25 06 2018

Staying Motivated for Weight Loss

We all know that the hardest part about working out and losing weight isn’t the actual physical side. No, it’s the mental aspect. Staying motivated for weight loss should be easy then, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work that way.

Fear not, because we’re going to show you how to overcome any mental hurdles that are getting in your way. By the time you’ve read this you’ll be carrying a mental toughness that’s thicker than tank armor. Well that’s what we’re hoping anyway.

20 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Lose Weight

Although sticking to your original weight-loss plan can sometimes seem impossible, we have come up with a list of 20 methods that should help you to stay on track. Hold tight while we rattle them off…

Consider why you wish to lose weight in the first place.
Keep your expectations grounded – dream what’s possible!
Focus on process goals and not just the end goals.
Choose a schedule that will suit your lifestyle.
Keep a weight-loss diary using your smartphone.
Celebrate your achievements and success.
Seek social support. It’s everywhere these days online.
Hard work and dedication.
Banish negativity – think positively and have a winning mentality.
Consider setbacks and loses along the way.
Don’t be a perfectionist and beat yourself up when you fail.
Learn to love yourself and your body.
Look for exercises that you enjoy – disregard others.
Find a role model that you look up to.
Get a pet for company – preferably a dog.
Seek professional help when needed.
Constant improvement is key – move forward and nourish your mind.
Evaluate your life from time to time: diet, sleep, socializing.
Take stock over your running regime – change as necessary.
Cherish the Biggest Motivational Factor in Your Life.

A Healthy Diet Feeds a Hungry Mind

1. Consider Why You Wanted to Lose Weight

Have a deep think about the real reason you want to lose weight. Go over the things that really touch your heart and give you purpose. Write your goals and targets down and keep them in a safe place. Whenever you feel a bit weak or low you can read through them in order to give yourself a boost. They should give you reason and purpose for wanting to lose weight.

It’s these little statements that on their own don’t mean anything, but to you they should define what you are. They give you a sense of clarity and realness that you can call on whenever you wish.

Think of this as your number 1 goal or the target that should change your life in a big way once you achieve it. Something that you can rightly be proud of and your friends will step up and take notice.

Not that you should do anything to impress your real friends, but you get the picture. It’s nice to be noticed for doing the right things in life. Compliments don’t cost anything and if you give them out it’s only right that people reciprocate when the time comes.

Summary: Write down your heartfelt goals. Keep them safe for recollection. Not just for a rainy day – but any day when you need inspiration. Stoke the fires from within.

2. Keep Your Expectations Grounded – Dream What’s Possible!

If you set your targets too high, if you want to do the triple jump before you can even bounce, then you’re going to be in for a triple disappointment. Studies have shown that people who are the most grounded when it comes to losing weight are the ones who are the most successful.

Think about it – if you are constantly failing then your motivation will be shot. Imagine being a footballer and playing on the losing team every week, you’d soon lose the will to live. Well it’s exactly the same when it comes to losing weight and getting fit running. You need to set realistic goals that are matched to your body weight and physique.

Try and aim for between 1 and 2 pounds of body fat per week. If you consider 1 lb a win then you will be happy every week; if you get to the magic 2 lb mark once or twice a month then you will be absolutely buzzing. You’ll be enjoying dieting and running so much that it won’t even seem like a chore. It will be a blessing.

Don’t feel pressured by magazines or TV articles. Most of the people you see on the big screen or in print have either had a personal trainer and a bowl of lettuce or they’ve been Photoshop’d to death. It’s common knowledge how different your favorite celebrity looks in real life compared to what they do with thousands of pounds in makeup.

Just bear this in mind because you really shouldn’t get upset because you aren’t as perfect as them. They’re a caricature – you’re a real person for a start. Even losing 5 – 10 % of your body weight is a little win. This would go a long way towards helping you avoid the following:

Improve blood sugar control.
Reduce joint and knee pain.
Reduce the risk of heart disease.
Lower cholesterol levels blood levels.
Reduce the risk of certain cancers..

