How To Lose Weight (Even If You Have No Time, Work Too Much And Don’t Know Where To Start)

As a man, the brutal truth about health and weight loss is this:

It’s hard to get motivated.

You get home from work. You are tired, stressed and lack the energy to go through all of the health information available.

It’s easier to slack off and worry about it later because you convince yourself that it’s not that bad.

I get it.

That’s why I want to show you one strategy you can use to motivate yourself to get started and keep that motivation going.

But what if I have no time?

When speaking to men, two common reasons for not taking care of their health and weight are not knowing where to start and a lack of time.

Addressing not knowing where to start is easy. To make it even easier for you, I compiled some weight loss tips that you can start acting on today without changing what you are currently eating.

Let’s move on to the lack of time issue. Shall we?

This is more of a psychological issue than it is a resource issue.

Stay with me on this.

On a biological level, we are driven by our need to avoid pain and gain pleasure.

These are the controlling forces in our lives.

In the short term, we’ll do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure.

Let me ask you this.

At work, have you ever been given a project or task to complete in a ridiculously short amount of time and you got it done.

Why?

Because you wanted to avoid the pain of failure, getting yelled or losing your job.

When it was first given to you, you thought it was impossible, but you did it.

Now you are saying, “How’s this relate to health and weight loss?”

To start taking your health seriously and losing weight, you must use the same strategy.

You are procrastinating because you think that taking action in regards to your health is going to be more painful than not taking action.

You must learn to control the motivating forces of pain and pleasure

The thing that is most real to you is what you are focusing on. That means to change your current habits, you have to focus your attention on:

1. The pain you’ll experience by not changing your behavior.
2. The immediate pleasure it will bring to you.

You are sabotaging your success when it comes to your health because you think that by changing the way you eat, you will gain some pleasure (weight loss).

You also think that it will be painful to give up some of your favorite foods, so you say you should do something, but you don’t do anything.

Make the decision right now that you control the focus of your mind.

Use pain and pleasure to change your behaviors

I’ve laid out a simple action plan to get you started.

It’s important to get specific and realistic with your answers.

The more specific you are, the better you can see how you are progressing.

Take a out a pen and paper and write your answers down. Look at them frequently.

Step 1: Make a decision

Decisions are one of the most powerful actions you can take. Decide right now that you are going to take control of your health and take action.

Step 2: Define your goals

In order to know if you are on track and what your goal is, you need to define it.

Are you going to use your GPS without putting in your final destination? It’s important to know where you are going.

Answer these questions:

What do you want your weight to be and where do you want your health to be in 3-months? 6-months? 1-year?

How do you want to feel when you wake up?

How do you want to look?

What do you want others to see and say about you?

Step 3: Control your motivating forces

Answer these questions:

In the past, what is the pain you’ve associated with losing weight and focusing on your health?

What is the pleasure you took from not following through in the past?

What will it cost you if you don’t start taking care of your health and losing weight now?

What are the benefits you’ll gain by taking action?

Go beyond the surface level answers on these such as, “I’ll be fat.”

Because the pain of missing out on pizza or chocolate cake will be stronger than “being fat.”

Go deep when you answer these questions – something like “I won’t be able to keep up with my kids when they grow up” or “I’ll never find my soul mate.”

For the benefits gained by taking action, maybe it’s “I’ll have better sex with my partner” or “I’ll be able to kick my teenage son’s ass on the basketball court.”

These have to be reasons that resonate with you and have to be real, not just words on paper.

Sound off

In the comments below, let me know if you have decided to take action and share some of the pains you have linked up to not taking action.

Photo Credit: Killer Biscuit