Despite the plethora of advice available  many people fail to lose weight. In my experience as a personal trainer and nutritional therapist, people never fail, they just give up!

They fail to keep the motivation needed to see it through to the end. With that in mind I asked 39 of the leading fitness and nutrition experts one simple question:

“What are your top three motivational tips for someone trying to lose weight?”

Tweet this”: Reach your weight loss goals in no time. Stay motivated with these tips from 30 experts http://bit.ly/1U0wLcX @geraldsmith20

I wanted to know what advice the top nutritional and fitness experts were using to help their clients stay motivated, feel happier, and to shrink their waist lines.

This is what the experts recommend:

1. Understand your WHY? (9 votes)
2. Set SMART Goals (8 Votes)
3. Start Small/go slow (6 Votes)
4. Don’t beat yourself up/stay positive (4 Votes)
5. Be accountable (4 Votes)
6. Form daily routines (4 Votes)
7. Get a support network (coach, friends) (4 Votes)
8. Be grateful for the little wins (4 Votes)
9. Don’t be too serious/have fun (4 Votes)
10. Fuel your mind/educate yourself (4 Votes)
11. Write a plan of action (2 Votes)
12. Don’t make weight loss your goal (3 Votes)
13. Don’t weigh yourself (3 Votes)
14. Get into a routine (3 Votes)
15. Make a list or think of what you will do when you’ve lost the weight (2 Votes)
16. Be prepared to go outside your comfort zone (2 Votes)
17. love yourself (2 Votes)
18. Bounce back quickly when you lapse (2 Votes)
19. Silence limiting beliefs (1 Votes)
20. Get an App to help you keep track of your progress (1 Votes)
21. Do exercises that you find fun (1 Votes)
22. Use affirmations daily (1 Votes)
23. Relax/meditate (1 Votes)
24. Make it your top priority! (1 Votes)
25. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else (1 Votes)
26. Use visualisation (1 Votes)
27. Do simple daily routines (1 Votes)
28. Separate your bad unconscious habits and your good conscious thoughts (1 Votes)
29. Measure your progress with graphs (1 Votes)
30. Write in your diary every time you have cravings to see a pattern (1 Votes)
31. Find an alternative to comfort eating or eating when stressed  (1 Votes)

Read the rest of the article to see each experts top 3 motivational tips or simply click on the name of the expert who’s views you want to see the most.

Angela Freeman, Angie Spencer, Armen Armirien, Bevan James Eyles, Blythe Alberg, Brent Griffin, Claire Snowdon-Darling, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau,  Deborah Walker, Derek Doepker, Dr Lewis, Gabrielle Maston, Guy Bortz, James Mathews, Jamie Godfrey, Jason Glass, Jason Reiman, Kameron C Tarry, Kirsty Jo Hunt, Lawrence Neal, Lisa Druxman, Major Mason, Mark Metz, Mark Rogers, Mark Sisson, Mason Bendewald, Menno Henselmans, Ministry Of Movement, Paige Smathers, Dr. Robert Maki, Sheree Martin, Steven Stearns, Tanja Shaw, Tanya Fraser, Tawnee Prazak, Taylor Ryan, Tony Federico, Zuzana Fajkusova

Responses listed in the order they were Received:

Unveiling the Best Advice from 39 Leading Weight Loss Coaches

#1. Tanja Shaw – Fit & Vibrant You 

Great question. If you ask 10 people how to stay motivated, you’ll get 10 different responses  and, they could all be ‘right’.  What’s important is to find what’s ‘right’ for you.  Approach weight loss with curiosity, and the desire to love and honour your body.  Give yourself the space and the grace to slip up, and learn from mistakes.  To get started, look at the big picture:

1. Ask yourself ‘why’ you want to lose weight.  Get really clear on the why, and tap into your emotions.  Ask yourself, how do you want to feel?  And what does success look like?  Think action steps: what to fit/ healthy/ strong people do everyday?

2. From your vision of what success looks like/ what healthy and fit people do everyday, pick 1 or 2 things that you can implement into your life.  Make those action steps the goal, rather than focusing on weight loss alone.  Possible action steps may be to walk on your lunch break, to make some swaps to whole, real food, to get 7-8 hours of sleep each night or to manage your stress and workload.  Don’t get too overwhelmed with which habit to start with, just do something  And pick something that you can sustain for the long term. The goal isn’t just to lose 10, 20 or 100 pounds, is to also be 10, 20 or 100 pounds lighter 1, 3, 10 years from now.

3. Get support.  Whether you’re a newbie when it comes to fitness and health, or have been on and off for your entire adulthood, invest time and energy, and possibly money, into getting support.  Consider a coach, a close friend, or a community of like-minded people to keep you accountable to reaching your goals.  Even if you are self-motivated and self-accountable, it makes the journey much more enjoyable!

BONUS: Ditch perfectionism.  Weight loss, healthy eating is a practice.  If you’re trying to get good at a skill, such as paddle boarding or golfing, you don’t give up every time you fall or the ball doesn’t go where you want it to.  You learn and you try again.  “Failure” is simply learning another way that doesn’t work.  You have a reason why (see step 1)- try again.

#2. Steven Stearns –  Outside Health & Fitness

1 – while it’s important to focus on where you want to go, don’t forget to look back and be proud of how far you’ve come.2 – Find your “why” and remind yourself of it when things get tough. Maybe you want to lose weight so you can do more with your kids, or get back on the golf course…keep a picture with you so it’s an easy reminder.

3 – Find something fun and active to do. It can be a great motivator to lose weight and provide a little exercise, disguised as fun! Some ideas: bike riding, golf, swimming, bowling, etc.

#3.  James Mathews – JM15 podcast

We all hear nowadays about how much you need to focus on your nutrition and training to achieve the body you have always wanted.

You have possibly heard the whole percentage thing where it is 80% nutrition and 20% training. Now I am not saying that these 2 things don’t play a massive role in achieving the body you have always wanted because they do and I believe that you can’t out train a bad diet.

But also when you train you need to give it your all.  One of the most key things and most overlooked areas in any fat loss programme is mindset. I believe that without the right mindset you will find it hard to follow a nutritional plan or training plan.

You see mindset is what is going to be the main driving force for you to achieve your goals and without that you are entering a journey basically blindfolded. So here are 3 easy tips on how to find out your goals and what you want to achieve and how to stick to them.

1. Write a Life Vision- We have all heard of SMART goal setting (S-specific, M-measureable, A-achievable, R-realistic, T-time). See a life vision takes that one step further in my opinion. This is something I learnt from my coach David Godfrey. Since really applying this into my training I have had that final understanding of what I want to achieve and what is my driving force.

You see a life vision doesn’t just look at how you want look or how much weight or fat you might want lose, it looks at other factors such as love (relationships with partners, parents, friends) and wealth (how you want your career to look, maybe you want to start up your own company). The reason why this can be so valuable to write out these other goals is that you will find everything links together.

So you might want to get leaner or healthier, this could then mean you have more energy whilst you are at work so you have more output, could lead to promotion, which then could link to relationships because you have more energy so you will do more things like going out etc. Understanding all of these things can play such a massive role in achieving the physique you have always wanted.
2. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable- I am not going to sit here and tell you that this journey is going to be easy and that fat is just going to melt off of your body because it won’t. The human body is very clever and will do its upmost to keep itself in homeostasis (maintain balance within the body).

To achieve fat loss you are going to have to train hard and train with intensity each workout. Your muscles are going to burn due to metabolites being built up within the muscles such as lactic acid, but get used to this and power through it. You will want to give up you will want to fall on the floor but drive through it and push yourself. Your brain will always give out before your muscles.

Your muscles will be able to give so much more but your brain will be telling you NO! Learning how to differentiate between the brain telling you to stop and your muscles not being able to do anymore is key. It will not be comfortable but the more you get used to being with uncomfortable the better your results will be.

