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There is no doubt that losing weight and keeping it off can be very challenging, but what is the hardest part?  We put this question to our weight loss community to find out the areas that were most challenging.  All the responses were categorised and you can see the results below:

What is important is to look at these potential road blocks and identify the ones that affect you, and then you can look at ways of overcoming these obstacles.  

Interestingly most of these issues are intertwined and often stem from not having a clear framework of how to achieve your goals.  Let's look at a Claire, aged 31 who lives in Melbourne and is a classic example of someone who confronts many of these weight loss obstacles.  She was happy to share with me her most recent weight loss endeavour.   Claire is a personal assistant for a medium sized company, with 2 kids and a size 16 dress size.  She wanted to lose 15kgs.  She started up one of her old diets that worked for her (similar to the Atkins diet) and decided she would exercise every day. Things went well for about 2 weeks and she lost 2kg but then on week 3 things started to fall apart.  One of her kids was home, sick and her habit was broken.  A whole heap of things came up and all of a sudden it all seemed too hard.  She was too busy.  She put on 1kg in week 3 and by week 4 she knew she had blown it and did not even want to step on the scales. She had lost all motivation and began emotionally eating, exacerbating the problem. 

There were obviously other factors affecting Clair, as there are for all of us, but let's look at how she could have done things differently.  It all starts from cleaver planning.  Clair started off well by setting a goal, and that was to lose 15kg.  However she was not very realistic in being able to stick to her program.  She went from no exercise at all to trying to exercise every day and her diet was extremely restrictive (1200 Calories).  What many people don't realise is that it is much easier to lose weight by sensible eating, then trying to exercise an incredible amount.  There are more calories in a bottle of Coke than calories burnt on a 5km run! So whilst exercise is important, sensible food substitutes and healthy snacks iare far more beneficial.  The point is, you need to set a program that you know you can stick to.  If you don't like exercising, then start off with walking.  Go with a friend to make it more fun and build it up. 

Make sure you set a clear goal.  Write it down and also write down why you want to achieve it.  This will help with your motivation and will power.  Then you need to make sure you set yourself a meal and exercise plan you know you can stick to.  Once you can stick to your plan for more than 4 weeks it starts to become part of your habit and this will make it easier to have sustained weight loss.  Furthermore your consistent weight loss will stimulate sustained motivation and your excitement and satisfaction will reduce your emotional eating.  You can start to see how all the factors are intertwined.  The most important thing is start off with a sustainable plan and if you have a bad week, just put it aside and keep going.  Keep your goal in front of you and break everything down into achievable steps.  Remember that you can achieve any goal that you set for yourself, you just need to believe in yourself and keep at it!

To learn more about overcoming certain obstacles have a read over some of our related articles.

motivation, how much to eat, emotional eating, meal  plan, weight loss program