Your Excuse: "I'll Only Be Happy When the Weight is Gone!"

The Excuse Buster: Starting a weight loss program often makes you keep focusing on the future, looking forward to that glorious day when you are thin. Most often this is because you believe that everything in your life will be good when you are thin. You pin all of your hopes for happiness and contentment to the experience of being thin - but being thin won't make you happy. True, you may feel better both physically and mentally, have more energy and confidence, and you may even be more outgoing and do things you would hesitate to attempt while heavy.

It's a good thing to look forward to future successes, but it's not so good to focus obsessively on them. Why? Because it keeps you forever disconnected from this moment in time. That becomes a problem because you start putting your life off until you reach your goal, which just keeps you in a state of limbo. And you will never reach your goals by keeping yourself in limbo!

If you want to speed up your transformation, start being the thin version of yourself NOW. Start thinking, speaking and acting as a person who is confident and slender. Here's an easy way to begin doing this. Make a list of everything you are looking forward to experiencing when you reach your goal. For example, "Feeling good about myself. Being more confident. Having more energy. Wearing nicer clothes." And then come up with ways to begin doing these things now.

Start making an effort to feel good about yourself right now. Be more confident right now. Imagine that you have more energy right now. Wear clothes that make you feel good now. Granted, this takes a bit of imagination because you'll probably feel like you are lying to yourself or putting on an act. And in some ways you will be. But the more you do it, the easier it will get and before you know it, you really WILL be living these things, rather than continuously gazing off into the future, hoping and waiting for your dream life to arrive.