3. Be patient and consistent- Possibly not what you want to hear. But it’s the truth sometimes you have to patient with your own transformation, it is not going to happen overnight you have to be consistent with your nutritional plan and training plan. There is going to be times where you think to yourself I can’t do this anymore I am just not seeing the results I want too. We have all been there we want things to happen quickly. All the best transformations have taken time and hard work.

The one thing if you ask anyone who has achieved a fat loss goal is that they were consistent with everything and they changed their lifestyle to make sure they can be consistent. Now can you do a 12 week transformation? Yes of course you can.

Think of the long term and think if I do this 12 week transformation then this is what is going to happen in the long term and understand the next steps after those 12 weeks so that you stay consistent and keep the physique and build on the physique you have achieved over those 12 weeks of hard work.

#4. Guy Bortz – Fit Info Club

Firstly, Id like to start off with that yes, I am a strength coach/personal trainer, however I am not a dietician, medical practitioner, or exercise physiologist, and i think you should always consult your relative healthcare professional before engaging in any sort of weight loss program. With this in mind, these are some tips i think might help people on their journey to a healthy, progressive, and sustainable weight loss adventure:

a) Start Small – Achieving success in many pursuits of life requires consistency. In order to successfully achieve and maintain our fitness goal – whether it be improved health, weight loss, muscle gain, etc. requires one to develop small daily habits that culminate to make the changes we are seeking.

These habits are often as easy to do as they are not to do, something I learnt from Jeff Olson’s novel, ‘The Slight edge”. Therefore, in order to develop these positive habits that contribute towards achieving our goal, starting with smaller, mini ‘goals’ or habits allows us to ingrain them into our daily lives and gradually progress. Remember, the ‘secret’ to success is consistency, and in order to achieve consistency we must develop habits. I know its not sexy, but it works.

b) Join a community and seek help – making yourself accountable to someone else makes us more committed to the task. If you know your friend/relative/coach will be checking up on you, or they will be at the gym at 7am for the workout you planned to do, you’re less likely to fall off the bandwagon.

In regards to seeking help, do your research. Learn, get involved in understanding the process, don’t just simply let others do the work for you. Speak to educated, experienced, and reputable PROFESSIONALS in the industry as to how they’d recommend you go about it. In the fitness industry this can be VERY hard to find, so one resource i can highly recommend and a good place to start is at www.precisionnutrition.com.

c) Make it fun, and don’t take it too seriously – As many people say, its more about the journey than the destination. You have a life to live, a job to work at, sights to see, friends to laugh with, and maybe kids to look after. Ofcourse there are aspects of exercise and eating well that are harder than others, but try make the process fun, don’t FORCE yourself to do it. Find a balance.

I often see and hear of too many people going way too extreme, and failing to maintain the plan because it DIDNT SUIT THEIR LIFESTYLE. In my opinion, there is no ‘best diet’ or ‘best workout program’, everyone is different. Simply move more, eat less, and enjoy yourself. Find a balance. Have some cake, but don’t eat the whole thing. I personally believe balance is key.

And if you fall off the bandwagon, don’t pick up the monopoly board and throw it against the wall. Simply get back up, dust yourself off, and keep going! One bad meal or one workout missed won’t make you unhealthy, just like one healthy meal or one workout won’t make you instantly healthy – yet the latter is a start!

#5. Zuzana Fajkusova – Active Vegetarian

“I don’t believe there is one magic solution for staying motivated and keeping on track.

First I think it’s about being honest with ourselves and checking regularly where you are at. Whether you measure it by how many times you made it to the gym, how much rest you’ve got, how many glasses of water you’ve had today or  the number on your scale, doesn’t matter. Being in denial will only set you back further.

I understand that it’s overwhelming to make many lifestyle changes. It took months if not years for me to stop all the unhealthy habits I had, so my second advice is don’t try to change everything at once! I have seen amazing success with my own clients and our website followers by spending 2-4 weeks working on one healthy change at the time.

Once they are confident and it’s part of their daily life we move onto a new challenge. This has been the key for them to stick with positive changes and I am confident anyone can do it!

And one last thing, get someone who would hold you accountable. Friend, family member, coach or a mentor. Because you can’t always feel motivated to go to the gym or eat healthy. But if we have someone who’s checking up on us to see how things are going, they’ll get your “butt” in gear. Even if you don’t feel motivated at that time. The truth is that If you cannot be consistent you cannot make progress.

#6. Claire Snowdon-Darling  – Balance Wellness

1) Getting in the right frame of mind is so important because we need to be ready to make decisions that are appropriate for the plan we are on, I recommend my clients spend at least a week preparing for a plan. Clearing out cupboards, planning recipes and meals (even planning what to choose when eating out) and of course shopping for appropriate food. Getting all these aspects ready is a real key to success

#7. Taylor Ryan – Womens Fitness and Nutrition

1 – Have an accountability. Tell someone your goals and keep them posted on your progress. Better yet, have a partner that you can go through the process with together. This helps keep you honest with yourself and when you know you have to share how things are going, you’re much more likely to stick to your nutrition and workout goals.

2. Don’t think about long term goals. Don’t focus on losing 30 pounds. Instead set action goals each week, like: I will workout 3x, I will drink 3 liters of water, I will pack my lunch every day. Doing these steps keep things in perspective and also help to relieve the stress if you don’t drop 10 pounds in a single week or month. Action steps lead you towards your big goal and hold you more accountable. Plan!

3. Don’t do it all at once. The biggest reason people burn out is because they try to change overnight. From sitting on the couch eating a bag of chips to the next day working out till they almost pass out and eating nothing but salads. Start with small changes… workout for 15-20 minutes a few times a week for the first month, make small tweaks to your diet (give up soda, pack your lunch, avoid desserts). Each week add to it. Small steps = manageable goals and more likely to hit them.

Mindset is 110% of success. I am big on affirmations because we live in a time where we compare ourselves to one another. When we do this we feel we’re not good enough, not skinny enough, not fit enough. We are. Each day I tell my clients to say outloud something positive to themselves and mean it. You can do it. Which is what the steps above are really all about, getting in the right frame of mind. In terms of weight loss, everyone has to come to that “enough is enough” moment where they want to get in shape for themselves. Not for their spouse, but for them.

#8. Lisa Druxman – Motivating mum podcast

My top tips for weight loss are 1) to figure out your why. Why do you want to lose weight? Get very tied in to the pleasure that you associate with the desired goal and the pain with not achieving it.

2) to have a SMART plan. Make it specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. But also make sure to have a plan for the obstacles that will get in your way.

3) Take care of you. Mentally. Recharge. If you carve out time for meditation, a walk, some “me” time, you will feel more at peace and you will be better able to make good food choices.

#9. Angie Spencer – Marathon Training Academy

1. Know your “why”.  Mindset is key to achieving a weight loss goal.  If your “why” is only to fit into a certain pair of pants then that might not be a strong enough motivation to get you through the tough times.  While it’s certainly normal to desire weight loss to look better there are countless examples of people who attain their goal weight or size only to gain the weight back (and often more).  A deeper “why” might be having more energy, living a healthier life, or gaining stronger self-esteem. Having a multi-layered “why” is going to make your goal more holistic rather than simply based on outward appearance.

2.  Motivation will wax and wane.  “Motivation is what gets you started, habit is what keeps you going” Jim Rohn.  Remember that you won’t always feel motivated to do what’s necessary to achieve your weight loss goal. Relying solely on motivation is a recipe for failure because no one feels motivated 100% of the time.  Developing healthy and sustainable habits in your life will help you get through the times when you don’t feel like doing the hard thing.3. Seek progress, not perfection.

We all have moments of failure as we pursue our goals, but that is not a reason to give up.  None of us will ever be perfect.  Life is about becoming a better version of ourselves. Don’t ever give up as you pursue becoming a better version of yourself. Keep focusing on making progress and you will become healthier and happier as a result.

#10. Jason Reiman – Get Fit Friday

I don’t specifically assist people with weight loss. However, any goal can be boiled down to ensuring these three components:

1) be comfortable with failure and actually pursue it. If you aren’t failing, you aren’t pushing yourself enough and you’re ultimately not achieving what you are capable of.

