Question:  How long have you been on your weight loss journey?  Weeks?  Months?  Years?

Weight loss can indeed be a long journey sometimes.  The length of that journey usually depends on how much weight an individual has to lose, one’s body type (endomorph, ectomorph, mesomorph), health conditions, and so on.

Sometimes though, weight loss becomes a painfully unnecessarily long journey because of one crucial word.

HABIT.

Habits are HUGE

Habits are absolutely huge when it comes down to trying to lose weight.  We can partially attribute much of where we are in life, including where we are health-wise, to the sum of our lifelong habits.

Back then:  We were told to clean our plates, and that there were starving children in other countries…

NOW:  We do not leave any food on our plates, even if we are full.

Back then:  We had favorite TV shows that we would watch…

NOW:  The couch in front of the TV is the after-work spot every day for hours at a time.

Back then:  We started to prefer video games over playing outside…

NOW:  We barely go outside at all, aside from getting in the car to go somewhere, or getting in the car to come back home.

Back then:  We got candy for good grades and behavior…

NOW:  We buy our own sweets to help us feel good.

A lifetime of bad habits undoubtedly contributes to health problems, including extra weight and obesity.  I am sure that you know without me telling you that bad habits are hard to break.

However, if you have been in a perpetual losing battle with extra weight, you must tackle the problem of bad habits so that you can not just lose the weight, but also, so that you can move on with your life.  Too often, we spend huge chunks of life trying to lose weight.  It is time to stop trying and do what you have to do so that you can focus on living.

How to Deal with Bad Health Habits

With that, we obviously know that bad habits must be replaced with good habits, but how?  It is definitely easier said than done.  How do you stop gorging yourself with food when you have done it for a lifetime?  How do you abandon a lifelong sweet tooth?

• Make up your mind.  So here is the question:  How bad do you really want to get to a healthy weight?  Do you want it bad enough to do whatever it takes to lose it?  Only when you have become truly tired of where you are will you be ready to really lose weight.
• Tackle each habit one at a time.  Take a piece of scratch paper and jot down all of the unhealthy habits you know have contributed to your extra weight, and with that, strive to replace each bad habit one-by-one.  As you see, this requires patience.  It is easy to want to lose weight so badly that you try to deal with all of your bad habits at once…often the quickest recipe for failure.
• Do not expect it to be easy.  Losing weight, when done correctly without trying to take shortcuts, will be hard.  For the right kind of weight loss, there are no shortcuts…well, let me rephrase that…there are no safe shortcuts.  There always is added risk when shortcuts are taken (pills, powders, etc.).  Think about it.  If it took you 20 years to gain, you should not expect to (or try to) lose it in 2 weeks.
• When you fail, immediately GET BACK UP.  I somewhat hesitate to say this, but you are pretty much guaranteed to fail, at least when you are in the early stages.  I am not encouraging you to try to fail, of course, but the truth is that things happen.  But here is the thing.  You only truly fail when you quit.  If you slip and do not catch yourself, that constitutes failure.  Success is going to come from a series of failures followed by you getting back up again.  So if you fall, do not fret…just please, get back up!

You do not have to struggle to lose weight year after year.  Deal with the bad habits, so that you can go ahead and lose the weight and move on with your life.  Please reply below with any questions or comments.