How To Stay Motivated While Trying To Lose Weight

Hello, and good morning. I want to welcome you to the Body by Patrick podcast. My name is Patrick Ocheni. Ladies and gentlemen, on today’s episode, I have three tips for you guys on how to stay motivated while trying to lose weight.

The first thing you’ve got to realize is that you have to adopt and keep a long-term perspective. That’s the first tip I have for you.

You have to remember and keep reminding yourself that this is a journey. This is not a sprint. You’ve got to keep that long-term perspective in mind. Otherwise, you get easily frustrated whenever you hit a “roadblock” in your journey to lose weight and transform your body. Okay? This is a long-term journey.

All right. So, I’m not saying it’s going to last forever, but just like the stock market, in the stock market, they tell you what, to consistently invest your money every single month for the long term. It’s what’s called “Dollar Cost Averaging.” Whether or not the market goes down or goes up, if you do invest every single month over the long-haul history shows that you will make money.

So, the same mentality you’ve got to have when you trying to lose weight, for example, is that you just keep investing energy or effort into your fitness journey.

Some weeks or some months you’re going to see great result. Other weeks, other months, you might not see any result. But over time, the trend should be you’re getting closer and closer to achieving your fitness goal. That’s my first tip for you: You’ve got to have a long-term perspective.

The second tip I have for you is, you’ve got to have an accountability partner. And this is so powerful. See, one of the great benefits of working with a personal trainer is that not only do they get you motivated or help you stay motivated, they keep you accountable.

 My clients say to me sometimes, Patrick, there have been many times I didn’t want to come to the gym after work because I was tired. I didn’t want to do anything, but because I am invested in this process financially, and I have you, I show up.

So, I keep them accountable in that way, but you might be saying to yourself, well, Patrick, I don’t have money to hire a personal trainer. Well, that’s fine. So, what you’ve got to do is get an accountability partner, but here’s the deal with accountability partners, and here’s where people make mistakes.

You have got to choose someone that’s more experienced that you are. I see people in the gym all the time come in with their workout buddies. But the problem is the person that they are working out with is also out of shape or not as focused.

That is a problem. I’m not saying don’t workout with your friends but let’s say you call your friend Jessica and you’re like Jessica, we’ve been working out for a few weeks now, I’m not seeing any result. And I just don’t want to go to the gym today. I want to go out and eat and party.

Now, Jessica, because she wants to be your friend, might say to you, I feel you. Let’s go hang out, let’s go have fun.

But, if you have an accountability partner that’s more experienced than you are, that’s already achieved what you are trying to accomplish. Guess what, she or he will say to you, you know what, no, that is not what we’re gonna do.

I’m going to meet you at the gym at 5:00 PM tomorrow. I’m going to have to come pick you up if I have to, because I know this is part of the journey. You can do this. So, the key with getting an accountability partner is you’ve got to make sure the person that’s holding you accountable is at a higher level than you are.

Lastly, the other tip I have for you is, you have got to build a community around you by making friends at the gym.

If you are trying to achieve a goal, a that goal is very important to you, trying to be a lone ranger does not work in the long term, especially when you hit roadblocks and you get demotivated.

Now, there’s some people who are just super self-motivated and they’ll be able to plow through no matter what but most of us, we’re more likely to just fall off and stay down. To avoid that, what you’ve got to do is, you’ve got to work on building a community around you.

The other reason why you want to build a community around you and make friends at the gym is that, going to the gym is not a place you just go to try to get in shape.

Going to the gym now is a place where you feel like you have a second family, if you will. Think about these two scenarios, for example.

Let’s say, Jessica decided she’s going to go to the gym and just be by herself, do her own thing every single day and then just leave. And then one day Jessica gets unmotivated, and she doesn’t want to go to the gym that day. Well, more than likely she’s not going to go because she’s got nobody to lean on.

Now, let’s look at, Jesse. One day, he’s like, look, I’m not motivated to go to the gym. I’m tired. I’m exhausted. But, Jesse remembers, Bob is at the gym waiting for me. Bob is a person that I always see at the gym and we workout together– he motivates me, and I motivate him. And I know Bob is somebody that has accomplished what I’ve been trying to accomplish for a long time.

And I also know that Eric is going to be at the gym. Well, guess what? Jesse is more likely to end up at the gym because he knows when he gets there, there are friends at the gym looking forward to his arrival. You see the difference in the two scenarios?

Jessica has nobody to look forward to. Jesse has somebody to look forward to. That is the key: You have to have that mentality that it takes a community. One is too small a number to achieve greatness.