Are you afraid that a lack of motivation and commitment will torpedo your weight-loss or fitness efforts? Think you may be a lost case
with little hope of long-term success - maybe with a history of failed attempts to prove it?
At last! Read the good news...
The biggest obstacle for you, or anybody, to embark on a weight-loss or fitness programme is inside your own head.
First, to gather the courage and motivation to start, and then, perhaps most crucially, to keep the momentum and commitment to persevere
until your goals
are reached. The reasons for your success or failure are psychological. They do not come from any specific diet, nor from a
health supplement container.
And still the weight-loss industry worldwide responds, year after year, by flooding the market with all sorts of new discoveries, promising
instant slimming without really having to change your lifestyle. "Lose weight without dieting" is a common advertisement slogan.
But even with this promise, you'll always find the catch in the fine (mostly VERY fine) print:
"Only effective as part of calorie-controlled intake". In plain English this means you'll have to cut back on eating, in order for this
wondrous discovery to work. No impact on your lifestyle, or no dieting? Yeah, right.
If your weight problem is primarily the result of your lifestyle and not due to medical conditions such as low thyroid function,
the bottom line is that you will have to modify your lifestyle if you want to lose weight. Nobody really wants to hear this,
but this is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If you are serious about losing weight or increasing your fitness and be
successful over the long term, your first step is to come to terms with this fact. If not, you'll forever be chasing after elusive magic
quick-fixes, and find yourself repeatedly exploited by a fairly ruthless industry who won't have too many moral objections to take you
for all you're worth.
OK, let's assume you're in agreement. What now? We all know that the term "lifestyle change" which is thrown about so casually
is only a politically correct euphemism for the rather unpleasant-sounding concepts of dieting and exercise.
The reasons for apprehension concerning diet and exercise are simple: Many fear the prospect of not being able to get going with a diet-
or exercise programme, and even more fear the prospect of failure, not trusting their own will-power and commitment. Ask anyone who has
attempted to do this a few times without success. Maybe you can identify with this yourself.
This is where motivation will make or break your effort. Motivation drives your attitude. It boosts your morale, discipline,
commitment and perseverance. If you're motivated you will
find your lifestyle changes less unpleasant - you will even come to enjoy them, and even more so enjoy your success. Only if your
motivation can sustainably overcome your bad lifestyle habits, will you be able to lose the weight, keep it off and be more
healthy. Your results will only be as good as your ability to stay motivated.
Not much we can do about motivation for lifestyle change, most of us tend to think, besides joining a weight-loss club,
attending motivational seminars or spending hours in therapy with a shrink... Or is there?
Motivation is the key. We discovered an astoundingly effective way
for you to get and maintain the motivation and commitment to make your lifestyle plan work. And to keep it working over the long term.
The motivating power of BodyByte was originally identified as a potential spin-off benefit that you would enjoy from using BodyByte.
However, the extent and significance of this power only became fully apparent after trials and testing with a range of users and volunteers
commenced, and the results were analyzed.
Apart from the technical feedback to verify the functions and calculations built into BodyByte,
comments received from the vast majority of participants did not concern the technical issues, but featured the almost unanimous verdict that
using BodyByte somehow boosted their focus, motivation and commitment well beyond what they generally thought themselves capable of.
Further development and testing revealed that the original identification of BodyByte as a motivation booster had been grossly
underestimated. Feedback to date has confirmed that BodyByte has the power to contribute hugely to
address the core issue of weight-loss and fitness - your motivation.
The following observations are compiled from experiences reported in the majority of user feedback, and may well hold the critical
key to your own successful weight-loss and fitness...
When starting to use BodyByte, your attention is focused AWAY from your own perceived lack of motivation.
When you begin to create your user profile in BodyByte, you start off by comprehensively reviewing your own body, something you
may not have done in years, or ever. You are not willfully trying to build up will-power to dive into a diet- or exercise programme,
but rather become sub-consciously focused on your body details, as well as the goals that you would like to reach. Users report that
this simple act of "taking stock" and coming to grips with your status quo generates a sense of expectancy in your own mind, a feeling
of "I'm doing it right this time".
Capturing your lifestyle plan instills a sense of understanding and control,
of focus and purpose.