Summary: Set realistic and achievable weekly goals – this will promote good feelings and a sense of winning. Ease off if you’re getting too tired and feel burn out coming on. You aren’t in a competition with anyone, the only thing you need to do is keep hanging on and bit by bit you’re getting nearer to your dream body and fitness levels.

3. Focus on Process Goals – Not Just the End Goals

If you concentrate on the end result – say that you wanted to lose 2 stones or 28 lbs, then that is going to be weeks in the future, if not months away. This is obviously a long time to stay focused and committed to one goal. There is a real chance that you will become disillusioned and give up well before you have completed the programme.

What to do? It’s simple. All you need to do is break your big goal up into little chunks. So instead of losing 28 lbs in one go, break it up into weekly goals of 1 to 2 lbs per week, then medium goals of half a stone – 7 to 8 lbs or so. Then the next goal after that would be the first stone that you have lost. Losing 1 stone in body weight is a big achievement for anyone, especially if you are only a small person to begin with. The smaller you are the bigger the achievement really.

An 8 stone lady losing 1 stone is bigger than a 20 stone man losing 1 stone. Though we’re not knocking the big guy, but merely pointing out that sometimes the same weight means more or less to different people.

There is a term that sports trainers are using with regard to goals and its SMART… specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-based.

Some examples of SMART goals include:

Next week, I will walk briskly for 30 minutes x 5 days.
Every day this week I will have at least one serving of vegetables.
This week I will only drink one can of Pepsi.

Summary: The key is setting SMART goals and concentrating on smaller chunks, little wins that add up into a bigger win. Celebrating smaller achievements helps build momentum and a sense of winning. Focus on the positives, while learning from the negatives, but without stressing over them, is also important.

4. Choose a Schedule to Suit Your Lifestyle

If you want to be successful, then don’t set yourself up for failure. What do we mean by this? Well keep your weight loss training and diet programme simple for starters.

Instead of adhering to an all-or-nothing dietary plan, try to make your own balanced diet and consider the following tips:

Decrease calorie intake
Reduce portion sizes
Reduce frequency of snacks
Reduce fried food and desserts
Include fruits, nuts and vegetables

The above are all just simple common sense solutions really.

The more difficult your plan, the harder it will be on all levels. Imagine if you’re a working parent that has children to look after, pick up or drop off. Then you’ve got your training time. A healthy diet usually has more preparation time and forethought than a junk food diet.

We aren’t trying to put you off, but rather pointing out that ideas roll off the tongue easier than they roll onto the plate. However, don’t go overboard and make your new diet too easy as that will probably equate to boring. You want a balance between ease of preparation, taste and nutrients.

Once you get to know your way around the healthy ingredients and fresh food isles in your local supermarket, you will find cooking and meal preparation easier. Just like you have to learn how to workout, you have to learn how to eat and cook like an athlete. Unless you’re lucky enough to be able to afford a personal chef. Imagine, haha! That would be cool, eh?

Summary: Keep it simple and aim for a clean and healthy diet that doesn’t cost a fortune, is relatively easy to prepare and above all you like the food. If you try and force food down you that isn’t to your taste buds it won’t be long before you give up on it. Fine tune your diet and work on your cooking. You’ll soon be a master at saving time on preparation – use the freezer for healthy spaghetti bolognese sauce, etc.

5. Keep a Weight-Loss Diary Using Your Smartphone

You can use a pen and paper if you prefer the old-school way, but in the smartphone era it is much easier to use your phone and an app. Whether you use your specific dietary app, the inbuilt notes feature on the phone itself or even the running app that you’ve been monitoring your training with isn’t so critical.

Again, the most important thing is that you don’t find it a chore writing down all your details. Chores are annoying and people pack them in the first chance they get.