2) ensure you know why you want to achieve something. That is, what is the end result of losing weight – what will it do for you? Be specific.

3) achieve and celebrate quick wins. All goals take time to accomplish. Make sure you set realistic goals in the short term that you can accomplish rather painlessly so that you have something to help fuel more motivation toward your grander goals.

#11. Dr Lewis – Doctors Nutrition Texas

First of all you have to know the need behind the need. It’s not that you want to feel better but it’s why you want to feel better such as be a better spouse, parent, co-worker, etc. due to the increased health and fitness.

Your motivation can be spiritual. (1) Taking  care of the temple of the Holy Spirit.

(2) A prudent person for sees danger and take precautions but the simple person goes blindly on and suffers for it.

Your motivation can be positive. With increased energy and fitness you will have a more clear mind, play with the kids, grandkids, and feel better and get promoted at work. Some of us realize it is our purpose in life to take care of ourselves in order to lead others into a healthier more fulfilling life.

Your motivation can be moving away from the negative such as a wanting to avoid your children having the pain of a parent dying early, avoiding amputation due to diabetes, avoiding hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical care, and avoiding bankruptcy from the cost of treatment. You can choose to get healthy and fit to avoid the stress on your marriage that ill health can cause. Avoidance of pain is an acceptable  motivator if it’s used positively.

Other than that the most important thing that you can do is find a coach, realizing you cannot change the situation with the same mind (consciousness) that was present when you created the situation in the first place. Once you have the right coach in the areas you want changed then trust, faith, patience, and persistence will lead you to a New, Better You!

#12. Sheree Martin – Discover Grow Shine Podcast

1. Commit to a life change that values health and energy.

2. Love yourself–you’re worth it.

3. Get plenty of sleep.

The key to achieving a healthy weight is not really about dieting. A healthy body weight that you maintain over time is based on three things: (1) Quality, real food in the reasonable quantities (2) Moving your body on a regular basis each day and (3) Sufficient sleep for your body and mind. Your mindset is what determines whether you’ll stick to a new lifestyle. Find your internal motivation for making the change and commit. Love yourself, don’t beat yourself up if you mess up once. Just get back on track. There’s no quick-fix. But with the right life changes and right choices, you’ll shine!

#13. Kirsty Jo Hunt – Body Buddies Podcast

Mind-set is powerful as your mind fosters your decision-making abilities. ​When we focus on mind set, we help to activate a stronger conscious awareness. We recognize when negativity is setting in and seek to quickly re-frame it (turn it into a positive phrase) so our mind doesn’t feed on the negativity. It’s very much human to have negative and self-depreciating thoughts. However, champions and successful people are those who quickly turn those thoughts around and use them for their benefit. ​

1. Break your goal down to daily, actionable steps. Too often we focus on the big picture and say, I will be happy when I reach my goal.The key, however, is not to focus so big as that goes, as most people get frustrated in the process because those results are slow-coming. When we focus on smaller action items, we do the work. We modify our behaviour that delivers results. I tell my clients constantly: “Focus on the behavior and the results will come. Focus on results and you’ll just end up frustrated.” It’s all about narrowing your focus. ​

2. Acknowledge your triumphs.When you focus too intensely on everything you did wrong, or need to do better, your mind gets honed in to focus on negative. It’s as if staring at a white piece of paper that happens to have the smallest black dot; you may find you focus on the black dot. Learn to focus on all you’re doing right to keep you feeling confident that you have what it takes. Each week, my clients send in their online accountability forms with their number one field to complete being “What were your triumphs this week?” I’ve seen everything from “I turned down the donut at work” to “I ordered strategically when I went out to dinner with my family and chose not to feel deprived!”​

3. Purposely fuel your mind daily.Each of us is human and is tossed to and fro with the chaos of life. This can cause us to lose focus unless we purposely do something to bring our focus back. When I ask my clients what they’re doing, they tell me they’re listening to podcasts, reading my book, watching motivational YouTube videos, or choosing a quote of the day. When we focus more intensely on our mind-set preparation and mental mastery, we will be far more successful than if we focus on rigid compliance to our nutrition and fitness strategy alone.

#14. Blythe Alberg – Fit Life With Blythe Podcast

1. ROUTINE! Getting yourself into a routine of eating correctly and exercising will set your life on an entirely brand-new path. Don’t believe me? TRY IT!

By that I mean simply organizing your food and exercise into a daily routine (it’ll take a bit of practice, so be patient with yourself ) will contribute in degrees you never knew and contribute to all of the positive things that happen in your life.

This is exactly the reason I became so interested in life coaching.

2. The scale LIES! I get so frustrated alongside my clients when the scale does not move. I tell people from the very beginning that I don’t expect or anticipate the scale moving for the first 4 to 6 weeks. If it does, it is a pleasant surprise for most! The scale is one of the poorest measuring tools we use when it comes to making changes in our bodies. Our bodies are one of the best adapting “machines” known to man! Do not let a scale determine whether or not you have been working hard.

3. STAY THE COURSE AND REMAIN POSITIVE!

You are not in this journey alone.

Every day is a brand-new day and each choice you make will take you closer to your fitness goal or farther away from it.

The more you throw yourself into this philosophy, the quicker you will see results. Unfortunately, our psychological condition plays a great role in our physical condition. I always recommend scheduling in one or two cheat meals every day if you are being very careful with your nutrition. This gives you something to look forward to as well as feeling balanced and undeprived! Out of 40 meals a week, one or two will not make or break you. Stay positive and look at the big picture! Trust yourself along this Journey and if you need somebody to hold your hand and guide you, finding someone that understands you can be very simple! Feel free to reach out if you need answers to questions. It’s most certain that you are not the only one asking️

If you find you are the type of person that does better with one on one help, you may look into life coaching or nutritional counselling. If you are somebody who enjoys the group environment and a supportive community either local or online, seek out that! If you need help I am always here to ask.

#15. Tanya Fraser – Cut The Crap Podcast

1. Get Clear – through my years of working with clients, I’ve met many people who want to lose weight for all the wrong reasons. They want to get a boyfriend, they are getting married, or they are going on vacation. While these may be valid, they are not reasons that will help you keep your weight loss goals sustainable. It’s very rare that I hear “I want to lose weight because I want to be healthier” Once you get really clear as to why you want to lose weight, then you can set yourself up for true success. Weight loss should be for you and only you. Not for someone else or an event. Those can be great motivators but when you’ve had the wedding or you are now in a relationship the desire to keep the weight off is gone. If you make it about you, and your need to be healthier, to have more energy, to get rid of aches and pains, to sleep better then and only then will you keep the weight off.

2. Forgive yourself and forget the guilt – a big part of why diets don’t work for weight loss is because most people feel like they have to give up things and deprive themselves. Life is meant to be enjoyed, food is meant to be enjoyed. The key to weight loss is finding foods that are healthy for you AND taste good. We are so lucky to live in this day and age because there are so many options available to us when it comes to food, we can easily find healthier options once we start looking. Everyone now and then you will want that chocolate cake or bag of potato chips, I say go for it. If you are going to indulge, make it worthwhile. Go for the best chocolate cake you can find and enjoy every morsel. Once you allow yourself to fully indulge, you can forgive yourself and you can remove the guilt. And don’t stop. Once you’ve finished that chocolate cake, keep going. Your journey is not over.

#16. Aaron Alexander – Align Podcast

1) Change-up persona

One of the key qualities differentiating high level performers from the perpetual novices is their self-perception. Stay with me on this, why is it that first string athletes continue excelling and the third stringers generally continue moulding the bench to their flaccid butt cheeks? When you identify as an impeccable athlete, business tycoon, father or any title you can think of, you will find yourself owning it in every instance. The same goes when you identify with the fat uncoordinated kid, awkward dude at the party or any less desirable state.

Next time you have the opportunity to jump into a beach football/soccer game, dance party or social situation, let go of the “I’m no good at this’’ attitude and dive in. Next time you are about eat that extra piece of cake, align yourself as an athlete that demands the highest performance from yourself and decide based from that point of view. Sometimes it may be the right decision do swan dive into some cheese cake. What would your strong, lean outgoing-self do in every instance. Own it or be owned, it’s a choice.

