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Dare to succeed in your diet goals and learn that as you enjoy your own weight-loss success story, that you’re also creating successful beliefs that will benefit you beyond your waistline. If you have only succeeded in failing your diet goals in spite of the promises and trendy weight-loss tips offered by the Atkins and South Beach methods, it’s time to evaluate your attitude toward the challenge. Overcome your failure complex and self-sabotage by developing the positive consistency you need to succeed. A review of success and failure reveals startling culprits; one of them is consistency—a leading cause of failure in business and other areas of life is consistency. You may think you want to succeed but another part of you believes more consistently in failure—a form of self-sabotage. If you want change, you have to apply the same principles that pertain to that goal—consistently. If you want your blood cholesterol levels to maintain their same high levels, keep eating cheeseburgers or something equally as deadly. In this manner, you will have demonstrated a consistency for success at raising your cholesterol levels. You can’t begin with a positive goal, apply successful principles to achieve the goal, then drop your focus and expect positive results. Consistency is the key to the success, including your success at failing anything you attempt to accomplish. Let’s take a look at what you want to change and relate it to this idea. You’re overweight and you want to change. You pick a diet out of the plethora available: South Beach, Atkins, etc., and for four days you do well, then suddenly you change lanes—you convince yourself one Milk Dud won’t hurt and wind up eating a whole box. Now you view the diet as ruined, and you feel like you might as well eat what you want for the rest of that day and start the diet fresh the next. The next day isn’t any better than the first and each day that follows you feel worse about yourself. You succumb to various defeating attitudes: it’s too hard to lose the weight… your gene pool is working against you losing weight… you’ll have to starve to lose the weight… you have no will power… you are worthless. You give up entirely, filled with self-loathing and wait for the next surge of weight-loss promises to hit the market. Okay. Your diet didn’t succeed, but you had several things working against you. Can you see what they were? Obviously, a consistent focus on dietary change was absent, but there was one other thing standing in the way of your success: your beliefs about success. You consistently applied negative beliefs about yourself, weight, and dieting, to your dieting regime and Milk Dud transgression, and with that consistency, your reward was failure. Take a piece of paper and fold it in half, creasing the fold to create a sharp edge; now, fold it again and again until it has numerous folds and creases. Open it fully, and lay it flat on the table and rub your hand over all of the creases to flatten it out. Did the creases disappear? No, those creases have become a part of the texture of the paper; they are now part of the paper’s personality. Apply this same idea to your beliefs about dieting (and all other areas of your life that may need an adjustment). Each crease represents a belief, supportive or self-sabotaging, that has become so much a part of you, you don’t appear to be able to rid yourself of the affect it is having in your life. Here’s a weight-loss tip: lasting change can occur by converting each negative and sabotaging belief to one that is supportive of you and your goals. Dieting is no exception. The very word “diet” has a negative connotation to most of us. We tend to believe it isn’t going to be a fun experience. How many people do you know who wake up in the morning, stretch, and with a smile proclaim to the universe, “I’m happy and excited to be dieting today”? Probably not many. But you can turn your diet attempts into a weight-loss success story. It is possible to choose to view the process differently, to embrace the idea that you are doing something positive, just for yourself. It is not only possible, but imperative that you give yourself a break about your weight, your success and failure with diets, and change all of the negative body image beliefs and self-talk to a supportive rather than self-sabotaging script. “I am happy and excited that I’m eating what is supportive of my body type.” “I accept that there are times when chocolate mousse appeals to me more than salmon, and I believe if I satisfy that urge occasionally, and start right back on my healthy eating routine, no harm is done.” “I am a healthy, happy, and slender human being, and I feel good about my new eating style and my slender me.” Positive beliefs and self-talk, applied consistently to any circumstance, will yield positive results. Dare to succeed. Don’t beat yourself up for an occasional choice outside of the healthy plan you are pursuing—just jump back into your healthy and desired eating. Look at your old patterns, based on useless beliefs you’ve carried around for a lifetime that no longer serve you. Pack up all the old beliefs and get rid of them! Replace those beliefs with new, supportive beliefs, while you shop for the new and smaller clothing you’ll be needing soon! You are as powerful and successful at everything you desire, as you believe you are. Make that belief the one you live by! Apply it consistently and happily, all the way to the positive outcome you are sure to experience. |