People Who Lose Weight Successfully…

• Exercise regularly

• Set realistic goals. When they don’t meet their goals, they learn from their experiences instead of giving up.

• Have social support from family, friends, coworkers, or support groups. People who complete a weight-loss program with friends or family lose more weight and are more likely to keep it off.

• Work on liking themselves (or already do).

• Are motivated to lose weight for internal reasons rather than external reasons. For example, Star used to lose weight to fit into her old size-six jeans. Now she is losing weight to improve her health.

• Concentrate not on the bathroom scale, but on some positive outcomes, such as lowered cholesterol or being able to walk further without becoming tired.

• Have conquered emotional eating (eating when bored, angry, depressed, or stressed) or are working on it.

• Have learned to eat sensibly at restaurants, at parties, while traveling, and so on.

• Work at self-monitoring. This may mean keeping a food diary, tracking the amount of fat eaten in a day, or logging your food on a food tracking system. 

Whatever the challenge is, you can overcome it by following these tips and sticking to your exercise and healthy eating plans.