When is the Best Time to Start Losing Weight?
It’s that time of year again. The weather is beginning to warm up and we’re moving well into Spring. Gym memberships are soaring, people are stocking up on supplements and we are of course getting inundated with personal training enquiries.
Even though motivational levels may be at their highest around this time of year, there is something that stops many people from accomplishing their goals. It’s this perception that starting this weight loss journey should be held off until everything is perfect as to not interfere with one’s weight loss efforts.
My role as a trainer is interesting at times, you really gain some insight into human behaviour. Many of us want to accomplish a particular goal, but many of us also believe that accomplishing this goal requires the stars to be aligned in such a way that ensures optimal progress toward that goal. Therefore, if something is not supportive of accomplishing that goal, it is better not to begin moving toward that goal at all…or so the logic goes.
I guess you can liken this to a journey from one place to another that would normally take an hour in good traffic conditions. Let’s say you’re going on a holiday and you’re about to jump in your car. It’s raining outside. So instead of leaving (as traffic may be heavier and visibility is lower), you wait until the rain stops. Instead of arriving in one hour and twenty minutes, you end up arriving the next day when the rain has completely ceased. Under normal circumstances, this scenario is completely illogical as the extra twenty minute drive is not enough to warrant the extra day on your holiday.
Why then is it so common to replicate this when attempting to accomplish a weight loss goal?
Common excuses (often perceived to be reasons through rationalisation) that will prevent you from undertaking a weight loss approach come in many shapes and forms. Here are some common that I’ve been bombarded with over the years:
- Injury (a particular injury may prevent you from some exercises, so it’s best to wait)
- Events (you have some events planned and you don’t these to interfere with your goals)
- Finances (you cannot afford a gym membership)
- Poor fitness (you’re not yet fit enough to undertake a structured exercise regime)
- Work (work commitments will prevent you from exercising)
- Illness (You’re not feeling 100% and want to wait until you’re better)
But if you find yourself saying things like these, wake up to what you are really saying! These are merely excuses serving as a means of procrastination. You are using these excuses to prevent you from accomplishing your goals and justify spending another week/fortnight/month/year doing nothing!
With each of the above examples, here are some brief approaches that you could take, showing that often none of these are valid:
- Injury: Have a trainer construct a plan to accommodate for the injury. Further, injury does not prevent you from focussing on good nutritional habits.
- Events: You simply work around these events. Events are a fact of life and you need to learn to integrate them in with a healthy exercise and nutritional approach.
- Finances: Just train in a low-cost manner. You don’t need a gym membership. In fact you can save money by eating healthier too.
- Poor Fitness: This is surprisingly a common one that one must be fit first to undertake a weight loss journey. Just do something – your fitness will improve as you lose weight anyway.
- Work: You’re going to be working for the rest of your life so you may as well figure out a way to integrate your work life in with your personal goals.
- Illness: Unless extreme, there is nothing stopping you from eating in a healthier manner and performing exercise if appropriate under the circumstances.
If you do think in this way, the real issue is not so much in the actual excuses you are making, it’s more in the way that you view weight loss. It’s quite probable that you are out of shape because weight loss is perceived as something that is only accomplished when you give it a 100% level of effort. Anything short of this would result in failure. This is a perfectionist approach which frankly does not work in the real world. Another common term for this is an “all-or-nothing” approach.
Understand that your life is a series of obstacles. It’s likely that you will sustain an injury or get sick every once in a while. You’ll have birthday parties, holidays and other social events come up from time to time. There may be times when money isn’t plentiful. So if you want to lose weight over the long-term, why on Earth would you wait until everything is perfect in your life? In doing so you’re setting yourself up for failure as soon as something goes wrong and prevents you from adhering to a strict exercise and nutritional regime.
If your goal is for long-term sustainable weight loss, you need to understand that such an approach requires give. You need to be able to tweak your training and nutrition to accommodate for the things life throws at you. Hence, you are not on a diet, you just eat in a healthy manner (most of the time). Further, you don’t train like an athlete, but rather you train in a manner that supports your goals and does not interfere with your desired lifestyle.
Ultimately life is all about balance. If you push toward weight loss with an extreme approach, things will snap and you’ll be back where you started before you know it. Sustainability is a critical element for long-term success.
If you are someone that feels it necessary to train (and eat) with a full-on approach or not bother doing anything productive at all, and find that this mindset is just not delivering the desired results (especially if you’ve been tackling weight loss for years), then this can be a very difficult habit to change. I would very strongly recommend obtaining the services of a professional so you can learn new strategies for long-term sustainable weight loss. Further, I would strongly recommend against entering into a short-term challenge or short-term training stint (eg. Like the BodyBlitz), as this will only encourage this mindset and set you up for failure.






