of space for each day. Then you set your goal and place a deadline on it, and do not stop there. Take out your calendar and start counting backwards from your target goal deadline to the present day. For example:

T-minus 100 days….T-minus 99 days… T-minus 98 days….

 

Finally, fill in your workouts for an entire 3 to 4 month period, which is a typical length to allow for any mid-range goals. You would be shocked – pleasantly so – just how focused this keeps you. The great thing being is that you get more and more motivated with each passing day you countdown because the deadline is getting closer. Deadlines are absolutely critical to your success. Little gets done without deadlines.

                                                                          

Remember term papers in school? When you were given a term paper assignment and you had the entire semester to do it, did you run home that first night and get cranking on it?  How about after a week? Two weeks? A month?  Two months?  Probably not, eh? If you are like most people, you put it off until the last minute and you barely got it turned in on time. In fact, there are always a few people who pull all-nighters the night before!  Alas, the power of the deadline!

In weight loss endeavors, if you don not have impending deadlines that give you that twinge in your stomach that says “take action now, or else!” then you find it very easy to say to yourself, “I have plenty of time so this one cheat meal doesn’t matter.… it doesn’t make much difference at this point if I skip this one workout… I have time to make it up…” In fact, just like the term paper, you are scrambling at the last minute to reach your weight goal. However, in the case of your body, the consequences are more severe and painful than just a bad grade or late penalty.

Inevitably, you succumb to crash dieting and overtraining or other unhealthy fast-weight-loss madness, which eats up your own muscle like a hungry cannibal and sends you spiraling into the dark pit of metabolic damage and the inevitable plateau and weight gain that follow.

The solution is so simple: Count your way down to success!

Don’t stop with setting goals. Put your goal countdown on paper, review your goals every single day, and know, every single day, how many days there are until your target goal date. You will stay more consciously focused and, even better, your unconscious mind will go to work for you in keeping you motivated, on track, and on schedule. You’ll come in for a landing on your goal deadline date like an F-16 landing on an aircraft carrier.

Let's not under-estimate this simple technique. Give it  an honest test because it’s often the simplest motivational techniques that are the most powerful of all!