#17. Major Mason –  Fast & Jacked

1. Get an app that tracks your macro nutrients and calories, this will help keep you accountable and motivated to stick with the proper calorie intake and nutrient balance. I would join an online forum or facebook group of people dedicated to similar goals as well, they can help provide a push when you ‘just don’t feel like it’.

2. Remember fat loss is a slow process the upper end of the scale should be 1.5 – two lbs a week of weight loss, anymore than that and you are going to lose lean body mass. Do not weight yourself everyday as the weight loss is to slow and you may see fluctuations on a day to day basis. It is best to weigh yourself once a week at the same time on the same scale for consistency.

Developing healthy habits is about creating a healthy lifestyle not a diet. Once your body becomes accustomed to eating good food and regular intense exercise it will become natural and routine. And if you make a mistake and cheat once in a while don’t get down on yourself and fall back into the trap of eating junk just continue where you left off with the next day or meal.

A positive outlook is paramount to achieving your goals, you must believe you can accomplish something or you are already defeated. I had a history of back injury and never thought I would dead lift heavy weights again, through smarter training practices I got up over 500lb for the first time in years, once I did that I actually believed I could deadlift 600lb and sure enough it was only about 8 months until I did.

#18. Mark Sisson – The Primal Blueprint Podcast

1. “Set concrete measurable goals, allow for setbacks, and make modifications along your way based on what you’ve learned. All three tips are the most well-tested ways to keep focus in achieving sustainable weight loss.”

#19. Angela Freeman – Angela’s Awesome Podcast

Answer:  (Take a deep breath…. here I go!) I am all for getting people where they want to go with their weight loss goal, but one thing I know for sure is that they DO NOT need more motivation. If you are actually asking a personal trainer or a coach for help, you are motivated enough. If you are reading a blog or book or checking out an online program about losing weight, you are motivated enough. If you are at that point in your weight loss journey where you are spending money, time and effort by looking for help, you are NOT lacking in motivation.

What you need is better information. What you need is sustainable real solutions. What you need is inspiration to do it differently. If you are someone who is trying to lose weight, odds are HIGH that this is NOT your first time on this merry-go-round. I guarantee you WANT it. I guarantee there is some serious shame about not being able to get there. Hello, we are not kind to overweight people online or in real life.   That unkindness comes from outside of your skin and within. Trust me, you are plenty motivated.

Weight loss is hard. If it was easy, we’d all be doing it rather than trying to sift through all the bad information out there. Weight loss is also targeted as something you have to do to be healthy. That’s simply not true. You need to do healthy things to be healthy. Weight loss may or may not come with that.

If you are a person wanting to lose weight, be it a big amount or that pesky last five pounds, here’s my top three INSPIRATIONAL ideas.

1. Stop making weight loss your goal. Yep, I just said that. I’ve just lost half of you. Everyone who is still reading, hear me out please. When we make a number or a size our goal, insanity can creep in. (Sometimes insanity doesn’t creep, we simply open the front door wide and invite it to our very scarce new way to eat dinner). When we are looking at a number goal or a size goal, we often stop listening to our bodies. We don’t eat when we are hungry. We don’t do exercise we love.

We flirt with the line of obsession (again, some of us just make obsessed our new best friend) because we are determined that we NEED that new size. Again, do NOT throw that “I need to be healthy” phrase out because science simply does NOT support that. Make healthy habits your goal. Measurable, wonderful healthy habits. Something like, I will enjoy eating a slow relaxed dinner before7 pm three nights a week for the next eight weeks. Or I will revel in a comfortable stroll outside after dinner Monday through Friday for the next four weeks.

There are TONS of healthy habits that will help you get healthier.  There are tons of strategies that will help you cultivate a loving listening relationship with your body. Your body wants to talk to you. When you are absolutely insisting that it become a different size before you’ll even consider a conversation, well, wow.  No wonder we are constantly looking for more motivation.   This is your body.   Your body is your friend.  Please stop punishing it into a different size.  Stop it.

2. Embrace the Feminine. The Feminine HATES to be measured, weighed and found wanting. (Chuck your scale in the dumpster and quit weighing and measuring your food… yikes… the Feminine is horrified when you do either!!) The Feminine would like some finesse please.

Yes, finesse.  Just in case you aren’t sure, this is what FINESSE means: “skill in handling a difficult or highly sensitive situation; adroit and artful management.” ARTFUL MANAGEMENT is what is called for.  Not bossy, mean and nasty M O T I V A T I O N .  How does this food make your body feel? What type of exercise gives you pleasure? (In fact as long as we are talking Feminine here, the Feminine wants to MOVE, not EXERCISE).

The Feminine insists on experiencing and enjoying the journey.  We may or may not end up where we think we are headed and that is A okay with the Feminine as long as there is some pleasure along the way.  And even if you are a male, you can benefit from more feminine. We all have both, but especially your gals out there, isn’t there a big part of you that is like, YES… that IS what I want!!  (Please don’t tune her out… get curious… the Feminine is MAGIC… You DO NOT want to miss this!!)

3.DO IT NOW. Whatever it is that is going to magically happen when you lose the weight, do it now. Make a list of everything that you are going to do when you lose the weight. That list might include, buying new clothes, taking a vacation, going on date night, splurging on a make-over. Then DO EVERYTHING ON THAT LIST NOW.

Don’t wait until you lose the weight. Do it now. Life doesn’t start with a new sized body or some lean ripped abs. Life starts as soon as you jump in. So, LEAP my people. Do what you would do if you were 5, 10, 15, 25 pounds lighter. Go for the JOY. Do the things you really want to do.

When you do this, you will find that you are inspired to take better care of yourself. When you are doing things that you love, the healthy habits will start making their way into your life. When you are feeling fab in your new clothes, rested from your vacation, filled up with love from date night and fresh from that make-over, it will be easier to start doing the self-care things that lead you to weight loss. (Or “body as is” love… either one is good).

PS- do not tell me that eating a gallon of ice cream is what makes you feel good and so I am nuts for suggesting this. Yes, if you have denied yourself ice cream for the last, oh I don’t know, nine and a half years, then YES, you may need permission to have a lot of it for a while. BUT, there’s a big world out there and when we get REAL about what we really want, trust me, the amounts fall into place. Again, we have to start with idea

1. LET GO OF THE OUTCOME and the 2. EMBRACE THE FEMININE… how does this feel and the 3. DO WHAT YOU REALLY WANT TO DO.

We need to stop the insanity of #everydamnday, (really ever single damn day??), #justdoit (really, don’t you think I would if I could??) #fatfighters, (seriously, do we really need a bigger fight with anyone nonetheless our bodies?) #challengeyourself, (My word in heaven, aren’t we challenged ENOUGH just navigating our lives??).  We need stop reading mags that say you need to do this and buy that so you can look like this. (Hello, it’s all about the money!!) We need to release with love and let go of anyone that “encourages” us to lose weight to be healthy. Again, healthy habits make us healthy, not weight loss.

Let’s pick any and all blogs, newsletters or social media that says, #bodyacceptance, #selflove, #slowdown, #healthatanysize, #courage, #youareperfectrightnow (is that a hashtag?? It should be). These are the structures that will feed your mind, body and soul with more compassion and love.

IF you are fed a steady diet of compassion and love, you will start to crave foods that embody compassion and love. If you are fed a steady diet of compassion and love, you will start to move your body in a way that supports you and creates joy instead of dread.

THIS WEEK: If you are trying to lose weight and just OVER IT or looking for motivation, I say, draw a big line in the sand that says, ENOUGH. I’m DONE with the madness. Sign me up for WONDERFUL. Sign me up for PEACE. Sign me up for EVOLVING and THRIVING. Sign me up for JOY.

