Yes, you WILL have one of the bad days when you eat too much or too lazy to do exercise followed with guilty feeling later for betrayed your own program. Heck, everybody in a diet must have through that at least once, but as long as you still have motivation, you will endure, do it better, and finally achieve your goal.
These are some tips you can apply to maintain your diet motivation:
1. Do not include any complicated calculation in your diet
It is hard to stay motivated when you have to keep track of calories, carbohydrates, fat, etc each time you put food in your mouth, especially in busy times like lunch break. Eventually you will get disturbed and drop the program.
Solution: Try to master simpler method such as hunger fullness method or get a program which provides the meal plans for you.
2. Hunger is not part of a good diet
Some diets will suggest you to eat much less foods in a day, the other even apply fasting for fast weight loss. Yes, you will lose weight, probably within very short time period. The questions are: Can you maintain that ideal weight? Do you think you can do it again and again, endure hunger and stay focused in your activities? I am sure we're all agrees that the answer is big NO.
Solution: Unless you have been lived under a rock, I'm sure you already know that rapid development in weight loss industry has created many techniques where you can avoid hunger while still losing weight at adequate speed. Breaking meals into four or five small meals with less intervals is one of the popular method.
3. Set realistic goals
You must have goal to be success in a project, but if you set your goal too high within short time limit, you will get depressed as it will be very difficult to accomplish and only add excuses to stop trying.
Solution: This is obvious; if you already followed a proven program, set a realistic goal such as 7-8lbs in two weeks. Forget any fad diet that offer fantastic result in no time, it will only hurt you in long run.
4. Share your problem with people who understand it
If you are the only one with overweight problem in your family, school, college, or office then you are surrounded by people who didn't understand your problem or your feeling. Being left alone will only make you depressed even more and you will lose your diet motivation eventually.
Solution: Join a group or forums. There are a lot of people who experienced the same problem, especially if you are in US, so finding this group should not be too difficult. You can motivate each other, share stories, having exercise sessions, and solving problems together.
5. Eat what you like
Being forced to eat foods that you dislike once or twice is still bearable, but if you have to consume it on daily basis you will hate every meal time and lose motivation in no time at all (cabbage soup, everyone?).
Solution: Currently, there are diet programs that support dieter's food choice and can integrate it to its meal plans. The other provides a list of various recipes so you can choose your favorite ones. Either way, you CAN lose weight while eating your favorite foods everyday.
Diet motivation is one of the most common big problems for all dieter. It is a sensitive problem and must be treated intensively before you jump into other issues such as meal plans, exercise sessions, cheat days, etc. Setup every possible aspect in your diet program to support this and it will be a lot easier than you think.
Easy solution: I recommend Strip That Fat since it can solve your problems instantly: no calorie counting, no hunger, and no food that you dislike.
