What are your core beliefs when it comes to weight loss and healthy living?

What to you immediately think of when someone says to you "oh I'm starting a new diet/workout/healthy eating regime/boot camp"?

Did you know that what we automatically think of, when faced with that question or statement, is a core belief around weight loss and health.

These core beliefs will determine your potential success, or failure, and your mental attitude when you take on a weight loss journey.

By addressing your core beliefs and getting them in line with what you want to achieve, you will be more likely to get the success you crave.

What are your core beliefs with weight loss?

What words pop into your head?

Are they words like:

• denial
• hunger
• boring foods
• expensive diet foods
• spending lots of time in the kitchen
• cravings
• boring exercise
• missing out?

If they are, your core beliefs, when it comes to healthy living and weight loss are negative, and it will be very difficult to consistently live a healthy lifestyle long term.

If you are constantly thinking negative thoughts about weight loss and healthy living, it is not something that you are going to look forward to doing.

Change your core thoughts on what living a healthy life looks like, and change your life forever.

Living a healthy lifestyle needs to be something that you enjoy, that you look forward to doing, that you love every single minute of it.

These are the core thoughts that you need for success.

When you change your thoughts, you will be able to change your outcome.

I love living a healthy lifestyle when I live life the SMASH Way.

I love how I feel, I love the foods that I eat and I love the energy that I have.

Living my life this way is the best thing ever, as it means that I get to do everything that I want to do. I never feel deprived or that I am missing out. I LOVE it.

However, it wasn't always that way! I used to have such a negative opinion on living a healthy lifestyle, and guess what?

I failed! 

It was only when I changed my deep core values and beliefs on what a healthy lifestyle meant to me, that I changed my life forever.  That happened back in 2013, and I have never looked back since. When you find a healthy lifestyle that you love, you will live that way for the rest of your life.

You will never need to diet again.

You will never look at your food and feel as though you are missing out. You too can love living life the SMASH Way.

Let's look at each of these common core beliefs, the impact of them, why they happen and how you can change them around to your benefit

The 8 Core Beliefs Sabotaging your weight loss

• I will have to deny myself nice things
• I will be hungry all of the time
• I will have to eat boring bland foods
• I will have to eat expensive diet foods
• I will have to spend lots of time in the kitchen
• I will have lots of cravings for my favourite foods
• I will have to do boring exercise
• I will be missing out on lots of fun things

When you flip your mindset around, you will flip your whole life around. So instead of being negative about your health, let's try these thoughts instead.

• Rather than focusing on denial -> focus on nourishing your body and giving your body what it needs in order to heal and thrive
• Rather than thinking of hunger all the time -> focus on the fact that you will be eating delicious foods that will leave you satisfied
• Rather than thinking that you will be eating boring foods -> focus on the fact that you will be experimenting with delicious new recipes and are going to find new ones that you will fall in love with
• Rather than thinking that you have to eat expensive diet foods -> focus on eating whole foods that are cheaper and better for you
• Rather thank thinking that you have to spend lots of time in the kitchen -> focus on how you are going to be better planned, and will have more energy to cook because you feel better
• Rather than thinking that you are going to have lots of cravings -> focus on the fact that you will never have any because you understand you body better now and are eating what is right for you body
• Rather than feel that you have to do boring exercise -> find an exercise that you love and look forward to and your relationship with exercise will change
• Rather than feel that you are missing out on things -> focus on finding healthy alternatives to the foods that you would generally eat and know that you are extending your life and your health is improving.

We must look at living a healthy lifestyle as something that is enjoyable and of benefit to us and then it will be something that we can do long term. Then it just becomes a way of life.

Busting healthy living misconceptions

One of the most common misconceptions of living a healthy lifestyle mentioned above, is that it is eating healthy food is expensive and the other is, that women don't have time to cook healthy meals because it takes too long.

Let's bust those...

I recently recorded a live video in the SMASH Academy cooking SMASH Spag Bol from scratch. (You can download the recipe for free here). Now cooking and talking on a Live is fun lol and it probably took me longer than I normally would take, cooking a Spag Bol, but I was able to cook it in under 13 minutes.

That is not a lot of time to cook a meal for a family of 4 from scratch!!! And the best news was, that there was leftovers for lunch the next day too - which saved me even more time.  Healthy cooking does not have to mean endless hours being spent in the kitchen.

Healthy eating is does not have to expensive.

I am here to bust that misconception too. When you cook from scratch you will actually save money. Large food companies spend a lot on marketing making you think that you won't, but it is not true.

If you buy the "gimmicky" so called healthy foods, yes it is more expensive, but if you start cooking The SMASH Way,  you will actually save money in the long run.

The SMASH Spag Bol that we cook on a regular basis, and is a firm favourite in my households, only costs £1.22 per serving to make!!

If you were buying a pre-made portion of this in a shop it would probably cost you around £3.99.

When you cook from scratch not only do you know what you are putting into your food but you are saving money too. Our shopping bill is now a lot cheaper than it was years ago and due to the fact that we don't continually crave and binge on junk food, we eat less too.

When you know what to do and how to do it, healthy eating doesn't have to take you hours nor does it have to cost a fortune.

When you live life the SMASH Way, not only will you save time and money, you will also feel so much better too - and lose some weight at the same time - remember a healthy body does not need excess fat!!

When you change your core beliefs around living a healthy lifestyle, your life will change too. Start your journey today