#20. Gabrielle Maston – Nutrition Hacks & Serious Training

When it comes to weight loss it’s all about having the right mindset. Unless you decide you want to change and then you consciously commit, it’s not going to happen. If you want sustainable weight loss, ditch the fads and change your mindset. Weight loss is a journey of rediscovering yourself, tuning into your body and teaching yourself how to eat differently.

My top 3 weight loss tips are:

1. Don’t focus on weight loss. Focus on the behaviours you need to change. Often weight loss is so intertwined with self-esteem and self worth. Concentrate on what you have to do to achieve weight loss, not the outcome of weight loss itself. For example never set a goal to lose 5kg, because that doesn’t give you focus on what you actually have to do. Instead, set a goal to walk every day. This will provide direction and help you lose weight as a side effect.

2. Learn to love yourself. It’s hard to get motivated to exercise when you hate yourself. Loving yourself also gives you permission to treat your body with care, like feeding yourself food that makes you feel good. Not food that feeds your emotions.

3. Learn to listen to your body, it will tell you what you need. Your body will tell you when to eat by making you feel hungry and when to stop when you feel full. This will happen if you tap into your hunger signals. Weight gain and over eating occurs when we don’t listen to what our body is telling us.

#21. Tony Federico – Paleo Magazine Radio

1) Keep it positive – Too often people get obsessed with what they are going to lose, cut out, or get rid of. This frames the whole process of getting healthier (which is the real point) negatively and sets the stage for short-term, unsustainable efforts. Instead of going negative, focus on the positive. Think about the nutritious foods that you are going to incorporate into your diet. Focus going on walks, going to the gym, and maybe working with a trainer.

2) Have a vision – Losing weight is a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Having the goal of fitting into a bikini for the summer, or, for the guys, looking good shirtless, is all well and good, but what happens if you reach your goal? What do you do then? Instead of goals that end, expand your thinking to include the type of permanent lifestyle that you want to create. Put together a list of fun activities that you would like to enjoy but that require physical fitness like surfing or rock climbing. Connect to other people who share your vision and build community around your goal.

3) Bounce back quickly – The path to health doesn’t follow a straight line, and there will be diversions along the way. Birthday parties, holidays, or stressful days at will still happen, and you will still find yourself participating in them. If you overindulge or get off track for one meal, one day, or even an entire week, that doesn’t mean it’s time to throw in the towel and quit all together. Become like Rocky and get back up no matter what!

Why getting into the right frame of mind is important:

The world is not designed to make it easy for you to reach your goals. The very fact that you want something often means that it’s difficult, challenging, or scarce, which means you’re going to have to put in work to get it. Having the right mindset is the key to understanding this reality, and striving for your goal anyway. You have to stay focused and constantly remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing. Build your mindset by reading inspiring true stories, hanging out with positive people, creating personal mantras or vision boards, and above all, never giving up!

# 22. Paige Smathers – Nutrition Matters Podcast

Here are my thoughts on motivation.

1. You’re in charge of motivation. When I’m working with someone one-on-one to make nutritional and health changes in their life, I often tell them that they need to bring motivation to the table. I can provide education, topics for discussion, support, accountability, encouragement, but they need to bring the motivation. It’s the gift they bring to the table of our working relationship together.

2. Recognize that motivation is like taking a shower–it often doesn’t last long. Some days you wake up and are ready to take on your day, and others you can’t seem to muster the motivation to make things happen. Just because you felt motivated last Tuesday to make changes doesn’t necessarily mean you will feel the same way today.

3. Figure out how and why you are motivated. I’ve never seen someone succeed with making sustainable and realistic changes when they aren’t motivated for themselves in the first place. Dig deep, be introspective and find your reasons for making changes in your life.

#23 Mason Bendewald – Daily Burn Fit Minute

If you’re on the right track you’ll be excited about the new things you’re learning about food, cooking and fitness. It’s an exciting journey and one that doesn’t end. Your appreciation for food will go up as you become more knowledgeable and you’re body will start to change as you incorporate fitness in to your normal routine. It becomes a vicious healthy spiral upward – enjoy the ride.

1. Make it your priority. Literally make it the #1 thing you focus on until it becomes second nature to do the right things.

2. Prepare your own food. If that seems like too much work look at answer #1 – how badly do you want it? Preparing your own food puts you in touch with what you put in your body and that connection makes it easier and easier to make better decisions.

3. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else. You need to be happy in your own skin and that should be based on your health 1st. Not looks. If you’re healthy everything else falls into place.

#24. Nicole & Jazz – Ministry Of Movement

Consciously take action towards the goal daily – our level of motivation (on a scale of 1-10) is not always a 10. Our motivation fluctuates. At the start, it is usually a 10 and, most likely, every New Year, but what about the in between times, the ‘lull’ times. If how badly you want your results isn’t a 10 right now, it doesn’t matter as there are simple things you can do to make your level 5 turn into a level 11.

We recommend choosing to, each day: visually see the dream you want to achieve, for example view a photo of your dream body, spend a few minutes visualising how it would feel and look to achieve the goal, writing your goals, dream or visions on paper, and/or viewing the piece of clothing you want to wear again; audibly focus on the goals, through motivation speakers, podcasts, motivating music or other people’s testimonials/successes; and physically taking a step towards the goals, like forcing yourself to exercise even when you don’t, getting out of bed earlier to exercise, meal prepping, or whatever the action for you may be.

#25. Mark Metz – The Conscious Dancer

1. Develop a healthy morning routine by building in tiny keystone practices into your earliest hours. This video (Click here) by Stanford researcher BJ Fogg explains the surprising science that proves how the easiest 5-second practice you can imagine done first thing every morning creates positive effects in all areas of your life.

2. Separate ‘unconscious habits’ and ‘healthy regimens’ in your mind, and learn how to be mindful of both. A regimen is done with conscious intention as a form of self-love, a habit is an unconscious way of ignoring your essence.

3. Find some simple inspirational roadmaps to living such as The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, or Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. Spend a few minutes with them each morning before any media or internet. Then choose your priorities for the day. Anchor some positivity into your heart early before the world demands a reaction from you.

#26. Lawrence Neal –  Corporate Warrior

Getting In The Right Frame of Mind

It’s very important that you see a healthy lifestyle as a permanent change to your life. Fat loss and a lean body cannot be sustained unless the lifestyle that achieved it is sustained also. Too often, people look for a quick fix or a diet that is going to trigger rapid results. They also think that they can do the diet for a short amount of time and then return to their former bad eating habits. Truthfully, for a diet to be successful it must be sustained indefinitely. That being said, cheat days do work well to help you to stay compliant. The important thing to recognise is that a cheat day should be infrequent, and perhaps once every 1 or 2 weeks. Some people don’t need cheat days and consume a healthy diet year round, but these people tend to be very rare.

For me personally, I have found that my motivation to continue to eat and live a healthy lifestyle, which includes plenty of movement and some intense exercise, is driven by my obligation to my audience and my drive to have sustain a high quality of life. The first component to my motivation (obligation to my audience) may not be helpful to you, but the second one should be. If you want to live a productive and happy life, free of disease, with plenty of energy and functional movement well into your old age, then it is incredibly important that you live a healthy lifestyle to support that.

A fat loss strategy geared towards losing a bit of excess body fat for a holiday break isn’t going to cut it. You have to commit long term and commit to educating yourself on how to improve your overall health. Once you begin to understand how to trigger fat loss effectively, and realise that activities like excessive jogging do almost nothing at all, its incredibly liberating. I know what you’re thinking:

“But there is so much information out there, I don’t know what is right from wrong or where to start?!”

I’ve been fortunate enough to stumble across some great resources. Resources that have had a significant positive impact on the health of myself, my clients and my listeners. Here’s just a couple to get you started:

4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss

Body By Science by Dr Doug McGuff.

My 3 tips are as follows:

1. Measure Your Progress with Graphs

Take a moment to figure out your current weight and desired weight. Using a tool like Microsoft Excel, create a table with your weight down on one axis and the date on the other axis. If you don’t know how to do this, there are a ton of tutorials online. Here’s one I find a moment ago. This video will also show you how to use the results in the table to create a chart.

