Achieve Your Weight Loss Goals with Affirmations in Just Minutes Per Day

How many times have you started a weight loss program only to quit within a few weeks? Perhaps your motivation was high in the beginning and you may have even lost a few pounds in the beginning, but then as one day dragged into another, you slowly reverted back to your old eating patterns and sedentary lifestyle. Why is that? How can we keep ourselves going to create the new, positive habits that we need to realize our long-term goals?

One powerful strategy is affirmations. Affirmations are a method of self-talk and a way to reprogram self-limiting beliefs. The most powerful predictor of future success or failure in weight loss, is past experiences. If we have lost weight in the past, we know we can do it again and we are more likely to succeed. However, if we have tried and failed in the past, we have likely created a self-limiting belief that we can’t do it and we are going to fail again. Changing that self-limiting belief that we can’t lose weight is obviously critical to our future success.

To change the self-limiting belief, we must reprogram our subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is where our habits and our emotions live and it is programmed through repetition. (Read more about the subconscious mind here.) Therefore, to remove that self-limiting belief, we must tell ourselves, repeatedly, what we want to accomplish and why it is important to us. Affirmations help you change existing beliefs and create new beliefs which will result in new behaviors. In fact, science has proven that affirmations are one of the most effective ways to achieve your goals.

So, how specifically, do we create an affirmation?

First, we need to be clear about the result we are committed to and why. What result do you want and why do you want it? How is this goal going to improve your life or the lives of others? It is not enough to say we want to lose weight. We must explore the underlying reason. Do we want to lose weight to have more energy to perform better at work which will increase earning potential? Do we want to lose weight to have more energy to play with our kids to create memories for them and us?

Second, don’t focus so much on how you will achieve this. We are creative beings! We will figure out a way and besides, there are multiple paths to achievement. Don’t limit yourself. When you start creating goals around these affirmations, that will be your time to address the “how” and make them more specific. You will likely have multiple goals that align with your positive affirmations anyway!

Pulling these first two steps together, a potential affirmation may be: “I am 100% committed to losing weight so that I can help my son practice soccer to help him make the team.”

As you can see, the what and why are specific but the how is not addressed. It gives a meaningful reason for wanting to achieve the goal, but it doesn’t provide the action plan for getting there. Again, this is where goals will come in later.

The next step to using affirmations to help you achieve your weight loss goal is to recite them at least once every single day, but feel free to repeat them multiple times as well. Repeating affirmations in the morning and evening before you go to bed are perfect. You may also want to save them on your phone so if that cookie is really calling you in the middle of the afternoon, you can quickly read your affirmations to give you that extra support.

Because we are reprogramming the subconscious mind and this is done through repetition, we must repeat them daily or as often as possible. Just like eating one salad is not going to make us lose weight, affirmations will not work after one time. Like any other habit, it is the action we take day in and day out that leads to results. Be consistent and repeat your affirmations daily. It only takes a few minutes so you don’t have any excuse not to!

Finally, constantly revise your affirmations as your goals change or as you make new realizations. Part of the growth process is learning new things about ourselves and the world around us, and then revising our plans for moving forward. Any time you have a new goal, create an affirmation for it. You can also incorporate new quotes and strategies that you stumble on that really resonate with you.

If you need some help getting started, here are some ideas. If any of these really resonate with you, feel free to use it and just tweak it to make it your own!

• I am committed to improving my fitness level so I can run a fun 5K with my wife in October.
• I am committed to eating more vegetables each day to feel better and have more energy.
• I am committed to becoming more positive and focus only on the things I do that are moving me towards my goal.
• I am committed to becoming more successful with my weight loss every single day so I can look and feel better.

Keep in mind, you don’t need to create affirmations only for weight loss - you can create affirmations for everything in your life - work, school, relationships, etc. We all have the power to change our mindset, thoughts, and beliefs. Using affirmations will reinforce our goals while changing self-limiting beliefs that have been holding us back. Good luck and enjoy the journey!