It’s also crucial that you are honest with yourself and write down every little sweet that you have had to eat. You are only cheating yourself if you lie, so there’s no point in going down that road. However, you must be keen to learn and lose weight because if you weren’t you wouldn’t be reading this now so bravo and pat yourself on the back for that one.

Summary: Write down all you’ve been eating. You can write down any mood swings, both up and down, that you’ve been having. Do certain foods or people put you in a mood? If you keep track of everything then even things that don’t at first seem significant might show themselves as a problem if they keep on occurring far too often. A diary isn’t just for the sake of it – the information is there to look back on and pick up on any patterns.

6. Celebrate Your Achievements and Success

Don’t forget to reward yourself when you have hit a certain level and you feel the need for some self-loving. How about:

Spoiling yourself at the hairdressers.
Having a night out with friends.
Buying a new running outfit.
Treating yourself to a healthy meal.
Getting a manicure.

You can share your success on social media, Instagram and Facebook are great places to start. You can join weight loss groups that will likely be more supportive over things like you losing a few pounds, whereas your usual social media platforms might not be so kind, unless you have lost a lot of weight.

Just bear in mind that you might not always get positive feedback, but be strong and don’t get upset or put off by any negativity. Sometimes people might only be joking, but it’s easy to take things the wrong way when you aren’t talking face to face. It might sound obvious, but text doesn’t convey the same nuances of tone and facial expressions that us humans have evolved with.

Summary: Celebrate your achievements by breaking your overall project down into lots of smaller wins. This will help keep your pecker up and give you a regular incentive boost. Don’t make the intervals so easy that they don’t mean anything. As with anything else to do with exercise and healthy eating, balancing things correctly is the way to go. Not too big and not too small.

7. Seek Social Support from Friends and Online

Similar to Number 6, seeking social support be it online or from friends and family is vital. Studies have shown that people who have a good friend they can rely on, whether that be a best friend they can offload their problems to or a family that they can share little things with, it’s all helpful when dealing with stress and expectation.

Remember that when you’re trying to lose weight your mood might be up and down when you are hungry and tired. While exercise gives you a high, especially running, you can also feel a bit low if your blood sugar is down and you’re week and tired. If this is happening too often then take a look at your diet. You might not be taking in enough calories.

Have a thorough examination of everything you are eating over a full week. Then look at how many extra calories you are burning exercising and what is the healthy amount for your age, gender and body weight.

You can check your BMI or body mass index here: BMI Healthy Weight Calculator.

While BMI isn’t my favourite way of checking your health, it is better than nothing. The best way is to find out exactly how much body fat you are carrying as a percentage of your overall body weight. BMI is still okay though if all you want is a quick check up, which is the reason doctors use it. They know it isn’t perfect, but it’s quick and easy to do, hence, its popularity.

Summary: Seek social support from friends or family. Don’t bottle your problems up, your friends will be glad that you trust them to share anything important with them. That’s what friends are for, after all. If you are working away from home and have nobody to talk to then you can always phone the Samaritans or a similar support group.

8. Hard Work and Dedication

It’s only three words: Hard Work, Dedication. It rolls off the tongue much easier than you have to do it at the gym, but it’s a great little mantra that you can tell yourself when the chips are down. One of my favorite boxers – Floyd Mayweather is a billionaire because of it. He must have said it literally thousands of times, but it’s made him wealthy beyond belief.

Now we don’t have to be anywhere near as successful as Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather, but when we’re tired or feeling a bit down in the dumps, we need to remind ourselves about HWD. Yep, it’s something that might not always come easy, but it’s something we all need to master at various levels.

By telling your friends and gym buddies or fellow runners about your goals, you’re making a commitment that you are more likely to carry out and dish out the hard work and dedication. Think about it, if you keep it to yourself that you are going to go for a five mile run tomorrow, then cancel the run. Nobody will know. You won’t have let anyone down.

On the other hand, however, if you speak out and tell a few people about your plans they will hold you to it. They will hold you accountable. This might feel like a bad thing when you want an easy day off, but if they encourage you and shame you into some hard work and dedication that can only be a good thing.

