Focus on the process and not the end goal. If all you are concerned about is losing 30 pounds, then your 10 pounds will never be recognized as an accomplishment. You’ll find yourself saying, “So what if I lost 10 pounds; I’ve got 20 more to lose.” With this kind of attitude, you’ll end up gaining the 10 pounds back.
Colleen A Sundermeyer, Emotional Weight
Remember, losing weight is not the only goal of a diet. A diet serves to educate you about yourself. If weight loss is the sole purpose of your diet, you get caught in the trap of chastising yourself for weighing too much and rewarding your correct weight. Such self-treatment can prove depressing and weakening.
One of the things you learn along the dieting path is how other people can influence your eating habits and self-image.
After my first figure competition, I celebrated by eating cheeseburgers, candy bars and every other food I denied myself while dieting. Now that I realize diets are not about denial and starvation but self-discovery, I don’t celebrate the weight loss, I celebrate myself.
Instead of determining how I will treat myself based on a read-out from the scale, I examine how “good” I’ve been to myself. Did I make the time for myself to go to the gym, to buy the right foods so that I could nourish myself, did I take time to soak in a hot bath? That’s how I measure my dieting success. Dieting success is not that one elusive moment when those last 10 pounds.
Dieting success happens when you stop panicking about how you look and stop torturing yourself with fad diets and start to create acts of self-love in your life. That’s the first step to dieting success: putting you and your needs first.