Mastering Medical Weight Loss

To lose weight and keep it off long-term, you’re going to need to boost your self-accountability.

When it comes time to lose weight, you can be your own best friend or worst enemy. Your attitude has a lot to do with the weight loss success you will experience. A medical weight loss program can present you with proven strategies and tools to make changes in your life, but it is a positive attitude and solid sense of accountability that will keep you sticking with the tools you’re provided.

Accountability ensures a task is carried out as planned. To become accountable is to take responsibility for an action. In terms of weight loss, this often means accepting responsibility for your progress instead of looking to external factors that might have tempted you to stray from your weight loss plan.

Accountability can be tough to self-generate. Workout buddies, support groups and regular meetings with Dr. Lazarus are all great sources of external accountability that can help you stay on track towards your weight loss goals, but they aren’t always enough. You are the only one who is ultimately responsible for your actions. Adopting certain strategies can improve your self-accountability and help you become more in-tune with your weight loss efforts.

Here are a few tips to improve your weight loss accountability:

• Keep a journal: Keeping close track of your weight loss progress can help you maintain accountability. A journal makes it easy to go back and evaluate what you ate yesterday, how often you worked out last week and what stressors might have interfered with your weight loss program.
• Use social resources: In this day and age, social resources are available 24/7 and can provide a personal strategy for accountability. Using tools like Facebook, Twitter and blogging websites like WordPress to announce your progress to the world can boost your motivation to stay healthy. Update your status with your exercise plans and let your Twitter feed know when you’ve enjoyed a dinner that met the requirements of your meal plan.
• Mark your calendar: By looking at your calendar every day you can be constantly reminded that you have a goal you need to concentrate on. Use X’s to mark off days where you fulfilled your fitness requirement, or circle days where you stayed within your calorie allotment. The more you are noting on your calendar, the better you are doing at working towards your goals.

There are plenty of other ways to boost your weight loss accountability, too. Challenge yourself to get more active by wearing a pedometer, or create a weight loss contest with a coworker and spend a month urging each other on as you lose weight. The more accountable you become during your weight loss program, the better your weight loss experience is bound to be.