The plus side is that you can rightly brag about your achievements, even if you’re just messing around with your friends. We all know that you have to do something worthwhile before you have earned your stripes and the right to shout your mouth off. So do yourself a favor and tell your friend that you’re going to run a half marathon in six months’ time. That way you will get fun made out of you if you don’t, but you can be the one laughing when you put in the miles and actually turn up on the day.

Summary: Make yourself accountable by making a public statement of intent. This doesn’t have to be by mouth – you can simply join your local gym or running club. However you decide to do it, just make sure you do. Even making a pact with your best friend. Like Nike say: Just do it!

9. Banish Negativity – Think Positively – Have a Winning Mentality

Change talk is similar to Number 8, but you can talk about how you are going to lose weight, what behavioral changes you are going to carry out. It’s all about making statements with intent.

Talk comes cheap, as the saying goes, so make sure that you back your words up with actions. Balance one against the other. A positive trait of successful people is that they have good vision. They can look into the future and imagine situations. This is what gives them the hunger and drive to be successful. However, you don’t want to indulge into this way of thinking too often or not without contrasting it with the problems you might come across.

The trouble is if you concentrate on the glory you might feel as though you’ve already been there and done it. Hence the emphasis on contrasting the good with the bad. While it isn’t a good idea to dwell on the negative items either, all we are saying is like most of our advice it’s about balance. You must balance one with the other.

Imagine yourself running along the beach with that six pack or whatever else you fancy. Don’t give up until you get there. Imagine how proud of yourself you will be when the time comes.

Summary: Think positively and talk positively. However be realistic and balance your positive thoughts and emotions with negative challenges that you will need to overcome. Look at the big picture. Plan for all scenarios.

10. Consider Setbacks and Loses Along the Way

Life can be stressful, that’s normal. We all have to deal with varying problems and stressful situations along the path of life. What you must avoid is things like binge eating when problems are overwhelming. You should be planning ahead and have coping mechanisms ready to call upon when the unfortunate happens.

Perhaps you bump your car on the way home from work, what if it’s not your car, but your partners? Things like this can often set the pressure in the kitchen way too high for us to absorb things without a reaction.

Whatever happens, don’t load more pressure on to your shoulders. You’re already having a hard time; stay staunch and rise above it all. It’s easy to say now, but most problems are nowhere near as bad as what we think they are initially.

Have a few get out of jail cards ready for when it all goes pop:

Breathing techniques.
Get some fresh air.
Take a bubble bath.
Phone a friend for a chat.
Ask for help.

It’s at times like this when things are hard people will completely forget their weight-loss goals. Try and keep on track instead of letting it go to pot. You will be proud of yourself for keeping it together.

Plan ahead when going for meals and find out what healthy options they have on the menu. Most restaurants will be glad to accommodate you and do a special one-off meal for you; don’t be afraid to ask – you’re the one that’s paying, not them.

Summary: It’s good to practice coping strategies. Ensure that whatever your stress level the one thing you won’t do is binge eat. There are plenty of coping mechanisms that you can apply rather than heading straight for the chocolate bars and cake tin. Stay staunch and reassure yourself. Talk to a friend as well – if you know something is likely to happen, say an illness in the family then it’s most likely that your best friend will already know anyway if you’ve prepped them beforehand.

11. Don’t be a Perfectionist and Beat Yourself up When You Fail

If you start out looking to be a perfect dieter, then it’s not going to be long before you cave into the pressure of a rumbling stomach or a bar of chocolate that is talking to you. “Eat me, I’m only skinny.”

You should set out to be dedicated, but if yo have a little slip up then so be it. Most dieters have one splurge day when they let themselves go and basically eat whatever they want. If your day off is on a Saturday, but you’re going out with friends on the Friday night, then why not just swap your splurge day over? Simple solution, really. Don’t make things more difficult than they need to be – life is hard enough as it is.