Each morning during your weight loss journey, take 5 minutes to weigh yourself and fill in the table. The result will pull through to the graph/chart and you should, assuming you are participating in a sensible weight loss regimen (like that in point 1 above), see gradual weight loss each day. This seemingly trivial action of plotting your results will provide significant motivation to help keep you going. The visual feedback that this provides is a powerful tool for tracking effectiveness. This tactic used in many disciplines, most often in business, to drive positive results.

2. Create Stakes

Several years ago, I used to live with my best friend. He was not a morning person. He wanted to be able to wake up at 5am every morning so that he could put more time into his business to make it more successful. Year after year I watched him fail. Then one day, he came to me and gave me £200. He said:

“If I fail to wake up at 5am on a weekday for an entire month, you keep this £200. You only give this £200 back to me once I have successfully complete one month.”

He succeeded.

He was so strapped for cash at the time that £200 was a significant amount that he could not afford to lose. My advice to you is to do the same. At the beginning of your weight loss journey, find someone you trust who can help hold you to your commitment. Make sure you pick an amount of money that is relatively significant to you otherwise you won’t care if you lose it. Your commitment to that person could be, for example, that you will stick to a diet for 30 days.

Here are a couple of websites that work very well and elaborate on this strategy:

https://www.dietbet.com/

http://www.stickk.com/

#27. Tawnee Prazak – Endurance Planet

Many people think weight loss requires miserable dieting, constantly starving, tortuous exercise, and checking weight on the scale to assess progress. Stop right there!!! Ditch the term weight loss! Ditch the mental images of suffering! Labeling your goal as “weight loss” is setting yourself up for failure, stress, and constant body shaming.

Instead, re-establish your goal as “building better health” in which you learn to love yourself inside and out, and you actually enjoy the process. When one is healthy–metabolically, mentally, physically, and otherwise–then it becomes much easier to achieve and maintain a good body composition.

Instead of focusing on what you think the outcome should be (i.e. weight on a scale), focus on the process of making your body healthy so that it naturally settles into your normal weight, with the appropriate lean body mass and body fat.

We can’t know for sure what our ideal weight is, so choosing a goal that you want to lose 10, 20, 30+ pounds may be the wrong approach. Choose to adopt healthy habits that are sustainable, educate yourself on nourishing foods, work on your stress, learn to love physical activity (get outdoors!), and enjoy the process. This will allow your body to find its homeostasis and to you feeling and looking your best ever.

Your path to better health does not have to be a miserable one. Instead, focus on your health as the ticket to feeling and looking your best ever.

#28.  Deborah Walker – Food For Thought Podcast

I believe that if you want to achieve any goal you need to understand your own value’s that drive the decisions you make, this is by far one of your greatest motivators. Once you understand what your values are, particularly your highest values, you will know how to set appropriate goals that you are more likely to achieve.

It’s important to be clear on the reasons why you want to lose weight and how they fit with your values before embarking on a diet, because it’s not that you don’t know what real healthy food looks like. Let’s face it, rarely do I come across anyone in my practice who can’t identify healthy over unhealthy food ingredients.

Therefore staying motivated on your weight loss goal is rarely about the food, it’s about your values that create your mindset, which then drive the decisions and choices that you ultimately make, all of the best intentions in the world are worthless if you don’t align them with your values. Understanding this can be one of your greatest assets to achieving any goal no matter what it is in your life.

We all have values, they are key to motivating your actions and influencing your decision making in every moment, because they totally direct your conscious and unconscious actions. They are the driver behind the wheel.

Therefore your values matter in regards to keeping to any goal you have set yourself, and understanding what your values are will enable you to be clearer about the type of goal you set yourself. So is health one of your values? Because if it’s not then you are unlikely to achieve any dieting or health change for the long term.

Values can be health, wellbeing, safety, security, freedom, family, in fact many things and they are very personal to you. They will be influenced by your environment, culture, and previous experiences amongst other things. Those values that come higher in the hierarchy will demand more of your focus, and they will direct more of your actions. This is one of the reasons it can be so hard to stay motivated, because if health isn’t one of your highest values, but family, or security are then your actions towards family and staying secure and providing security will always be a higher priority in regards to where you spend your time.

When I see clients who yo yo regularly, and become frustrated with themselves at their use of time or the other distractions they have in their life, I find that they are struggling with their value of health, because it’s not key to them the majority of the time. So find out what value is, and either refocus your goal to fit with that value or set your value of health higher.

All the good intentions in the world that you’ve set are worth nothing if your values don’t support you carrying them out, it becomes hard work to achieve any goal without the support of your values behind it.

Understanding your own body through testing when you plateau.

When my clients plateau this is a key time that their motivation tends to wane and they start to lose interest and think it’s all been for nothing, it’s become hard work at that point for them to stay on track. But at that point I ask, could something else be a factor in this slow down in weight loss, it’s worth finding out, because often doing more exercise isn’t the answer.

I suggest you have allergy, and sensitivity, hormone or nutritional deficiency testing carried out at this point. This is a great way of refocusing your diet solely away from weight loss and onto nutrients that support what you are now doing, and it’s a good way of keeping your interest level up, as well as increasing your own knowledge of more specifically what nutrition and testing can do for you. Then it’s easy to surround yourself with the right food, that suits you, and feeds your body in the way that it needs rather than more generically because you have the more specific knowledge of what you do and don’t need in your diet at that point to aid the goal you are wanting to achieve.

Stop those cravings

Finally one of the main motivation killers my clients have are cravings that can put an end over night to any progress they’ve made, leaving them not only physically changed but also mentally frustrated. I see people often consumed by their cravings, and their energy is drained fighting it both mentally and physically. I’ve had clients write to me about how they are on their 3rd bag of crisps, or 2nd bag of Haribo and just can’t stop. But it really doesn’t have to be that way, and dieting isn’t about mind over matter, mostly cravings are an indication that you aren’t doing something right in the diet, you may not be hydrated enough, the foods you may be eating contain chemicals that you may be reacting to, or you may not have enough key minerals, you may have a food or chemical sensitivity, your blood sugar is not balanced, or you have a gut problem. There are many reasons why these cravings could be happening and are driving you to despair, so to stay motivated, I believe understanding and diarising your cravings is important, and once you have this information documented it can be great to get help to understand these patterns and have someone make sense of them with you to help you realise that it’s not always emotional eating, or a loss of control on your part, but a legitimate issue that really is taking you off the rails. This can be a fascinating process for you to take part in and experience and add’s a whole new dimension to how you can use food yet again to achieve your goals and maintain them effortlessly. All of those things can be changed, and having someone else help you to make sense of them with you, can stop you from consuming the entire contents of the confectionary department an undoing months of good work.

#29. Derek Doepker – Excuse Proof Fitness Podcast

Blurb: Everything you do and achieve begins with the thoughts in your head.  The key to changing your body is to change the mind that decides what your body will do.  – Derek Doepker – ExcuseProof.com

1. My top tip for sticking with weight loss goals is to give yourself micro-commitments that you can guarantee you’ll stick with each day.

Too often people burden themselves by saying they need to exercise 45 minutes a day or cut out all junk food.  Instead, a much more powerful approach is to set extremely small commitments like exercising for at least two minutes a day, or eating one carrot a day at lunch.  Then, and this is critically important, ask the question, “Can I do just a little more?”

What you’ll often find is that just by taking small steps in the right direction, this builds momentum.  Then momentum generates motivation.  So that two minutes of exercise easily turns into ten minutes, or possibly even thirty minutes or more.

What’s so powerful about this approach is since it’s such a minor commitment, you can’t really talk yourself out of it.  So every single day you see yourself as moving closer to your goals and this keeps you inspired.  Set yourself up for small successes, and those small successes will almost effortlessly lead to achieving greater successes.

My next tip is to get accountability.  If there’s nothing on the line for not following through, it’s easy to get distracted.  Yet if you know you have someone checking in with someone asking if you’ve done a workout, or even better have made a bet where you’re going to lose some money (or something else) for not following through, you’ll start to think twice about skipping things when willpower is lacking.

