5 mental strategies that will help you lose weight — and keep it off

So we all know that planning ahead is the best way to ensure we fit in workouts and eat healthy, but why then do we so often fail to do it? Delaney says this is where psychology comes into play: We need to find the intrinsic motivation to plan ahead by asking ourselves, where does the value lie?

“Everyone has something that’s going to be more meaningful to them, so you have to figure out what is it that’s going to drive you to actually do it. Is it time saving? Is it cost saving? Is it the ability to make things simple [so that] you don’t need to think about it?” says Delaney. “To sit down on a Sunday and think about planning takes time. How am I justifying that time? Well if I add up the cost savings and the time savings throughout the week, it may have only taken me an hour on a Sunday, but during the week without having to think about it, I just saved five hours. If you do the math, it’s worth it. You’re also giving yourself back some mental space. So instead of waking up in the morning and winging it, now you have some sort of routine so you can feel more in the present and not consistently worrying about what’s coming next.”

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The best way to lose weight boils down to these three things

The best way to lose weight boils down to these three things

Get your family on board

“Family and friend support is so critical to staying accountable," says Delaney. "People may have a sincere interest to work out and eat healthy, but [it's hard if] their family is not on the same page. They buy junk food. They aren’t active. They sit in front of the TV instead of taking a walk.” But getting your family on board with your health goals is another one of those things that’s easier in theory than practice. Delaney offers up three strategies she uses in her own household:

• Show don’t tell. “It’s important as you’re raising children to lead by example and hopefully as they grow up you start to influence their mindset so they become the type of people who want to do these things,” says Delaney. “Kids never like being told what to do, so I was never strong handed. Now that my girls are college-aged, they make good choices on their own. What I’ve learned is, as my children have grown up they on their own have made these choices because they see me working out and eating healthy. What that has done is create an adult that is doing things intrinsically, because they are meaningful to them and not because someone is forcing them to.”
• Make your space exercise friendly. “I’ve made my house health friendly. We never really use our living room and didn’t have room for a home gym, so we decided to push the furniture aside and put out some weights and exercise mats,” she says. Suddenly, squeezing in a workout is as easy as plopping down on the couch to watch TV.
• Re-think date night. “It’s really hard to find time to be together. People always say 'date night,' but it’s hard to get out once a week and leave the kids and do that," says Delaney. "So what we do is rather than date night we try to have one or two days a week where we train together in the gym. We spend time as a couple together being active and doing active things with the family. One of our favorite things to do is walk around the city, we don’t take cabs, we walk the whole city, window shop and have something to eat. When it comes to exercise, have fun and don’t make it feel like it’s a chore.”

Practice these mini motivation-boosters once a week

How do we keep ourselves motivated to continue to put in the work? It’s hard to do! If it was easy, “lose weight” wouldn’t have a permanent spot on our New Year’s resolution list. Delaney offers up two tactics that will continuely stoke the fire:

• Use weekly check-ins to celebrate small successes. Recognizing your wins keeps you motivated, says Delaney, who recommends checking in with yourself every Sunday about your progress for the week — specifically what went well. "When you did a good job, you should recognize that because that keeps you motivated,” she says. “Then you can go back and reflect. It’ll remind you of your progress and of the things that you did really well; we need that. Part of the sustenance of keeping with a goal is feeling good about yourself.” Take five minutes each Sunday to complete this journaling prompt: What did I do well this week? What didn’t go well this week? What can I do differently next week to improve?

• Schedule "cheat meals" and gym breaks into your routine. “It’s hard to be consistently motivated and always be on your game. Give yourself a little bit of a reprieve," says Delaney. "Mentally, it’s not normal to constantly be on all the time, we need to unwind and relax. By doing something that’s not perfect, were allowing ourselves to revel in the moment and celebrate our success; it gives us a renewed energy to move on.” To do this, Delaney says to schedule one cheat meal a week, and to pick 1-2 days where you let your body rest. "Go out and have a slice of pizza and a glass of red wine. Your body needs that, not just physically, but mentally. Same with the gym. You don’t need to work out every day. Give your body that recoup time; physically and mentally it needs it. Give yourself a break so you can sustain that motivation. It’s an allowance instead of creating the ‘I messed up syndrome’ which causes you to get off track.”