Different Mindset, Different Results: How to Think About Losing Weight and Getting Fit
Jodi Davis
| 4 min read
Being able to put yourself in a different mindset is such tremendous help when you are trying to lose weight and get into better shape. It’s really pretty simple to do, but you have to allow yourself to relax and allow your mind to look at stuff a bit differently, changing how you view certain things. It really does bring successful weight loss, but can only help when you are truly ready. Are you?
‘There is No Way’
OK, let me explain how this works. First off, I don’t know about you, but I do not like being told how to live my life. I think that is why all of my weight-loss goals were never met before because I was told how to follow a diet and told how to exercise, and honestly that just made me angry! It was almost as if I ultimately failed at every weight-loss attempt because I was mad at being told how to do things.
My mindset was, You must follow every rule exactly or you are a failure. You see, I didn’t want to follow every single rule perfectly because to be honest, half of them did not make sense to me. Rules like: Don’t eat after 7 p.m.; exercise a minimum of two hours per day; coffee is all you can have for breakfast; dinner consists of a protein shake… whatever! My mindset was, There is no way.
And those ways don’t work. So I was done. But what I found is if I put myself in a different mindset, I could enjoy what I’m doing and have fun with it! I started to look at things differently, which allowed me to succeed at losing weight and most importantly, keep it off.
First of all, as I’ve mentioned in past posts, I did not want to exercise, especially for a minimum of two hours per day! Who has time for that? But facing facts, it only made sense that in order to burn off my excess fat, I had to really get moving at least once a day. That’s why I chose walking, because it was just that — taking a walk. I never called it exercise. My new mindset told myself it was no big deal — it’s just a walk, and I took one each day for only 22 minutes, not two hours. Nobody told me when, how far or how fast to do it — I did what I wanted.
Here’s where I really used a different mindset: on my food intake, which obviously converts to calorie intake. Was I careful? Yes, but I did not want to be told how, what or when to eat. I made sure to never skip meals and stay around 1,200 daily calories.
Rethink Your Food
But what was really fun for me was this: I knew that walking one mile burns about 100 calories. When I made a sandwich with mustard and completely omitted the 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise I would have normally used, my mind told me that I just walked almost 2 miles! You see, 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise contains 180 calories … I just omitted that amount from my calorie intake, which is approximately two miles of walking. Woo hoo!
Here’s more:
- Omit 1 tablespoon of butter (100 calories) on my morning toast — I just walked another mile!
- Omit 3 teaspoons of sugar (45 calories) in my morning coffee — I just walked another half mile!
- Omit 12 ounces of sugary pop (189 calories) and drink water instead — I just walked almost 2 miles!
- Omit two sandwich cookies (110 calories) for a snack — I just walked another mile!
- Omit two handfuls of potato chips (20 chips=200 calories) — I just walked 2 entire miles!
- Omit one candy bar (250 calories or more!) — I just walked more than 2 miles!
Of course, I wasn’t actually physically walking each of those miles, but it was a new mindset that reminded me of how easily I could have consumed those extra, unnecessary calories that I wasn’t ready to walk off! I love to walk, but if you add up the miles from just a few of the items listed above, I would have had to walk all day to burn them off. Let’s get real — I’m not doing that!
I think it’s great that anyone can imagine that they “walk several miles at lunch” by omitting fast food and making healthy choices instead. Oh, and you really can (physically) take a walk at lunch, and I suggest that you do!
Actually BURN some calories and exercise your heart and lungs… a different mindset cannot do that for you, but your legs can!
Are you ready to change your mindset?
Photo by Gwin Michael
