Top 20 quotes to keep you motivated on your weight loss journey
Millions of people have gone on a weight loss journey. And millions of people have lost their motivation at one time or another. Sometimes all you need is a great quote to get you in a motivated state of mind and start making progress on your journey again. Here are my top 20 quotes to keep you motivated on your weight loss journey: “The scale is merely a measure of my relationship with gravity.”– Lauren Harris-Pincus “When you feel like quitting, think about why you started.”– Author Unknown “Success is the sum of small efforts — repeated day-in and day-out.”– Robert Collier “If you are tired of starting over, stop giving up.” – Author Unknown “You didn’t gain all your weight in one day; you won’t lose it in one day. Be patient with yourself.” – Jenna Wolfe “A journey of 1000 miles begins, continues and ends with a single step” – Andrea Muñoz “Fitness is like marriage; you can’t cheat on it and expect it to work.” – Bonnie Pfiester “Looking after my health today gives me a better hope for tomorrow.” – Anne Wilson Schaef “Action is the foundational key to all success.” —Pablo Picasso “The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man’s determination.” – Tommy Lasorda “Slow and steady wins the race.” – The Tortoise “There’s no such thing as failure: either you win, or you learn.” – Author Unknown “Strive for progress, not perfection.” – Author Unknown “My power lies in my choices.” – Andrea Muñoz “Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.” – Napoleon Hill “We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes―understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.” ―Arianna Huffington “You can either experience the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The choice is yours.” —Unknown “Don’t quit yet, the worst moments are usually followed by the most beautiful silver linings. You have to stay strong, remember to keep your head up and remain hopeful.” ―Unknown “If you believe it’ll work out, you’ll see opportunities. If you don’t believe it’ll work out, you’ll see obstacles.” ―Wayne Dyer “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” ―Arthur Ashe I hope these motivation quotes help you along your journey. Remember to save the ones you love and reflect on them often. If you are still having trouble with your weight loss journey, I’m here to help you. Set up a call with me today and let’s get you started. Your Coach, Andrea
What to do when you lose your weight loss motivation
Motivation is a fleeting thing. It seems to come and go as it pleases. Once motivation begins to wain so often do the healthy habits we put in place to lose weight. For many of us, this is a problem as we begin to put on weight and feel like we have failed. So what should you do? Here are five steps to take when you lose your weight loss motivation: Remind yourself this is normal It’s really easy to look at other people on social media on health and fitness journeys and believe that they are machines that never waiver in their motivation. But that’s simply not true. Social media is often a highlight reel of people’s lives. Everyone on this Earth has struggled with feeling unmotivated. It’s really beneficial to acknowledge to yourself that this is totally normal. It’s likely not the first time you’ve felt unmotivated and it won’t be the last. Acknowledging that this is normal is really important. When you believe you are the only one who feels unmotivated, it creates a feeling of shame. Often times when you feel shame, you hide. You start hiding from your goals and ignore the reasons why you are doing this. You start making excuses how just skipping a workout this one time won’t matter or you deserve to eat this chocolate cake. Before you know it, you are feeling shame for “falling off the wagon” on top of the original shame of not feeling like working out and now you’re in a shame spiral. Shame has never been a good motivator. It’s important to exit that shame spiral by acknowledging that this is a normal part of all health journeys. This is something to be expected. It may not feel great and you might not love it, but it’s also something that won’t last forever. Acknowledge that motivation isn’t a requirement The second step to getting your motivation back is to acknowledge that it’s not required to do the things that result in weight loss. Yep, I said it. Motivation is not required to work out, eat a vegetable or stop eating at enough. Don’t believe me? Think about all the things you do when you simply don’t feel like it. Paying any bills at all would probably qualify. Going to meaningless meetings at work. Taking your car in for emissions testing. Flossing your teeth. You get the point. Motivation is a great thing to have but at the end of the day, you don’t have to feel motivated to take action. What is far better than feeling motivated is feeling committed. Commitment to your health goals is much like your commitment in marriage. It is for better or worse, through thick and thin, and until death do you part. To strengthen your commitment, remind yourself of the consequences of not taking action, which is the next step to getting your weight loss motivation back. Consider the consequences Every action has a consequence, whether good or bad. When you lose your weight loss motivation, your ability to consider the consequences seems to go out the window too. You justify skipping the workout without considering the new sedentary habit you are creating. You eat the chocolate cake without acknowledging that this choice means you won’t lose