When you mess up and you will because you’re human after all, don’t be too hard on yourself. Running the scenario through over and over in your head like a tape recorder isn’t going to achieve anything. The only thing that will do is upset you and fill your mind with doubts and negative thoughts.

You’re better than that. Rationalize the situation then learn from it and put it to bed once and for all. If it happened because it was a one off spur of the moment thing then that’s all it needs to be. If it was avoidable then all you need to do is make sure you realize what went wrong and make sure that it won’t happen again. It might have been thinking about your ex-partner that put you in a bad mood. These are the type of things you need to be putting in your food diary so you can keep track of them.

Summary: Learn from your mistakes then put them behind you. Keep track of any strong emotions that can affect your eating patterns or mood swings. Don’t dwell on things just for the sake of it – you don’t want to waste energy on negativity. You need to be on your A game to win the weigh war. It’s all possible when you are thinking the right way!

12. Learn to Love Yourself and Your Body

Researchers have found that people who don’t like their bodies are less likely to lose weight. This sounds quite obvious, really, because most people who are ashamed of themselves are unlikely to want to be seen out of the house.

The problems that people are going through are often mental, which isn’t a nice feeling when you are lacking in confidence and the thought of going in a gym changing room fills you with dread. The mental side of things can often be worse than someone who is overweight, but otherwise is feeling happy and cheerful.

Everyone is different and while confident people might find it a joke, we all have our concerns and worries.

Personally I hate being white, which is why I go on the sunbed. It also helps cover my tattoos, which I hate. It’s easy to say learn to love yourself, but as we get older we probably don’t so much learn to love ourselves, but learn to accept ourselves. There is a big difference between the two, but acceptance is better than nothing!

Research has also found out that people who like their body are more likely to stick to a diet.

The following activities can help boost your body image:

Exercise such as running.
Get a manicure or massage.
Surround yourself with positive people.
Stop comparing yourself to others.
Wear nice fitting clothing.

Summary: It’s super important that at the very minimum, you try and accept your own body. It’s the only one you will ever have, after all. Think positive things like how fortunate you are to have your full health. Whatever else you may do, don’t compare yourself to other people, especially models. Be proud of who you are.

13. Look for Exercises that You Enjoy – Disregard Others

It might sound obvious, but finding an exercise that you enjoy is paramount to sticking with it. We’re all about running at How to Run Faster and Longer so take your pick from the myriad of running formats that there is to chose from. You can still go to the gym, but running is the best exercise there is for losing weight.

We’re natural runners and have evolved with the ability over hundreds of thousands of years since we came down from the trees.

Don’t ignore this wonderful gift that keeps us fit, makes us feel happy and also helps us to stay trim and lose weight. Running really is a miracle among exercises. Nearly every sport there is has some level of running involved. Even darts has walking!

We won’t hate on you if you get involved in an other sport aside from running, but we aren’t kidding when we speak highly of running. It really is the best form of exercise that’s known to man.

Summary: If you don’t like an exercise – bin it because you won’t do it if it doesn’t feel right. Running should be a part of any serious athletes physical exercise regime. Do yourself a favor and make sure it’s part of yours!

14. Find a Role Model That You Look up to

We’ve all had different heroes at different stages of our lives, or at least that’s what I have done. Sometimes I look up to sports people, runners, boxers, then other times it’s a business man that I’ve noticed and admired. You might want to be a footballer, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t look up to a famous boxer such as Anthony Joshua for example.

Looking up to someone doesn’t mean that you have to copy them like for like. You just have to look at what makes them great and see if you can take a tiny bit of their best qualities and inject them into your daily routine.

Different sports are known for different qualities, but someone who is a distance runner like Mo Farah, is in most people’s eyes just as tough as a heavyweight boxer. Yes, he doesn’t get beaten up in the ring, but he beats his body up running hundreds of miles each week. The same can be said of the cyclists who compete in the Tour de France.

