Use Your Mindset to Lose Weight, Get Fit and Be Healthy

Why do some people seem to lose weight easily while others fail year after year?

• Is it genetics? Money? Willpower?

While it’s true these may play a small part, there’s something else that has a much larger role.

• It’s mindset.

And yours may be holding you back.

In this article, we’ll explore the science behind your mindset and underlying philosophy, and show you some proven ways to take action to improve it–so you can finally use your mindset to lose weight, get fit and be healthy.

What Is “Mindset”?

• Mindsets are beliefs about yourself and your most basic qualities.

Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck, who wrote a book called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, says there are two different types of mindsets: fixed and growth-oriented.

People with a fixed mindset think talent alone creates success. When faced with a challenge, they tend to take the easy way out to avoid failure and embarrassment. This is a psychological principle known as self-handicapping.

People with a growth mindset believe they can improve their abilities and create successes by working hard, practicing, and learning. They take on challenges even at the risk of failing. They embrace failure because they know they’ll learn valuable lessons from it.

How Mindset Affects Your Health

Research shows your mindset can profoundly impact your life—especially your health. Here are several studies that prove it.

In a study published in the journal Psychological Science, hotel cleaning crews were told that the work they do (cleaning hotel rooms) is good exercise and satisfies the Surgeon General’s recommendations for an active lifestyle. Subjects in the control group were not given this information. Four weeks later, the first group perceived themselves to be getting significantly more exercise than before. As a result, compared with the control group, they showed a decrease in weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index. Mindset alone caused physiological changes in their body.

In another study published in the journal Health Psychology, participants were divided into two groups. Each group received a 380-calorie milkshake but one group was told they were drinking a 620-calorie “indulgent” shake and the other was told they were drinking a 140-calorie “sensible” shake.

The researchers then measured participants’ levels of ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates your brain to increase appetite.

Those who thought they drank the 620-calorie shake experienced a dramatically steeper decline in ghrelin after consuming the shake. The study authors concluded that “Participants’ satiety was consistent with what they believed they were consuming rather than the actual nutritional value of what they consumed.”

In other words, your mindset about a particular food can affect your hunger and levels of fullness. If your mind tells your body you’re drinking a “skinny” shake, you won’t feel as full. You CAN use your mindset to lose weight, get fit and be healthy.

Finally, in a study published in the journal Clinical Psychology Review that looked at the science of optimism, researchers found that an optimistic mindset can lead to better health outcomes too—optimistic people tend to be healthier on average.

How to Change Your Philosophy and Mindset

So the science clearly tells us that your mindset can have a dramatic impact on your health. The question is, how do you change a mindset that may be holding you back?

This is what Dweck suggests in her book:

Step 1. Recognize fixed mindset thinking.

Even if you have a growth mindset, that pesky little fixed mindset voice will sneak its way in once in a while. You know … the one that produces these types of thoughts:

• “I have bad genes, there’s no way I can lose that much weight.”
• “What if I fail?”
• “I don’t want to embarrass myself.”
• “I don’t have the willpower to stick with a healthy diet.”
• “I’m just not as smart/lucky/talented.”

When this happens, simply recognize and accept it. Then do this …

Step 2. Reframe negative, fixed mindset thinking with a growth mindset voice.

Once you recognize a fixed mindset thought, you have a choice: believe those negative thoughts … or reframe them. For example:

• “No excuses this time … I’m getting started.”
• “If I fail, it’s okay. Great accomplishments don’t happen without risk.”
• “Forget diets. I’ll take it slow and making eating healthy a lifestyle.”
• “If I don’t know how to do something, I’ll learn.”

Step 3. Take action.

Once you reframe a fixed mindset thought, the next step is to take action.

Here are some strategies that will help you:

1. Write it down. One of the most effective ways to improve your philosophy and mindset is to keep a journal or planner. Use it to capture your thoughts, plan your day, and track your goals. For example, here’s what I do:

• At the start of every day I write a positive quote at the top of my daily planner (today’s quote is “Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it”).
• Next, I write down everything I plan to do over the course of the day to accomplish my goals (for example, “Write new blog post, network with 3 people, lift weights for 45 minutes, find recipe for healthy dinner”).
• Then, I evaluate what I accomplished at the end of each day.

Writing things down feels good, and it’s proven to help you cultivate positive mental and physical changes in your body. In one study, participants wrote for 20 minutes each day for three consecutive days about either a positive life experience or a control topic.

Three months later, the students who wrote about positive experiences had improved physical health and higher levels of focus—just from writing about it. That’s powerful stuff. If you want to change your mindset, write.

2. Embrace learning. We all consume massive amounts of information every day. You have a choice whether that information helps you or holds you back. Checking your Facebook page 10 times a day may be mindless fun, but what if you spent that time reading books that helped you cultivate a growth mindset?

I recommend Mind Is The Master by James Allen, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, and Make Today Count by John Maxwell. Even if you don’t like to read, buy audio books and listen to them while you drive. Imagine the impact those books and others you’re interested in can have on your mindset over time.

3. Take calculated risks. Whether you want to start your own business or get in the best shape of your life, ask yourself this question: will you be better off by never starting or by taking a chance and risking failing?

It’s an easy answer. Embrace failure. Because it will give you the most valuable feedback in the world. The foundation of the growth mindset is the ability to learn from your failures and become a person who continuously improves.

On Carol Dweck’s website, she says, “Although people may differ in every which way—in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments – everyone can change and grow through application and experience.”

