The right mindset is always a big part of your motivation. There are several strategies out there you can use to help boost motivation and visualizing how fabulous you’ll look after losing weight is one of them.

 

I personally am always skeptical about most kinds of positive thinking techniques but there is actually research confirming its effectiveness. If you know how to do it correctly you can use visualization to your advantage.

 

First what not to do:

 

Don’t only visualize yourself losing weight and looking fantastic. Research from the University of Pennsylvania has found that people who only fantasize about how great the future could be, are ill-prepared to handle the inevitable setbacks and give up at the first obstacle. In fact, thinking about your ideal self can undermine your motivation to lose weight.

 

So, then what’s the right way to visualize for weight loss?

 

Actually, the most effective state of mind for reaching a goal is to be both optimistic about what is possible but also realistic about the setbacks that can happen.

 

What you want to do is spend a few moments fantasizing about obtaining your goal weight and write down the top two benefits that would come from it. Then right afterwards fantasize about the two biggest obstacles that may lie in the way of reaching it.

 

You always want to hold both the top benefit and the top set back in your mind as one visualization and then afterwards think of the second biggest benefit and setback, in the same way.

 

An example of this strategy would be: “I am going to look great in these clothes when I lose weight. But when someone offers me a cookie at work, I often struggle to say no.”

 

This strategy called doublethink was tested on a number of goal types, and it always came out better than visualizing either only the advantages or only the obstacles.

 

To put this into practice, from now on when you visualize the future think about the benefits but also think about the real obstacles that may prevent you from getting them.

 

Being realistic isn’t always entertaining or glamorous, but it can give us the important long-term motivation to lose weight.