Improving your Confidence and Motivation Levels

Posted: Jan 14 in Weight Management Strategies by Dr. Lazarus

Most individuals that I meet at CNC come in highly motivated and proceed to accomplish their weight loss goals. Unfortunately, sometimes in the months and years that follow this level of motivation wanes, some weight is regained, and the end result is not only a loss of motivation, but a loss of confidence in the ability to sustain weight loss long-term.

For many, regain comes as a big surprise. But not for me. Obesity is a disease, like diabetes or high blood pressure. With treatment, we can manage the disease, make it undetectable and prevent health consequences. We treat the disease, it goes away. We stop treatment, it comes back. Unfortunately weight regain results in a loss of confidence. With no confidence it is hard to find motivation.

How Motivated & Confident are You To Lose Weight Now?

Please answer the following two questions:

How motivated are you in your ability to lose weight now?

Low 1—2—3—4—5—6—7—8—9—10 High

How confident are you in your ability to lose weight now?

Low 1—2—3—4—5—6—7—8—9—10 High

If you are highly motivated, right on! But if your score is less than 5, why? It doesn’t seem important right now? There are other more pressing concerns? For many people, they won’t act unless the motivation is a 10! But it is hard to maintain that level long-term. Instead, let’s think about what we could do that would just increase your motivation score by 1 or 2 points.

Finding Motivation

There are lots of effective strategies to improve motivation. One of my favorites is to find motivation by reading about the successes of others. That’s why we accept and publish to our web site patient success stories (see the “Patient Results” tab on our web site). Countless individuals have found a renewed sense of motivation by reading about how others overcame their challenges.

Others find motivation through exploring benefits of weight control. These include: improved health, feeling better, having more energy, being able to do the things we want to do, less back and joint pain, fitting in to our clothing, being able to sit on the floor to play with the kids / grandkids and most importantly, living longer. Why do YOU want to lose weight?

Finding Confidence

If your confidence level is less than 5 then let’s find a plan to restore confidence in yourself. When the prospect of losing weight becomes overwhelming, we need to develop a plan that you KNOW you can do. An office visit with your CNC dietitian is a great starting point. Confidence building begins with a plan. Your dietitian can help you pick achievable goals each week. As you achieve each one, you’ll find your confidence level improving.

Think Small

The idea of trying to lose 20, 50 or 100 pounds can be daunting. Because we tend to think of things as “all or nothing,” many will do nothing in this situation. Instead of committing to losing 100 pounds, a monumental task, why don’t we pick smaller actions that we know we can do?

Medically, the first 5 or 10% that we lose provides the vast majority of health benefits. Often, 10 or 20 pounds is enough to come off of prescription medications for blood pressure, cholesterol, or even diabetes. Consider some of the following as a starting point:

• Eat breakfast every day.
• Drink a glass of water before every meal.
• Eat 5 times a day with protein at every meal and snack.
• Keep a food diary.
• Replace 1 or 2 meals a day with fixed calorie meal replacements (for example, a CNC Protein Shake or bar for breakfast helps boost protein in the morning controlling hunger all day. Another protein in the afternoon helps prevent fatigue and hunger all evening).
• Use the least convenient restroom, preferably one on a different floor.

These smaller actions will add up quickly and motivate you, and the 10 or 20 pounds that you lose will provide a significant health benefit!

More Tools To Boost Confidence and Motivation

Remember all the tools you had that boosted motivation and confidence levels last time you were successful? For most individuals, just one tool doesn’t cut it. Think about which of the following would be most helpful to you now?

Appetite Control Medication and Medical Review – Consult with our Medical Staff regarding the use of appetite control medication and optimizing other medical problems with respect to weight control (like depression, diabetes, hypothyroidism, menopause, etc.) to help you get back track!

Accurate Body Fat Measurement: To assess where you are and what is a realistic goal weight.

Action plan for Maintenance – Consult with our Medical Staff to develop green, yellow and red zone plans to keep you in your goal range.

New CNC Tools for SUCCESS

Did you know that over the past year CNC has developed lots of new tools to help YOU with life-long weight control? Best of all most are FREE! Let’s look at a few of the improvements we made this past year:

1. Monthly e-Newsletter Service: Packed with success stories, timely weight loss tips, coupons for our on-line store, recipes, and updates in medicine and nutrition. This is written by the professional staff at CNC. If you are not receiving this newsletter, you may have missed lots of exciting news! Examples include:

• Success Stories: Read about Peggy’s 221 pound weight loss journey, how a 50 pound weight loss saved Jean’s life, Pam’s remarkable 54 pound weight loss story and countless others.
• Medical News: The FDA will re-consider a new weight loss drug in April that can help obese individuals lose over 14% of their total body weight. Also, did you see the 3 most effective determinants of successful weight loss according to the latest medical research (Look Ahead Study)?^*
• Weight Loss News: The FDA took steps in December to stop the HCG weight loss scam due to its ineffectiveness.
• Meal Plan Updates: CNC now offers full Optifast meal replacement programs designed to help individuals quickly, safely and simply lose 50 pounds or even more.
• To Sign Up For Our Free Newsletter: Just click the “Subscribe” button in the bottom right of the footer on every page on our web site. (or click here)

2. Medical Weight Loss Blog: Our blog now contains 150 articles written by the staff at CNC on a wide variety of relevant topics. Just head over to the web site and click “Blog” in the top menu bar.

3. On-Line Store: Do you enjoy the protein shakes, bars, soups, snacks and other items at CNC? Our foods are now available to CNC patients through our online store. There are lots of new flavors to choose from. They keep getting better and better every year! Foods can be shipped via UPS to your doorstep or picked up at the office.

4. CNC Facebook Page: We’re social! Harness the power of social networking to achieve your goals! “Like Us” on Facebook to keep in touch (link on bottom-right of web site).

5. Lifestyle Education Series: Ready to take the next step in making the lifestyle adjustments necessary to maintain weight loss? This series, produced by the health professionals at Optifast is available to patients of CNC regardless of which meal plan is followed. Inquire at the front desk for more information on how to use these modules to learn these strategies.