The 3 motivation strategies I used to lose 30kgs in one year

When you lose a lot of weight (especially in a short time), everyone wants to know the same thing:  How did you do it? 

What they really want to know is 'what was on your plate?'  It's natural to think that the answer must be in the food....that if we just know the food plan a person followed, we might be able to have similar success.

My weight loss journey wasn't about food. I didn’t know anything about nutrition back then,  and (as it was 23 years ago) you couldn't just go online to Google things either!

What I did have was a very strong WHY and mindset strategies that enabled me to connect to that why every single day.

These are the strategies I used that helped me nail those 30kgs:

1. I had a highly exciting and powerful short-term GOAL

I was living in Japan and decided in August that I would go back to New Zealand for Christmas.  To make it even more special, I decided to make it a surprise and not tell my family I was coming. 

At the time I weighed more than 90kgs and felt pretty miserable about my weight.  When I booked my flights to New Zealand it gave me a huge boost of motivation to start going to the gym and change my food choices.  I was determined that I would give it my all for the four months before my trip, and I ended up losing nearly 9kgs.  When I came back to New Zealand, lots of people noticed that I had lost weight, which felt fantastic.  I felt confident enough to get in togs again, for the first time in years. 

When I went back to Japan in January I was so motivated to keep going on my weight loss journey that I was absolutely unstoppable!  By August that year I was down 30kgs.

Having an exciting short-term goal gave me the drive to get started.  When people noticed and I started to feel clothes getting looser, that gave me huge momentum to keep going.

2. I had a powerful THOUGHT 

Before I made any decision or action around food, I would think the same thought in my head: 

"How am I going to feel about this action when I wake up tomorrow?"

 At this point I had been through years of waking up feeling unhappy in my body and regretting what I had eaten the day before.  Once I started losing weight, I absolutely loved the feeling of waking up and feeling more confident and proud of myself.  The whole day went better when I woke up feeling like this. I wanted this feeling EVERY morning!  Having this thought before I acted around food was a powerful way of keeping myself on track by just taking the time to think about exactly what I was doing and what the consequences would be.

3. I had a powerful PHOTO

This photo was taken when I had been in Japan a few months.  Notice how my plate is empty?  I  was always such a fast eater. 

When I saw this photo, I decided I was sick of being larger than my friends and always the person with the empty plate!  I put this photo on the wall next to my dining table.  Whenever I finished dinner and thought to myself 'that was delicious, I want more!' I would look at this photo and think to myself.....'maybe not....'  This photo was the anchor I used to stay focused and become much better with portion control.  Even now, when I'm dishing up my plate I say to myself 'small people eat small meals'.

These strategies helped me to not just lose weight, but also to keep it off for the past 23 years. 

The most important thing I have learnt both from my own journey as well as helping thousands of people lose weight over the past 12 years is that what we put into our head is FAR MORE important than what we put in our mouth.