In my last post, I wrote about the importance of FOOD and the fact that food is more important than exercise for burning fat and losing weight.
Food is the foundation of health.
What you choose to fuel your body with has an effect on every one of your 50–100 trillion cells.
Food affects your energy levels, hormones, body shape, immune system, mood, libido, and much, much more.
With this in mind, wouldn’t you want to put the best quality fuel you can find in the tank?
To put it another way, if you put junk in, you’ll get junk out (in terms of performance, body composition, energy levels, etc.).
You get the picture right? Food is important.
But, if you want to achieve realistic, sustainable results that last, long term, then there is a step that comes before food and is even more important than food.
MINDSET.
The mental game is overlooked in almost all weight loss programmes on the market but, in my system, it is the first and most important part of the programme (that’s why my company is called Think Food Move, because those are the key steps to successful weight loss, in that order).
Creating what I call a “weight loss mindset” is the key ingredient that separates clients who get amazing results and totally transform their bodies, health and fitness, from clients who get mediocre results that don’t last.
The first group do what they need to do to get the results they want and the second group make excuses (I don’t have enough time to cook or exercise or some other rubbish).
The mindset part is about uncovering your true motivation and the deep, emotional reasons why you MUST breakthrough your limiting beliefs and create new, healthy habits.
It’s not about willpower.
Willpower is a finite resource that is depleted with every decision you have to make throughout the day and will let you down when the going gets tough.
Willpower helps you start a diet in the first week of January but runs out three weeks later when you’ve had a shitty day and feel stressed and tired.
Instead of relying on willpower, you must fire yourself up and engage your elephant (more on this coming soon).
You must create an unbreakable mindset that will help you stick to the plan and be consistent, even in the dark moments when you want to throw in the towel.
A simple way to do this is to use what Tony Robbins calls “The Pleasure Pain Principle”.
In a nutshell, you have to find a way to make eating healthily, exercising and working towards your goals pleasurable instead of painful because it’s moving you closer to what you want to achieve.
And you have to find a way to make the short term pleasure / instant gratification of eating bread, pasta, ice cream, biscuits and cake painful because it’s moving you away from what you want to achieve.
With the right coaching, tools and someone to hold you accountable, achieving your goals is a lot more simple than you think.
But it isn’t always easy.
If it was easy, then everyone would be walking around slim, rich and happy!
