Sticking to the Tips

Many people try to lose weight through quick fix solutions like restrictive diets and intensive exercise regimes. These solutions may lead to weight loss in the short-term, but most people eventually put back on the weight they had lost.

Because of these unsuccessful attempts, many people think that losing and maintaining weight loss is expensive, time-consuming, very restrictive and pretty unsuccessful in the long-term.

In truth, weight loss does not have to involve huge changes, or take up too much time or money. Small changes, like Ten Top Tips, can help you to work towards a healthier body weight, but require a long-term commitment.

To help the Ten Top Tips become habits so that they are automatic things you do on a day-to-day basis, you need to plan, be prepared, and build the tips into your daily routine.

Without doing these things, it is extremely difficult to make healthier changes that will carry on into the future. This page has lots of helpful ideas to make the Ten Top Tips part of your daily life.

Sticking to a Daily Routine

To make a tip part of your daily routine, you need to do it again and again, in a similar situation or at a similar time. This way, things should get easier over time.

Make a plan

To help make these tips part of your routine, try to plan ahead.

In the first week or two, spend time working out in advance how you are going to stick to the tips
Focus on what you actually plan to do, not just the result you are hoping for
Concentrate on the tips that you think will be most difficult for you
Modify your plans over time as some things work better than others

For example rather than: "I'm going to try hard to eat five fruit and vegetable portions a day", a better plan would be: "I will have a piece of fruit at breakfast, or after lunch and dinner to increase my fruit intake".

Be prepared

Being prepared will make it easier for you to keep to the tips. For example:

If you plan to walk to the train station, allocate extra time for your journey
If you plan to eat fruit at home, make sure you buy fruit when you go shopping
Write a list before you shop, even if it's just for a few items, and stick to the list. You can download a shopping card that will help you to understand the labels on food products and make healthier choices.

Keep track of your tips

Research shows that people who keep track of what they are doing are more successful at developing healthy habits. You can download a tick sheet to track your progress.

Fill in your tick sheet on a daily basis and make a note of anything that is helping you to achieve each tip. Use a new tick sheet every week and keep them as a record of your progress. Continue doing this until the tips have become automatic.

You can download an example tick sheet to show you how to fill one in.

Using the tick sheet will:

help you identify which tips you are already following
identify if you have achieved any of the tips on 5 or more days in the week
highlight the tips you may need to focus your plan on
help you to check if your plan has worked and make any necessary changes
help you keep a record to look back on, tracking improvements and difficulties you may have had in doing the tips

Record your weight

It is important to keep a record of your weight on a regular basis. This will show you what effect your healthy changes are having on your weight and help you to adapt your plans accordingly.

You can also weigh yourself on a daily basis if you want to. Studies have shown that daily weighing increases the chances of successfully controlling your weight. Some people find daily weighing is less worrying than weighing less often once you get used to it. Tracking your weight daily allows you to see if it is going gradually up, staying stable, or going down. There is a space for you to record your weight on the tick sheet.