Regardless of whether Lance Armstrong cheated, the lads that do it today are most likely some of the cleanest athletes that have ever competed in cycling or athletics full stop.

I used to look up to Michael Johnson the middle-distance runner and read his book many years ago. He is a great role model. Someone who had an awkward stride and wasn’t deemed good enough at first, but he toughed it out and held the Olympic and World Records for years. In fact, they’ve only just recently been broken – that’s how good he was.

It doesn’t matter who you look to for inspiration. As long as you can see quality in someone, even if someone else can’t. It doesn’t matter. Its’ what you see that counts. They’re your role model not someone else’s.

Summary: Look for the good in someone you admire. My favorite sports person at the moment is boxer Vasiliy Lomachenko. He is an all round good guy. Well mannered, polite, intelligent and supremely hardworking. He’s also a good runner! Whatever you see in someone, all you need to do is apply the same quality to your daily life. You might not be a world champion, but to your friends and family you are probably more than a champion. You’d be surprised how your real friends care about you.

15. Get a Pet for Company – Preferably a Dog

Canadian studies have shown that people with a dog walked almost double the mileage of people who didn’t own a dog. Do me a favor, though, please, if you are going to get a dog then try and rescue one rather than going to a puppy farm or buying one from an advert in the local paper. I won’t give you the animal rights lecture, but my mother is a big animal lover and she’d be annoyed with me if she knew I was telling people to go out and get a dog.

As well as increasing one’s happiness and well-being, dogs love to be walked and the more active ones like to go running. Therefore, most owners take advantage of the dogs love of the outdoors and can benefit from the increased activity of owning a four-legged friend.

Summary: Get a dog and increase your well-being and exercise more often when walking and running with your dog. Rescue centers are over-flowing with friendly dogs that need a good home. We once rescued a beautiful gun dog that would have literally cost us £500 or more and we paid roughly £50 at the most. She was an English Pointer called Kuita and was the quietest dog in the whole kennels.

16. Seek Professional Help When Needed

One of the most important things people like about seeking professional help is that it makes them accountable. By visiting the pros people are subconsciously moving up a level themselves. They’re taking their hobby be it running or dieting, whatever it is they’re seeking help with, more seriously.

Think about it, if they didn’t care they wouldn’t be spending their hard-earned dosh on professional advice that they can get for free on the Internet. In all honesty, most intelligent people can get the same results themselves for free or for a few quid by buying books, e-Books and magazines than they would from seeing a professional.

The only difference is that the professional is saving them time. They’re obviously giving them good advice – or at least you would hope so. Above all else, though, it just sounds way cooler when you tell your friends that you’re going to see your nutritionist rather than you’re going to have a peek online for an hour.

In an ideal world, we’d all have professional people to look after our every need, but unfortunately most of us can’t afford to waste such hard-earned cash on ‘advice.’ Not when you can come to the best website in the world – How to Run Faster and Longer – and all for FREE!!!

Summary: Dietitians and exercise physiologists provide an excellent service, if that’s what you are after. For most people, though, you can find all the information you need – and pass a few hours reading online. It’s all down to personal preference and depending on whether you live in Chelsea or the North East of England! Each to their own, I guess.

17. Constant Improvement is Key – Move Forward and Nourish Your Mind

When you want to lose weight, constant improvement is key. You need to keep on moving forwards by educating yourself. Once you start to feel stale with the current regime and diet you are using for your running, it’s time to spice things up a bit.

Reading books was the old-school way to nourish your mind and feed the brain, but today you can read a blog like this one instead. The principles are still the same. You read and learn.

Weight loss and nutrition are two fields where there is endless advice, but when you combine the two with running the options are literally endless. All you can do is through trial and error come to an exercise plan that you feel comfortable with and the same goes for your diet. Just ensure that you don’t stick to the same plan for too long. You can miss out on vital nutrients if your diet becomes too boring and rigid. Experiment now and then with new meals, food groups and recipes.