I say this, make distraction cost more than taking action towards your goals.  Make your comfort zone uncomfortable.  This will give you the kick in the pants to keep going when your motivation is lower.

Finally, I would say celebrate all your little successes.  We can often think quickly of the ways we’ve failed, but have a hard time remembering what we do well.

The little things, like drinking a glass of water, doing a short exercise session, saying no to the tempting dessert, and more ALL deserve massive celebration.  This gives your brain the signal it’s doing something right, and so then it wants to do even more for this dopamine rush.  Success breeds success, and if you don’t feel like you’re a success, it’s YOUR fault for not recognizing the areas you are successful.

#30. Jason Glass – Coach Glass Podcast

Right Frame of Mind for Weight Loss:

Never start a weight loss program, diet or exercise regime that you don’t feel is healthy or realistic to continue for the rest of your life. For instance, running 10km a day, eliminating all forms of sugar from your diet, never eating foods that start with the letter A, going to bed before 8pm every night. All of these examples are things you can do for a week, a month and maybe 3 months but unrealistic to think about continuing them for the rest of your life. If you can’t do it forever, its probably not a healthy lifestyle change!

For more tips and life hacks to improve your performance or maximize your lifestyle. Subscribe to the Coach Glass Podcast on iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/coach-glass-podcast/id829924939

1.     Do not use the number on the scale as a goal if you really want to lose weight. Make the goal to take actions (Lifestyle changes) that make you feel better, move better and perform better. If you truly seek a healthier lifestyle, the weight loss is a byproduct. If you focus on a number you will either reach it, which you will then celebrate by giving into all the temptations that got you in to this mess. Or you won’t reach your number which creates a sense of failure.  When people fail at weight loss, many will throw in the towel and just go back to their old ways. “All that work for nothing? I might as well eat and drink what I want and enjoy my life!”

2.     To create changes in your lifestyle you need to pick variables that you know you can successfully change. Start slower and smaller than you think. How about your 1st goal being drinking 2 litres of water a day for a week? If you can complete this goal you reward yourself by adding another goal to your new lifestyle. Once you have momentum you can add more and more lifestyle changes.

3.     Find a community of people or a training body who will help keep you accountable. You will encourage each other and offer support when needed. Some find using a tax system works well. Each person in the community pays a fine or a “tax” if their weekly goals are not met. Again, the scale should not be the focus on the weekly goal. Make it easily attainable lifestyle changes. Hopefully the “tax” jar is empty at the end of the determined timeframe and you all celebrate successful lifestyle change that is manageable for the rest of your life. And you have a new support structure. Win, win!

#31. SPOD – Fantasyze with SPOD

Personally, I’m not looking to be super trim and cut, I just want a better, longer life for myself. Sure, I can get inconsistent with my fitness, but I’m always looking at how I’m living and what I’m doing with my diet and exercise to allow me to focus on what I really want to be achieving. Getting fit adds to your productivity and clarity so make that your main drive.

Enjoy the process, not the goal. Goal focusing can really distract and disappoint you from whatever health goals you have set. Set your goal but don’t obsess over it.

There’s no rush, just make a goal and stick to it. You’ll get less disheartened and make much better progress if you’re not getting bummed at your scales and mirror but keeping your head up and just enjoying it.

Make this a life long commitment to living better, not a race to the beach.

#32. Kameron Tarry – Avena Originals Podcast

My #1 advice: Work smarter not harder! I see a very large percentage of people who are trying to lose weight by applying so much effort in the gym and through exercise, which is hard work for minimal results.

What people need to understand and wrap their thoughts around is the majority of our weight gain for healthy minded people is not caused by gluttony and garbage foods, the majority of it is caused by stress and toxins, the human body today is creating fat cells to buffer and store toxins. If you are trying to work off the weight in these cases your body will be fighting back against you wanting to keep the weight on, as it needs it for your health. Address these stresses & toxins first and you will find, weight loss will come naturally with far less work. This is working smarter.

#2 – Understand Bowel Toxemia, do you know that 95% of the toxins that are making us fat are originating in our intestinal systems! Undigested proteins are putrefying and forming very serious toxins. these are increasing the bodies needs for excess weight. Each of us should be having a minimum of 3 bowel movements per day? If you are trying to lose weight find ways to exceed the 3 eliminations and you will experience increased weight lost from all organs, tissues and glands.

#3 Remember this is a journey, cleansing and detoxifying does not happen overnight, it is a process you can apply daily and keep increasing your lifestyle to be leaner, cleaner, and far more effective. Best of all you will be benefiting your health and slow down aging by taking a holistic approach to health and weight loss.

#33. Dr Robert Maki – The Dr Rob Show

Stay Positive: When trying to lose weight, people tend to have a negative perspective, focusing on what has not been accomplished. The negative language people might use: ‘I can’t lose weight,’ ‘I only lost 2 lbs,’ or ‘I am not losing weight fast enough.” This perspective can be very dis-empowering and can sabotage any weight loss goal. Most people overestimate how quickly they will be able to lose weight. The weight loss journey takes time, so it is very important to keep a positive mind-set and be kind to yourself. Focus on and celebrate all of the positive changes you are making every day whether that is in the kitchen, in the gym or on the scale. Maintaining a positive mind-set is critical to achieving any weight loss goal.

2. Know exactly what you want and why you want it: It is important to be very specific about what you want to accomplish. The more specific and focused you are, the more likely you are to accomplish the goal. Your goal should stretch your comfort zone, but yet be realistic at the same time. Losing weight is relatively simple in theory, but is not necessarily easy to accomplish. It is takes time and good amount of effort. Having a clear goal is important, but the why​is the most important part of the weight loss process. The bigger the reason why​, the more motivation you will have over time to achieve your weight loss goal. In the beginning, everyone has lots of motivation, but as life gets in the way, it can fade quickly. You have no control over how fast the weight comes off, so having a strong reason why​will help you maintain focus overtime and allow you to push through some of the resistance that many people experience along the journey.

3. Have a clear nutrition plan: Before you get started on your weight loss journey, you need to have a clear whole foods based nutritional plan and strategy in order to accomplish your goal. Successful, long-term weight loss is 80-­90% about your nutrition and 10­20% about exercise. If you are just beginning on your journey, or have not got the results you want, then spend the majority of your time on your nutrition.

#34. Colleen Patrick-Goudreau – Food For Thought

1. Well, definitely “creating a specific goal” to reach your goal is key. It might be “lose 5 pounds,” it might be “lose X number of inches around my waist,” it might be “increase muscle,” it might be wanting to achieve a particular weight. But either away, choose a measureable, realistic goal. Studies indicate that when people have something specific to work toward, they’re more able to achieve it.

2. Don’t be afraid to look at where you are now. Sometimes we think if we don’t look at the scale or our pant size — or even at our own bodies in the flesh — that we can avoid seeing what’s really right in front of us. Embrace where and who you are now, and know that you won’t be able to get from point A to point B without knowing where you are first.

3. Consider the goals you want to reach as a fun challenge — not a hardship. I always tell people that weight loss isn’t about depriving yourself of calories, and it’s not even about exercising. It’s about burning more calories than you take in so you have a calorie DEFICIT. Whenever you have a deficit of 3,500 calories, you’ve lost 1 pound. You can lose that pound / achieve that deficit by burning more calories or eating fewer, but the difference between the two is where the answer lies. So enjoy it. Have fun — it’s really a very simple math problem that you can play with each day depending on how you want to achieve that deficit. But remember to do it safely, and don’t try to lose more than 2 pounds (i.e. have a deficit of more than 7,000 calories) a week.

We’re our own worst enemies when we can be our own best friends. The way we talk to and about ourselves can be so self-deprecating. We would NEVER say to others what we say to ourselves. So, treating ourselves with the kind of compassion we treat others with will make all the difference.

#35. Jamie Godfrey – Balance

You have to be mentally prepared to make changes in your life.  If you aren’t in that frame of mind, wait until you are.  It’s true. You aren’t going to achieve the level of results that you want if your head and heart are not in it.