In other words, your mindset is like a muscle: the more you use it to both learn and focus on positive thoughts, the stronger it becomes.

Dream big but start small. Focus on your mindset first and you will open doors to anything and everything you want to accomplish in life….perhaps starting with losing weight, getting fit and being healthy.

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Weight Loss Mindset: 10 tips for change

Every day individuals resign themselves to make the adjustments to their life to deliver real body change. It sometimes helps to know some of the most important elements of the fat loss lifestyle. Here is some insight that may help you make the switch into your new fat loss lifestyle, my 10 tips for real body change.

1) Stop playing the weight loss game and get into fat loss.

If you are still using a scale to measure your progress in body change, it will be virtually impossible to know what kind of weight you are losing. Just because you are losing weight does not mean you are losing fat. Too often it is not fat people are losing but rather water or even worse, muscle. This leads to yo-yo dieting and  weight rebound. A loss of muscle will make the metabolism less efficient in the long run. This is a key reason why chronic dieters have a more difficult time getting any sort of result as they age. To avoid this issue get something to monitor fat loss.

2) Stop counting calories and start paying attention to your body.

Counting calories is a one-size-fits-all process that works for very few. Instead of trying to practice food avoidance or portion control, pay attention to the signals your body sends. After each meal, monitor hunger, cravings and energy levels. These sensations can act as biofeedback tools that give you insight into your hormonal fat burning metabolism and help you adjust your diet. By eating in a way that generates less hunger and cravings and more stable energy you can fine tune your diet to the perfect approach for you. Eating this way will result in eating less calories without even trying and will turn weight loss to fat loss. One hint, protein and fiber are the key tools to balance these sensations so eat more of them.

3) Learn the process and stop doing protocols

Your body does not conform to simple math equations and does not respond like everyone else. You are unique and therefore require an approach that matches your individual metabolism. Instead of following a one-size-fits-all diet, or an off the shelf program, spend some time finding out your own fat loss formula. Approaching body change this way assures you will have something that always works even when your metabolism goes through changes (aging, children, menopause, etc.).

4) Don’t just eat healthy, eat for fat loss

A healthy diet does not always equal a fat loss diet, but a fat loss diet almost always equals a healthy diet. There are plenty of healthy foods that may not help your fat loss goals. While whole grains, nuts, dairy, and fruits are all healthy, some or all of them may need to be minimized according to your individual metabolic processes. Spend time figuring out what can stay and what needs to go. It won’t be the same for everyone.

5) BE, DO, HAVE

It is important to understand that the way many people go about change is backwards. Most people think if they simply DO something different, they will then HAVE what they want and BEcome a different person. This is often stated as the DO, HAVE, BE mindset. Or, they may feel if they are given something, like money (HAVE), they will be able to DO all the stuff they want and will BEcome a different person. This is the HAVE, DO, BE mindset. Both of these models are wrong. To make a true change, you have to BE the thing you are trying to become right now in the present moment. Then you will automatically DO the things necessary to HAVE what you desire…..BE, DO, HAVE

6) No Victim Talk and no blame

There is no room for blame in change. Resist the temptation to use the behaviors of others to justify your own. Just because your spouse, coworkers and others around you eat junk and are sedentary has nothing to do with you. Surround yourself with the support system you need. Take all blame, expectation, judgment, and excuses out of your mindset. Your success or failure is 100% up to you. You are either going to do it or not, it is up to you.

7) Eat Preemptively

Many people take an eat less approach to body change. Problem is you live in a body designed through the centuries to seek out food and maximize fat storage. This is an ancient survival mechanism we humans inherited from our ancestors who lived in a time where the next meal was never guaranteed. Now you live in a world where sweet, fatty, salty, and addictive food is on every corner. You can’t win a battle of wills against your physiology. Very few people can simply eat less and avoid food, and if you are overweight there is little chance you are one of them. Instead of fasting, eating less, or practicing food avoidance, eat preemptively. By eating more of the right things more often you can “preempt” hunger, cravings, and drops in blood sugar that lead you to make the poor choices in the first place.

8 ) Exercise for ME, meaning you

Exercise in a way that works for your body. Rest-based training is a good way to do that since it allows you to exercise at a high intensity, but do it at a manageable level and progress at your own pace. Not only does this mean you should avoid the popular boot camp trends of “keep going” and “out compete”, it also means choosing programs that suit you. While there is certainly a best approach for body change (see below), the bulk of your exercise should be something you love and can be consistent with.

9) Realize there is a best approach to body change

To get the most out of exercise, research shows cross-training is best. Some of us like to lift weight and some like cardio. Others like yoga and some like swimming. The best approach for body change involves cardiovascular exercise combined with weight training. If you want to lose fat and not muscle you need to learn to weight train and not simply try to “run off” the weight. There are many good programs, including the metabolic effect workouts, that utilize weight training in a way that generates a cardio effect. Search for these type programs. Some good ones include Crossfit, Metabolic Effect’s system of Metabolic Physique Conditioning, some forms of Power Yoga, and metabolic conditioning programs run by many good personal trainers.

10) Sleep and Stress

Neither one of these things have calories but we all know they drastically impact how we feel, whether we exercise or not and what we choose to eat. Research shows 8 hours of sleep a night can make a huge difference in hunger, cravings, and energy levels. It is your choice. Is staying up late to watch your favorite TV show worth more than body change?

Comment below a mindset tip you've learnt over your weight loss journey, I'd love to hear them :)

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