How the Compound Effect can help with weight loss
Why those small changes really do make a difference
If you’re trying to lose weight, exercise more or improve your health, forget crash dieting and extreme marathon workouts. Taking small steps—not giant leaps—are more likely to get real results.
When you focus on just a couple of small changes at a time – whether that’s ditching the take aways or swapping your chocolate bar for a piece of fruit, you begin to ingrain healthy habits that are more sustainable.
This is the basis of ‘The Compound Effect’. It’s an incredibly simple but effective principle where you make small, simple choices every day that move you towards your end goal. When you are consistent with the food and exercise choices you make every day you will feel more energised, healthier and leaner. In turn this will encourage more positive thoughts and new actions that propel you further forward even quicker. While one little change on its own may not seem much, the compound effect of several small changes overtime can be profound.
For example if you want to run a marathon but you have never run before, the last thing you would do is wake up one morning and run the full distance. You are likely to be coughing and spluttering at the end of the road. Instead you may start walking or running round the block gradually increasing the distance as you get fitter. The same applies to gym workouts. If you set yourself a simple goal of doing 5 sit ups each day the chances are not only will you achieve this but want to do more each day.
You can apply this principle to your diet. Instead of attempting a complete diet overhaul you may decide to start by just skipping your daily chocolate bar (thus saving about 250 calories). Do this consistently and the effect adds up.
Taking small achievable steps towards your goal not only results in a more consistent approach long term but all those individual choices you make add up (compound effect) leading to real results.
Consistently making the right choices and the positivity you experience will result in new habits becoming automatic.
Remember if you’ve been overweight for a long time you are not suddenly going to get lean in 10 days. But by making consistent changes you will be a different person in 6 or 12 months time.
Be realistic with your timescale and make sure your expectations meet with reality. If you want to lose weight then remember to lose 1lb you need a calorie deficit of 3500 calories. You can achieve this over a week for example by reducing your daily calories by 500 which is doable by taking out those extra treats or alcohol for example.
So if you want to lose weight and improve fitness making small consistent changes is the way to lasting results
On the flip side be mindful of negative thoughts too. When you start focusing on negative thoughts through the day these can also add up and before you know it you start automatically looking at situations or experiences in a negative fashion. What we think daily influences our actions. This is turn will determine whether we move towards or away from our goals. It can also affect our actions when we encounter setbacks. But we can control our thoughts. So make a conscience decision to feed your mind with positivity that supports your health, goals and happiness and focus on small, consistent changes that you can stick to.