First and foremost, set realistic goals.  Your incremental success will fuel future success.  And find a way to be accountable to your goal.  For me, it’s hosting a weekly podcast to talk about my progress.  Having a support system is key.

#36. Armin Armirian –Wodcast Podcast

Without the right context, you’re just sweating for no reason. Your mindset should put you in a place to succeed, not drag you down and make you feel bad. Remind yourself that you are choosing to move, to live, and have fun with what you’re doing. In the short term, you may succeed by hating yourself into submission, but in the long term you need to approach yourself with joy, love, and happiness or you’ve got no chance.

First off, you’ve gotta love not only what you’re doing but why you’re doing it. Staying on track is much easier when you’re approaching this workload from a place of happiness and joy. Workouts may suck, you may not make progress as quickly as you expect, but the only way you’ll stay consistent is if you love and enjoy what you’re doing.

Second, try to learn and master new skills. Put yourself in a position to learn new things. An elliptical is easy to use and convenient, but that doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile. Developing new skills, mastering your body’s movement is a meaningful task and something that you should strive to accomplish. The variety of skills you chase will keep you occupied and interested more than just doing the same workout at the same gym every day at the same time.

Lastly, you can’t move what you don’t measure, but not all measurements should be quantitative. What I mean is this: weighing yourself is a great way to tell if you’ve lost weight, but only you can tell yourself if you look, feel, and perform the way you want to. Don’t focus so much on the number on the scale when, in my opinion, you can find more valuable information by working towards looking, feeling, and performing better – and you can decide what “better” really means to you there.

#37. – Bevan James Eyles – IM Talk Podcast

Learn how to make your ‘failure points’ have as little damage as possible:
Whenever we try to create change in our lives it takes a lot of effort and focus. When it’s going well we feel great about ourselves, we start to see and believe that we will achieve our desired change. But, on the flip side when we aren’t being successful it can trigger an emotional response that can be very negative, often reinforcing a strong negative self perception.  When we are in this place it often leads to destructive behaviours. It’s when you think ‘I’ve failed with my diet so I may as well eat that whole block of chocolate’ but often it’s not just the chocolate, it’s everything you feel you have missed out on when you were being good.

If you understand the amount of damage you are doing with the bad behaviours that come from your ‘failure points’ you can look to how to deal with this in a less destructive way.

All of us have moments when we slip up or aren’t as sharp when we are trying to create change but your aim needs to be – becoming great at catching yourself when you do this, keep perspective on why it happened (so you can learn for next time), and then focus on what you need to do right now to limit the amount of damage you will do. The key is to get back to winning as quickly as possible, put your focus on easy successes at this moment and if you do this well your failure points won’t come at a massive cost and you’ll get back on track sooner.

Learn how the game is working against you:
When it comes to weight loss many people think that it’s 100% about our character, your success depends on your ability to show amazing will power. While there will be moments where will power does come into play there are many moments where you don’t have to confront it at all.

Dr Brian Wansink, the author of Mindless Eating and Slim by Design, has spent his career looking at how our environments influence our eating and has discovered many factors that make people eat more food. An example of this is people who clear up after dinner, they tend to pick at the leftovers while the are packing the food away and cleaning up. This habit of eating while cleaning can add another third to the meal they had just eaten at the dinner table. A way to combat this is for the person cooking dinner to make sure they pack away all of the food when they are preparing the meal, this is an easy strategy which can remove that extra third of temptation for the person clearing up.

When you start to look at your environments and explore how they are working against you, you can then implement strategies that remove the need for will power to be involved and make it easier for you to be successful which is an important part of your journey.

Find healthier ways to deal with your emotional times:

Many people who struggle with weight often use food as a way to deal with difficult emotional times. If they have a fight with their partner, they turn to food, they have a hard day at work, they turn to food, they experience a disappointing result in an area that’s an important to them, they turn to food. The problem is that in life we are all going to experience emotional times, it’s a part of life but if the way you deal with it is to eat, often to extreme levels with very unhealthy food, weight will likely always be a struggle.

If you can relate to this, you may want to spend time developing healthier ways to deal with these emotional times. Going for a walk in beautiful nature, calling a good friend who you can be open and honest to, writing in a journal, doing a creative hobby, meditation, listening to the right type of music, these are much healthier ways to deal with these emotional times. Your aim is to become aware of when you are getting emotional and learning to inject one or more of these types of behaviours in at these times. If you become great at doing this you’ll have healthier ways to deal with your challenging moments and more importantly they won’t come with the damage that emotional eating creates (which often leads to more time in your emotionally bad place because you feel like a failure).

Getting in the right frame of mind is so important to weight loss. If you can spend time looking at all the factors that create success, accept that you won’t be perfect along the way, learn from your mistakes and celebrate your successes, you will massively improve your chances of not only succeeding in your goal but maintaining it in the long term – which, is the real goal of any weight loss journey.

#38. Menno Henselmans – First Call Out 

1. Motivation and discipline are overrated: planning is key

What people perceive as motivation or discipline is often really just planning. If you go to the supermarket hungry or you come home from work or after a workout late at night and you still have to plan your next meal, you’ve set yourself up to cheat on your diet. The key there is not to resist your urges. It’s to plan your diet so that you won’t have to. “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

2. Embrace the scale

Weigh yourself every day. Many coaches shy away from this because it’s deemed to be ‘too burdensome’. Even worse than the fact you’re throwing away highly valuable data is that you are A) discouraging the formation of habits and B) removing a moment of diet feedback.Frequent weigh-ins are significantly correlated with weight loss compliance [2]. Weight monitoring is a form of control, not a burden.

3. Understand why diets fail

Read this article.

#39 Mark Rogers – Simply Human

Motivation is a tricky subject. Some things are super easy to get motivated to do while other things seem to require constant “motivation boosting” to achieve.
The problem is that motivation cost and willpower have a negative relationship. Things that require very little willpower have a very small motivation cost. You don’t have to get super motivated to put your dishes in the sink or sit on the couch and watch your favourite show because it requires very little willpower.
On the other hand, things that require tons of willpower also come along with small amounts of motivation. You have to force yourself to go the gym for that hour long workout (high willpower)? Probably not going to stay motivated to keep that behaviour up (small motivation).

So what’s the key to get motivated? Here are my three tips to answer that question:

1 Do things that require very little willpower

When you do small things that don’t take much willpower, you end up “working out” and strengthening your willpower muscle. And the stronger that willpower muscle is, the easier it is to “force” yourself to do things you know you should do, and your motivation increases.
Make your bed. Meditate for 1 minute a day. Do 1 pullup. Small things that require almost no willpower. It will begin to make a difference because 1 pullup will turn into 3. And 1 minute of meditation will turn into 5.

2. Do things you enjoy

If you try to get motivated to do something you absolutely hate, it won’t matter how much or how little willpower is in the equation. If you HATE running, don’t run. If you hate the elliptical machine, stay off of it. If you have broccoli, don’t eat it. Find things you enjoy and your motivation will automatically increase. And trying to force yourself to do things you hate will only lead to failure.

3. Be accountable

Once you have established small behaviors that require very little willpower (which you’ll notice is starting to lead to bigger and bigger changes in your life), and you are doing things you enjoy, it’s time to get accountable. Find a partner or join a group. That will keep a few more eyeballs on what you’re doing, and we all know that it’s harder to deviate from new behaviors you’re trying to establish when someone is there watching. It’s what I call the cheerleader phenomenon. You want a group of football players to really start running around and giving great effort? Put some cute girls on the sideline and watch the change.

Master the mind and then the body

Once you have mastered these motivational techniques you will be ready for  nutritional tips, exercise tips, hiit training, and other methods important for weight loss. However, if you have not mastered the mind than the body will not follow.
Tweet: Losing weight can be hard. Don’t be discouraged. 30 experts share motivational weight loss secrets @geraldsmith20 http://bit.ly/1U0wLcX

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topic: weight loss motivation ideas