Losing Weight: How Do I Start?

Contents

• Getting started
• The importance of setting a goal
• A lapse is not a collapse
• Useful resources 

Motivation

What is your motivation to manage for making a change?

Do you want to improve your health; to have more energy; to feel better about yourself or fit back into some of your favourite clothes?

Writing it down, visualising your end goal, and reminding yourself of why you want to lose weight in the first place will help with your motivation.

Lifestyle

This includes your diet, physical activity, how much alcohol you drink, and whether you smoke.

You might find it helpful to keep a food and physical activity diary for a week as this can help identify some areas where you can make some small changes.

Try identifying one or two things you can change to start with – this could be going out for a short walk every day, or perhaps eating breakfast at the same time every morning. Once you start making some changes and start to see and feel some benefits then try making some more changes.

Support

What and who is going to support you in the changes you are making?

Your support might be a friend that you can exercise with; planning out all of your meals in advance; using an app to track food and exercise; joining a weight management class or your partner or family also joining you with the changes you are making. Doing things differently isn’t easy to start with but having support will make the journey there much easier! How often have you told yourself that you’ll go out for a walk or run but you can’t muster the energy when the time comes? If you have a friend or family member you, you’re far more likely to go and enjoy it! 

Monitoring

How are you going to track your progress?

Decide what you want to track and how you want to track it. You could set a day for a weekly weigh-in and track it in an app or diary. You might prefer to take progress photos at certain time intervals so you have a visual comparison.

Having a record of the progress you have made can help you get back on track after a setback. Remember that having a few setbacks is a normal part of the process. What matters is not letting a setback completely derail you from reaching your end goal.

The importance of setting a goal 

Weight loss involves making permanent changes to what you eat and drink, as well as increasing your activity levels. Losing weight in a healthy way can therefore be a big challenge and many people find it difficult to keep these changes going in the long term.

Research into why some people lose weight and keep it off, while others do not, has found that most people who succeed have set a realistic and achievable weight loss goal and put together a personalised weight loss plan that outlines what they are going to do and how they are going to do it.

Specific

Avoid setting goals that are too broad as it can make it hard to track your progress. Instead of the goal just being  to “lose weight”, define how much weight you would like to lose and maybe break it into smaller chunks so it doesn’t seem too overwhelming. 

So instead of saying that you want to lose weight. Say you want to specifically lose 2 stone, at a rate of 7lb every month.

Measurable

Without having something to measure and track, it is difficult to know when you’ve reached your goal. Whatever your goal is, make sure there is a way you can measure it. 

For example, if your goal was to get fitter, it would be better to have measured targets e.g. to complete the couch to 5K programme, and specifically 3 runs in the week which you will track and move onto the next week of the podcast once you’ve completed them.

Achievable

Your goal has to be achievable otherwise, you are setting yourself up to fail. We all want to see results instantly, but for long-term success, you should aim for around 1–2lb weight loss a week. Having an unrealistic goal means that when you don’t achieve it, you feel like you’ve failed and will lose motivation.

Relevant

Your goal should be relevant to your overall objective. So your overall objective may be to lose weight and your goal is to lose 7lb a month. Therefore your goal fits in with what you ultimately want to achieve.

Time-specific

Having a deadline for your goal helps you prioritise it and gives you a sense of urgency. Having no time limit on when you want to achieve your goal can result in you putting it off or delaying it and then you feel like you’re not getting anywhere.

However, if you have a goal of losing 7lb in a month and you achieve that, it gives you a sense of accomplishment and the motivation to keep going.