Many times in my over twenty years as a personal trainer, I have seen clients make awesome progress with regard to following the customized eating plan I give them only to become complacent and slip back into the unhealthy dietary habits that brought them to the point of desperation. The question is how do we maintain the mindset that created success with regard to weight loss. The answer is that we must unswervingly focus on the end goal we established when we began on the program. Let's say a client comes to me who weighs two-hundred and fifty pounds and he desires to take his weight down to two hundred pounds. The client, in order to remain motivated, must constantly, reaffirm the commitment he originally made to drop his weight to two hundred pounds.
I firmly believe in using weight loss related mantras in order to stay motivated. The question is what is a mantra? A mantra is a constantly repeated saying which will affirm the client's goals until the mantra becomes a part of the client's belief system. Is this brainwashing? Maybe, but for thousands of years this has been a method which has been used in religion and in education to form belief systems and ingrain powerful and useful truths. In their spare time, I instruct my clients to constantly repeat the success mantra until it becomes such a part of them that nothing could stop them from achieving their weight loss goal.
Another power technique involves obtaining a picture of a body which is representative of what the client's end goal is regarding appearance. Every day that picture should be looked at, and I instruct the client to spend one half hour creating a mental picture of themselves with this goal body. This method is called visualization, and if practiced regularly will never fail to aid in the quest to remain motivated.
In order achieve success in their fitness program it is necessary for the client to dedicate themselves in totality in achieving their goals. Success only comes when a person dedicates themselves unreservedly in the pursuit of their goal. No failure self talk can be tolerated; examples of this would be "I have never been able to go more than two weeks on a weight loss diet," or "I will always be fat," statements such as these are the exact opposite of the success mantra described previously in this article. Success mantras, if diligently practiced, will drown out negative self talk. Negative self talk is the number one enemy of program success and must be overcome by diligent practice of the techniques mentioned previously in this article.
Success is a certainty if motivation is maintained and I hope the motivational techniques mentioned in this article will enable you to achieve success in your weight loss endeavor.
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Fort Lauderdale Personal Trainer Joe Kozma is a master trainer who has been practicing for over twenty years. Joe is a former national bodybuilding champion and college football player. Joe's fitness and weight loss service provides body makeovers, bodysculpting, strength gain, and more. See his clients at his Fort Lauderdale Fitness website.