You can capture ANY diet- or exercise plan into BodyByte. You may decide to use the latest diet fad or a meal plan published in a
health magazine or book. Or one supplied by your nutrition professional. Irrespective, you become involved in the details of your plan by
simple stuff such as locating the food items in the food database, entering regularly used recipes, and arranging them into a computerized
meal plan format. Users report that even at this early stage, they become aware of, and "educated" on, food qualities and quantities,
nutrient and energy content as they go along. They generally experience growing feelings of a sense of understanding and taking control.
Completion of your initial information input creates an urgency to start your lifestyle change.
One of the most remarkable experiences reported by users, is that the entire prelude of getting all the information together, compiling
a strategy to follow, somehow dramatically reduced their usual dread of the starting date. Instead, they experienced an almost automatic
motivational urge to get going and tackle the beast head-on. Interestingly, a common tactic most people employ to defer the dreaded
date is by insisting that it should be on the FIRST day of a year, a month, a week or some other logical demarkated date. This is just a
simple example of our natural need to have some sort of structured strategy and control, and an important clue as to why the BodyByte
structured approach works so well.
Commencing with your lifestyle change is perceived to be more purposeful, with a heightened
sense of awareness.
Once started with their lifestyle intervention programme, users reported that the sense of awareness and control remained, as
long as they diligently stuck to monitoring themselves and their programme. The task of attending to ongoing information management
of your lifestyle intervention programme is all you need to focus on, to maintain your perception of being in control. In your own mind,
perception is fact. To believe you are really succeeding and having the perception that you are in control, means you are.
When you falter, the information feedback provides support to continue, and you
remain in control.
We all falter. It happens. Unfortunately for many people, faltering only once in a weight-loss programme is a shortcut to giving up
altogether, because they believe they have just "blown it all" in one go. But when entering the details of a faltering episode into
BodyByte, users reported that analysis of the information showed it was not that big a deal. It wasn't the end of the world,
and in the greater scheme of things, merely a ripple in the pond. For most this was enough to put the incident behind them, and
continue with their programme with renewed commitment.
When your plan doesn't give the results you expect, you are in control to find reasons and
to make necessary changes.
Some diet- or exercise plans work better than others for different people. Some result in fast weight-loss, others are slower
but more sustainable over the long term. No matter which regime you are following, most people experience at some stage that it's
not working as it should. You may sometimes hit a body weight "plateau" which you cannot seem to break through. If you do not have
access to detailed information about your lifestyle programme, this is where you run the highest risk of getting derailed. Users
reported that they were always able to find the reason for the hiccup. Some found they were not sticking to their diet so
diligently anymore, "offending" every now and then. Others were able to establish that periods of weight standstill could be attributed
to muscle gains from their fitness programme, which were clearly revealed by continued body fat loss and body measurement
changes. Without having access to this information they would have been vulnerable to feelings of failure, and a loss of control.
That's all you need to begin sliding.
You don't need to focus conscious attention on your motivation.
In all of what has been discussed so far, NEVER ONCE did the notion of a conscious effort to boost your motivation arise. Motivation
does not seem to be something most of us can willfully control very well, because it is built or eroded primarily by emotion and feelings.
By far the most powerful feeling to build and sustain your motivation is that of being in control. Bad lifestyle habits essentially
represent out-of-control aspects of your life. Once you feel you're in control you're motivated to start and persevere with changes.
In the case of lifestyle modification, BodyByte user feedback suggests that it is far more effective to build
and maintain your motivation by indirect means. Concentrating on the information management of your lifestyle creates a focus on its
content, and boosts feelings of knowing, being in control. That's all you need to get and remain motivated.
You create sufficient time for your lifestyle changes to become habits.
There are some researchers who claim you need only 3 weeks for a behavior change to become a habit. Others say it's more like 6 weeks.
Bottom line is, it is not a long time. You only need a relatively short period of time for your lifestyle changes to become effective
new habits. And that is what it's all about: modification of your habits. Using BodyByte to get your motivation and commitment going,
you place yourself in a powerful position to succeed with your new lifestyle, even if you have failed many times before.
Try it. Take the trouble to become involved in the "nuts and bolts" of your lifestyle plan. Capture the details of your meal plans and
exercise routines. Check the nutritional values, get a sense of energy and nutrient content of your favorite foods. Do your history recording
diligently - BodyByte makes it easy and quick. When you focus on this, you focus away from your fear of failure, your worries that your
will-power will break down. You'll find motivation not to be an issue because you never deal with it directly. You will FEEL in control,
therefore you will BE in control.
