5 Steps To Using Your Mind To Achieve A Fit Body

When it comes to information on weight loss and fitness, most mainstream sources will emphasize exercise, followed by healthy eating in order to be thin.

If this is such great advice and has been around for so long, why isn't it working? 1/3rd of Americans are obese and 2/3rds are overweight, despite most people being aware of the "common wisdom" when it comes to being healthy.

While it is true that eating right and exercising are essential in getting to your perfect or ideal weight, the nutrition part of the equation is far more important than the mainstream would have you believe.

Once you start focusing on nutrition over strenuous calorie-burning workouts as your main avenue of achieving your weight loss and nutrition goals, the psychological part then comes into play. How do you use your mind to achieve a fit body? Here are 5 steps:

1. Gain proper nutritional
knowledge. Most people do not know how to eat and inevitably end up following mainstream diet plans which recommend counting calories, eating a taste-free, fat-free diet, and beating yourself up (or, using will power) to succeed. Start with low carb plans and find what works for you first.

2. Start associating bad, high carb foods with pain and healthy foods with pleasure. Part of the problem with traditional dieting is that it feels like sacrificing, and therefore it is doomed from the beginning. When you can associate the sugary cola or the extra helping of bread with a result that equals pain to you, you will naturally drift away from these nutritionally-lacking foods to ones that serve your body and health in a positive fashion.

3. Write your goals down and review them daily. What motivates you to eat the foods you do? What specifically will you do each day to get to your goals?

4. Do sentence completion exercises to figure out what is blocking you from achieving the fitness level and body you want. An example of a sentence completion exercise would be, write down the statement "Right before I indulge in my favorite bad food, I think..." and provide 6-10 endings to that sentence. This will uncover hidden truths that may be stopping you from doing the right thing in the realm of nutrition and fitness.

5. Accept where you are. If you cannot accept where you are today, you will not be able to move forward on your goals. Living in self-denial is not only bad for your overall self-esteem, it keeps you stuck in a rut of never progressing. Since progression is the natural human state, if you refuse to accept where you are right now, you are essentially at war with yourself- creating tension and the impossibility of achieving your fit body goals.