Are you making weight loss mentally harder than it has to be? In order to succeed with losing weight, you want to ensure that your mindset supports your efforts.


The following are five mental attitudes that will sabotage your weight loss success.


“I want it now.”

One of the hallmarks of being an adult is the ability to delay gratification; in other words, you must be able to say ‘no’ to yourself when it comes to eating foods that are not healthy for you. Or if you can’t say no, you should at least be able to say “not right now.”


By now, you probably realize that you can’t keep doing the same things and expecting different results. The reason that you are battling excess pounds now is because you have made errors in judgment regarding your health and allowed them to compile.


Conversely, if you make wise decisions about your health and allow them to compile, then you will have a better body in the future. You must be willing to keep rejecting the unhealthy habits (even if it hurts for the moment) long enough for the new, healthy actions to stick.


The outward changes won’t happen overnight, but they will happen. If you trust that, then ‘now’ will show up sooner than you think.

“I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Procrastination is the enemy of any successful endeavor. Each day that you continue to eat unhealthy foods and avoid exercise is a day that you are choosing to remain sick and tired. Decide that this is the day that turns your life around.

“When I lose weight, then I’ll”

When it comes to doing nice things for yourself, don’t delay. If you have a “When I lose weight, then I’ll” attitude, it is like saying to yourself that you aren’t worthy of nice things because you aren’t a certain size or don’t weigh a certain amount.



You are worthy no matter what size you are, so start doing nice things for yourself now. Have fun and treat yourself well now. Buy that new pair of earrings. Go on that trip. Talk to that cute guy. Tomorrow is not promised to you, so decide that you are worth the best, which includes having the healthiest habits around.

“I am in control.”

A recipe for frustration is attempting to control those things you cannot change, yet failing to control those things you can. A popular prayer illustrates this point:



God grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change

Courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference.





When it comes to weight loss, you can control the actions you take, such as choosing healthy foods to eat or choosing to exercise on a particular day. However, you only set yourself up for frustration when you attempt to control those things you can’t control, such as the rate at which your body loses weight.



For most of us, weight loss comes in spurts: Some weeks you will lose a lot and some weeks you will lose a little. But you will eventually reach your goal if you continue to do the right things regarding your body.



So relax and let your body decide how it wants to drop the weight. It’s going to anyway, whether you fret about it or not.

“This is too hard.”

If you believe that losing weight is too hard, then it will be too hard. Instead of complaining, try asking yourself, “How can I make this easier?” Is it hard for you to set aside 30 minutes to exercise in the morning? Then try breaking up your exercise routine into 3 10-minute segments. You will get the same benefit.



If it is too hard for you to stop trying to clean your plate at restaurants, then ask for a “to-go box” at the beginning of your meal. Put aside half of your food in the box and then eat the remainder on your plate. Your plate will still be clean, but this way you will get to enjoy the meal later when you become hungry again.



Focus your attention on seeking solutions to your health obstacles instead of arguing for them. If you argue for them, you get to keep them.

I hope this series has been helpful for you in identifying possible problems you might face in your weight loss quest. If you stay the course and stay away from these pitfalls, you will be fit and fabulous in no time.

A Registered Nurse for many years, Kimberly Floyd battled obesity for much of her adult life. She was finally able to achieve her ideal weight and is currently writing a book that is designed to help others win their weight loss battles entitled ‘Take Back Your Temple’.

Kim has written articles for the Georgia Nurses Association publication and Nursing Spectrum Online. Now a technical writer, she has written training programs for corporate clients, including IBM, U.S. Bank, and Cingular.

Kim also teaches an online course called ‘Goodbye to Shy’. This course is distributed to over 500 colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, and Australia through Thomson Learning. An accomplished speaker and trainer, she delivers presentations on health-related topics to enthusiastic audiences.

Tags: black women wellness, christian diet, christian fitness, christian weight loss, diet, women weight lossblack women wellness, christian diet, christian fitness, christian weight loss, diet, women weight loss

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What do you do about the scale? If you weigh yourself everyday you will likely see your weight bounce up and down, and on up days you can get discouraged. That is why many trainers will tell you to ignore the scale. They will tell you that what is really important is how fit you are, and not how much you weigh.

And on the other hand, there are diet programs and diet books that focus only on the scale, and sell you on quick weight loss based on nothing but the scale.

Which way is right? Scale or no scale? They both have some truth in them. Let’s sort it out.

We tend to be focused on the scale, because it is such an easy thing to measure, and it is easy to compare the numbers. You read that your favorite celebrity lost 25 poundsyou can easily understand that. You read, “Lose 15 pounds in 2 days!” You can certainly understand that.