The same goes for running. You are spoiled as a runner with the amount of choice that you have. If you click on the main menu bar you will see how many different formats of running I have listed and that isn’t nearly all of them. When the weather is right running must be one of the most pleasurable activities known to man. Look at the sunset in the featured image – need I say more?

Summary: Keep on moving forwards with your knowledge. Read as much as possible to educate yourself, but you will need to practice what you learn so you know whether the information is worth holding on to. Above all, stay motivated by enjoying yourself and having good conversations with friends, if you run in a group. Alternatively you can listen to music or podcasts if you run alone. The choice is yours.

18. Evaluate Your Life from time to time: Diet, Sleep, Socializing

The great thing about keeping a diary is that when something goes wrong, or doesn’t quite seem right, you have all the information you need to call upon in order to turn private detective.

When your body starts to slow down and feel sluggish, the first culprit is usually over training. That can stem from a number of things, though. It might be due to poor diet or a lack of calories. What about sleep? Have you been getting too much or too little sleep? Maybe you’ve been getting the correct hours, but you’ve been tossing and turning so it’s the same as not getting enough sleep due to poor quality.

What I’m saying is that once or twice a year, even if everything feels fine, give your life an MOT, just as you would your car. See if your life passes the Ministry of Transport test.

Socializing is hard on the body, especially if you’ve been drinking too much alcohol. As a runner you can’t expect to perform as efficiently as the next person if you’ve been taking liberties with your health. I’m not knocking you if you do, because it’s your body and your right to live how you want to live.

Summary: Take good care of your body and soul by having a stock take once or twice a year. Check your diet, your running schedule and see if it’s productive to your goal of losing weight. If you’re not feeling great then you are going to struggle to stay motivated and keep on track losing weight. Body fat is a stubborn thing to say goodbye to once the initial easy bits have been taken care of. The lower your weight – the harder the struggle becomes so stay on point. Focus all your energy and will power into being successful and reaching your targets.

19. Take Stock of Your Running Regime – Change as Necessary

Similar to Number 18, it’s important to drill down on your running weight-loss plan and see if you are doing the running appropriate with weight loss. It might be that you are running for fitness rather than to lose weight. All running burns calories, but to burn the most fat you need to concentrate on longer and slower runs to actually burn the fat, but also high intensity interval training is important.

The HIIT increases your fitness levels, even though at the time it burns mainly carbs and glycogen, the fact you will be much fitter helps you burn more fat at rest. Like most things involved in physical fitness exercises such as running, there is an overlap where one format has benefits that seem contradictory on first account.

Summary: In essence, variety is the spice of life and the spice of being a great runner that looks great with a six pack, but also has a great engine for endurance and stamina. Otherwise known as a great all-round runner. The key to this is hard work and dedication through a strict diet and highly motivated outlook.

20. Cherish the Biggest Motivational Factor in Your Life

What is the biggest motivator in your life? It could be your wife, your children or perhaps nothing to do with family at all. It might be purely that you wish to smash a world record. Whatever your motivation may be, hold it dearly to your heart and make sure you make a promise to your motivator. A promise that you won’t stop till you have achieved your desired target and goals are accomplished.

That’s it – just rinse and repeat.

Summary: Don’t underestimate the power of the mind. Your mind control is what governs your body regardless of how good or bad your body may be. Use your mind properly – it’s the best weapon you have in the battle to beat the bulge. Appreciate your motivator that we’ve just been discussing. Use him/it wisely like a joker in a game of cards. It’s all in the mind and you have the power to do anything you want. Look at Wim Hof for the perfect example. I’d say sitting in ice for two hours is will power.

Five More Runner’s Reads

How do You Stay Motivated?

We all have those dark days from time to time where we just feel like rolling over and staying in bed. Let us know how you deal with such situations. They’re not easy to deal with, but by being strong and taking a stand against our emotions is the best option.

It’s sometimes easier said than done, but hit us up in the comments with any tips you would like to share.