weight this week. Considering the consequences is not telling yourself that you’ll never lose weight because your undisciplined and a failure for skipping a workout or eating the cake. It’s just a reminder to yourself that your actions have an effect on the results you see on your journey. It is a moment of loving responsibility, not condemnation. Taking the moment to consider what you want right now in this unmotivated moment versus what you want most (meeting your weight loss goal) can be enough to motivate you to make the choice that brings long term success. Count your wins After acknowledging that feeling unmotivated is normal, reminding yourself that motivation is not required to take action and you consider the consequences, it’s time to start counting your wins. Everyone enjoys winning. When you are winning, you want to continue to play the game. When you are losing, you want to pack up your bat and ball and go home. One great way to get your motivation back is to count your wins. No matter big or small, it all counts! Start listing all the things actions you’ve taken on your weight loss journey, the non-scale victories as well as scale victories and you’re on your way to feeling more motivated in no time. Take action As discussed before, you don’t have to feel motivated to take action. So just get started. You don’t have to commit to never missing a workout but what about just doing five minutes right now? You don’t have to write an entire food plan, but what about just filling in what you’ll eat for breakfast. Don’t want to journal? Just write down how you feel today in a couple sentences. Something is always better than nothing and you’ll probably find that when you get the ball rolling, it is easier to convince yourself to just go ahead and finish what you started. In fact, most of us don’t want to take action because we think it will be difficult or require a lot of work. But the reality is once you start doing it, you realize it wasn’t that big of a deal to begin with and will often find it easier to commit to completing the task. And of course, when you take the action, celebrate it. Cue the confetti and tell yourself how amazing you are for doing it when you didn’t feel like it. You put what you want most over what you wanted right now and that is a huge accomplishment! Your Coach, Andrea
Nine lessons learned from losing 90 pounds
When you lose over 90 pounds, the process will change you. You learn things about yourself, see yourself in a new light and even evolve into a better version of yourself (and not just because you lost a ton of weight). I’m going to share with you nine lessons I have learned on my journey to losing over 90 pounds in hopes that they can help you on your journey. I enjoy sweets and treats more the less I eat them On my journey, I didn’t restrict any types of foods, including sweets. In fact, at the beginning I was eating sweets multiple times a day. Eventually I began to focus on foods that really gave me sustained energy and the sweets became less of my daily routine. And you know what? Creating more space and time between the sweets really allowed me to create desire and anticipation for the treat. I savored them more and they were much more enjoyable when they were just a standard part of my day. Emotional eating comes in many forms I was aware that I was an emotional eater but as I began to check in with myself more regularly before eating, I realized I was emotionally eating ALL. THE. TIME. If I was stressed about the kids being crazy kids, let’s look for some relief in the pantry. Work task that I didn’t want to start? Hmm…. maybe I should grab a snack before I get started. Bored? Let’s eat. Tired? A quick bite might energize me. If I was having a disagreement with my husband, I’ll show him by eating the last of the cookies! Feeling proud of my kids school performance? Let’s get ice cream! Becoming aware of all the times I was eating when I wasn’t truly hungry helped me figure out the real solutions for those problems. Now I take a power nap if I’m tired or go to my room for a quick breather when they kids are being crazy. Solving for the true problem allows me to feel better while also losing weight in an enjoyable way. It was time to parent myself My high weight of 250 pounds came from a lot of emotional eating and a side of “I don’t wanna.” I didn’t want to deal with my emotions. Eating fresh fruits and veggies didn’t sound fun. 11,000 steps each day sounded hard. I didn’t want to stick to a food plan. I basically conditioned myself to be a big baby whose brain would throw a fit at the thought of what it would take to get healthier and lose weight. I wanted pleasure and I wanted it NOW. I realized that many of the things I was allowing myself to do (like eat entire boxes of cookies or sit on the couch all day) were things I would never let my kids do. I know that moving your body, getting sunshine and eating a well balanced diet is key to good mental and physical health. Somehow I had convinced myself that because I already KNOW these things that meant I could be exempt from actually doing them. Not only was living my life that way taking a toll on my body but I was increasing mom guilt as I knew I wasn’t practicing what I was preaching to my kiddos. So I started to parent myself. I would acknowledge that I was making changes and that changes are often uncomfortable. That’s OK. It wasn’t going to kill me. In fact the more I practiced this new way of living, the more I would become comfortable with it and even appreciate it. I also made an agreement with myself that just because “I didn’t wanna” didn’t make that a valid excuse for not doing something. Logically I knew these actions were all what was best for me and I could do them even if “I didn’t wanna.” The scale is just one piece of data Yep, it’s been said before and I’m saying it again. The scale is just a number. And it is only one number to consider on your weight loss journey. From the beginning of my weight loss journey, I made sure to track other measurements too. I took body weight measurements, used habit trackers and took progress pictures. These were invaluable as I had weeks were the scale didn’t move (or gasp, went up!). These other measurements helped me stay grounded as I could reflect on the efforts I was putting forth and other changes that my body was making. Other ideas for non-scale measurement are body fat measurements, changes in how much you can lift and cardio endurance. Not sure how to measure cardio endurance? Climb a flight of stairs each month and record how long it takes, how long it takes you to catch your breath and how you feel afterwards. You can also track your mood throughout the process. Every morning record your mood in a journal. Exercise has been proven to elevate your mood so when you start noticing more happy and content days, that’s progress! The only diet drama comes from my own head This lesson took me a little longer to learn. When you are 100 pounds overweight, the beginning of your weight loss journey can be very thrilling. I made very little changes to my diet (I only stopped eating when I had enough, instead of being full) and the weight seemed to fall off. Eventually more changes had to be made to keep losing weight and certainly it was falling off me anymore. Cue the drama! I realized that the weeks where the scale didn’t drop “enough,” stayed the same or went up a bit were really difficult for me. All the sudden my motivation would disappear and I would start questioning if I would ever be able to reach my goal. I knew this was a normal part of the weight loss journey but it felt terrible. So I
Which Weight Loss Plan Is Best For Me?
There are literally endless options when choosing a weight loss plan. By the time I reached my highest weight of 250 pounds, I had tried them all. Weight loss plans based on your body shape, counting points, counting calories, counting carbs, counting macros, cabbage, the military….the list goes on and on and on. How do you decide which weight loss plan is best for you? Choose from love, not impatience. So many of my clients get to a point of desperation about the way their body looks and frustration with their inability to “make the right choices” that they choose a plan based on what will get them the results fastest. While it may seem like a great idea to really buckle down and tough it out, this results in extreme discomfort (with a side of weight loss) for the near future and long term misery (regaining the weight and then some) thereafter. Yep, you can generally follow any plan for a short period of time but those results will be just as short if the plan is not something you can enjoy doing. As humans, we like to feel good. So if it not a plan that you will enjoy following, then it’s not the plan for you. Choose a plan that includes your favorite foods. Nothing will set you up for weight loss failure as much as trying to avoid your favorite foods. It’s just not realistic. Yeah, some people just plan for cheat days but does that really feel any better? Who are your cheating on? Yourself and your goals? Plus when you avoid the foods you really enjoy it creates a feeling of restriction and deprivation that make those foods seem even more delicious and crave worthy. It basically guarantees that when you do finally give into those cravings, you’ll gorge yourself on them and feel immense shame and guilt afterwards. I don’t know about you but shame and guilt are not great motivators for making good choices but rather key ingredients for giving up on weight loss…..once again. Choose a plan that you can do FOREVER. Uh huh, you’ve heard this one before. It’s not about the perfect weight loss plan. It’s about a lifestyle change. If you go on a diet expecting to lose your weight and then go back to your normal ways of eating once you get to goal weight, then you can definitely expect to go back to your original starting weight. That’s why it’s even more important to follow the previous criteria of choosing a plan that includes your favorite foods. If you have no intention of leaving pizza behind as a thing of your past, then you should definitely choose a weight loss plan that includes pizza. Choose a plan that goes beyond exercise and food. It’s really easy to choose a plan that promises to tell us what to eat, how often to exercise and what exact exercises to do. Many of us just want to be told what to do. We don’t want to figure it out for ourselves or don’t TRUST that we can figure it out on our own. But what happens when stress is piling on every day and we are following the plan perfectly and the scale remains the same. What happens when you start telling yourself you “just don’t feel like it anymore.” So many things affect our ability to lose weight and stick to a weight loss plan. To be effective, the weight loss plan that you choose should encompass thought work. In my coaching with clients, I teach that our thoughts create our feelings. So if you are short on motivation, there’s a thought for that! (Try: I am figuring this out! This will result in weight loss! I’m a freaking weight loss machine!) Feeling stressed out and don’t wanna? Take a look at your inner