Here are a few inspirational quotes and how they can help you get moving and lose weight.
"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."—Maya Angelou
"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know."—William Saroyan
Interpretation: By carefully examining what went wrong when you fail, you learn something that will help prevent you from failing again.
Application: By looking at your failures, you learn what NOT to repeat. Keep an open mind. Think of the strategies that have not worked when you've tried to lose weight. Make sure to ask yourself: Why didn't these strategies work, and what have I learned from them?
More: 4 Reasons Why Most Diets Fail
But if you lost the weight, even if you regained it, you succeeded, too. Researchers say that about 30 to 40 percent of weight-control success has to do with reviewing and analyzing past success. You learn something from every diet you've been on, but it's up to you to figure out what you gained from all that hard work. When looking at your past, keep in mind that it's not unusual to camouflage certain unflattering truths about yourself. An honest and uninhibited look at your history is a courageous and healing act that will change your future for the better.
More: The Diet Detective: A Beginner's Diet for Weight Loss
"Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it a thousand times."—Mark Twain
Interpretation: It's easy to lose weight; it's hard to keep it off.
Application: Weight maintenance is significantly more important and more difficult than losing weight. Why don't we pay more attention to it? Because it's just not as sexy. No scale moves, no dramatic "before and afters."
Here are a few tips:
- Almost all successful weight-loss maintainers have some kind of "5-pound warning system"—a way of monitoring their weight before it gets out of control. It could be something as simple as keeping a "thin" pair of pants to try on periodically.
- Successful maintainers have figured out ways to make their choices second nature. Set yourself up so that you don't have to think about your diet by coming up with very practical changes and then keep doing them until they become habitual, like brushing your teeth.
- A major predictor of weight maintenance is dietary consistency. People who maintain the same diet regimen across the week and year are more likely to maintain their weight loss than those who diet more strictly on weekdays and/or during non-holiday periods.