The scale gives us a number that we can use and compare and use. It is simple.

But if you think about it, the reason we are so intent on the scale is not because we really are so interested in numbers, but because we are interested in looking good. We want to be lean. We want to be sexy. We want our clothes to fit, and we want to be appealing to others. And we know that when we lose weight we get these things. So we get hooked on the scale.

But the scale is just one part of it. What is really important is the details that we cannot measure so easily. For instance, you can lose weight but instead of losing fat you lose muscle. This happens all the time with quick weight loss diets.

When you are done, you don’t look as good as you thought you would. Your arms are still flabby. Your belly still sags. You still don’t look good in a bathing suit and you are still embarrassed about your body. And since you don’t have as much muscle to burn up calories, you gain the weight back faster than ever.

See, even if the scale improved, you didn’t accomplish what you wanted. So even though it is harder to measure, what you really want to know is how much lean body mass you have as well as how much fat you have.

If you became really lean, really firm, with sleek, strong muscles, and you saw your trim abs in the mirror, the firm arms, and the sexy butt, you wouldn’t care what the scale said.

On the other hand, the people who are the most successful in weight loss, in taking the weight off and keeping it off forever, are people who have a weight loss goal and who actually reach that goal. Not the people who lose some of their excess weight, or who get almost to the goal. No, the people who keep it off get all the way to their exact goal.

Many people can lose some of their weight and get part way to their goal. But the vast majority gain it back. But those people who have a goal and reach the goal are much more likely to keep the weight off.

So you see, there are two sides to the weight loss coin. There is more to losing weight and getting the body you want than the scale. And on the other hand, having a goal and reaching it will dramatically increase your odds of staying lean forever.

So what do you do? The best way is to make the scale part of your plan, but not the whole plan. Weigh yourself regularly, keep a chart, and watch only the long-term trend, not the daily ups and downs. And you can get the body you want.

Dan Curtis, M.D. Can help YOU lose weight. Sign up for our free newsletter: Dr. Dan’s Super Weight Loss Tips, Tricks and Secrets. It’s free! Click here http://www.superweightlossplan.com/newsletter/

Tags: fitness, weight lossfitness, weight loss

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Have you ever heard of the truism “jokes are half meant”? If you have, do you believe in it? If you have not, then now, you have read of it and maybe if you read on, you’d be able to think of a joke of your own which could be half or full-meant.

I gathered some of the most popular jokes on health and fitness over the Internet and after laughing about them, I thought maybe I could tell something that would prove that these jokes were born out of the sometimes painful and bitter realities of life.

It would really be nice to have a slim and really fit body but not everybody is blessed with such. There are some people, no matter how much food they take, including calories, fats and all, who never gain weight or grow fat. But to those who are blessed with tons of excesses in fats and weight, trimming down is one of the most difficult tasks in the world. Especially if “exercise” and “dieting” are alien terms for them, this humorous analysis of how the human body was arranged is just right:

I don’t exercise at all. If God had wanted me to touch my toes He would have put them up higher on my body.

Sometimes, in the lowest point of your weight-loss campaign wherein only your weight doesn’t go down and the rest, most especially your ego, has dropped down beyond the base, you find ways to console your ultra-bruised and dying ego. And one is to consider that every shape is accepted in the society:

I’m in shape. Round is a shape.

And then there’s the matter of aging. To some, the question is: why change the course of time? A person’s age adds up and along with the increase of the age is the gradual decline of the body. It is just a normal process. Why put pressure on yourself and your failing body? Age, time and fats are ganging up on you, three to one:

The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight because by then, your body and your fat have become such inseparably good friends.

To choose whether to follow what you think or what you feel is another difficult task. It is an honorable and praiseworthy thought of working to get into shape. But, what would you do if the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak?

Every time I get the urge to exercise, I lie down till the feeling passes.

And then there are some people whose form of exercise is sharpening their wits. They could utter one-liner wisecracks that could make it to the funniest sitcom on TV:

The only exercise you get is jumping to conclusions.

And who said that only the adults are having a hard time being friendly with exercising? Take a trip to a school PE schedule and you might be surprised to hear some outrageous quips coming from the tots that you think are advocates of physical fitness:

My gym teacher told me to touch my toes. I said, “I don’t have that kind of relationship with my feet. Can I just wave?”

Excuses are the most popular forms of escape from the campaign towards getting fit and healthy. Here are some excuses that you may have sheepishly used once, twice or maybe more than thrice:

Tags: fitness, fun, grow younger, health, medicune. laughfitness, fun, grow younger, health, medicune. laugh

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