thoughts and see where your thoughts are depleting your desire to make great choices. It may seem surprising but taking responsibility for your emotional life can help you conquer the scale. Choose a plan that doesn’t exist. What does that even mean? Create a plan that is specific and customized to you. Start with where you are and make small, incremental changes to a healthier lifestyle. Start by documenting what you are normally eating and drinking throughout the day and then get curious. What would I be willing to do tomorrow to be 1% healthier? Yes, just 1%. Something so small and seemingly insignificant. Something that you probably dismiss right away as too small to make a difference. But if you commit to changing 1% each day for a year that will result in 365% of change towards and healthier you and a very easy, manageable change each day. (OK, maybe the math doesn’t exactly work out that way but you get what I mean) Remember, the best weight loss plan for you is the one you stick to. Your Coach, Andrea
How To Stop Night Time Snacking
How do you stop late night snacking?! It’s a problem that many of my clients have. You finish up the nightly chores, put the kids to bed and grab a seat on the couch to relax for a bit. Then it hits you, “I think we still have some of those chips in the pantry” or “I could really use some chocolate right now.” Whatever the craving, it comes down to eating when you hadn’t intended and with a side effect of weight gain that you truly didn’t want. Here are five tips to STOP night time snacking: Make a commitment Sounds simple enough but this is different than simply saying that you want to stop night time snacking. This is an actual commitment that you follow through on. Something I do with myself and coach my clients on is the concept “Decide and done.” Once you make the decision that you are not going to snack at night anymore, that’s it. No more discussion. No more back and forth with excuses and justifications. No more second guessing the decision. Going back and forth with yourself about whether or not to have that snack only serves to make you miserable now and potentially make a decision that takes you further away from the person you are trying to become. “To-try list” The thoughts we think are instructions for our brain. When we tell our brain NOT to do something, the instructions aren’t very clear. While the instruction to not do something is generally singular, the options for what to do can be endless. With lack of clarity on what to do in that moment, your brain will want to default back to what it knows and what it has always done: reach for the night time snacks. To make the instructions for your brain more clear, make a list of 20 things to try when you are having a craving to snack at night. Every person is different so I can’t tell you that knitting will certainly work any more than I could tell you the reading a book would. These are things to try and then evaluate how well they worked. Change your routine Humans are creatures of habit. We love routines and predictability. If night time snacking is a part of your routine, then consider creating a new night time routine. You don’t have to turn the whole routine upside down. It could be something as simple as not sitting in your usual spot on the couch. Also, be aware that if your body is used to being fed again at 9pm you are likely going to experience hunger cues at that time for a few weeks before your body gets used to the new routine. This is OK. Expect it and remind yourself that you are getting closer to being the future version of you that doesn’t snack at night. It’s something to be celebrated! Close down your mouth After dinner, clean your mouth and shut it down for the night. Take the time to brush and floss your teeth, rinse with some mouthwash as well as put some Chapstick on. I don’t know about you but I LOVE a fresh and clean mouth. When I have that clean minty feeling, I have no desire to eat plus the taste from the toothpaste also alters the way food tastes (hello orange juice!). Not only can this deter you from wanting to eat but it also a great self care. Self Care A lot of my night time snacking had nothing to do with being hungry. Many nights I would plop down on the couch after a long, stressful day and want to eat something just to feel good. Especially during the pandemic, many of us are just wanting to feel good instead of the stress we feel daily trying to juggle working from home with homeschooling and keeping every one healthy and safe! The simplest version of self care is to check in with yourself before you make the decision to eat. Ask yourself “What am I really hungry for?” or “If I wasn’t hungry, I would be feeling…” Allow yourself to get curious with what else might be going on. Are you lonely or bored? Did today feel pretty crappy and you just want to feel good? Are you tired and just need to go to bed? The best form of self care is to give yourself the support you truly need. So those are my five tips to stop night time snacking but I will give you a bonus tip as well. Maybe you feel like this is all too overwhelming and beyond what you can handle right now. That’s OK. We all have different abilities at different times in our lives. Maybe for you the best thing is to just not buy the types of foods you snack on late at night and replace them with more nutrient dense, prepackage snacks. It is best to have them prepackaged and commit to only having one a night. As you master that level up in your nighttime snacking game, you will feel more confident in eventually cutting it out entirely.