Improve Self-Efficacy to Lose Weight

How Do I Build Self-Efficacy?

So how do you turn a negative belief system into positive thoughts? Researchers have identified four things that impact self-efficacy: mastery of experiences, social modeling, social persuasion, and emotional responses. You can learn more about each one from Kendra Cherry, the About.com Guide to Psychology. But if weight loss is your goal, here's how you can improve each self-efficacy factor to lose weight.

 Ways to Improve Self-Efficacy to Lose Weight

Set and reach small goals. To improve your mastery of experiences, you want to successfully complete small goals that will act as stepping stones to larger accomplishments. Break each long-term goal into smaller achievable goals, and as you complete each one, acknowledge it in your journal and remind yourself of your success. The completion of each small task will build your level of self-efficacy for completing larger tasks in the future.

Surround yourself with positive messages. If the people that surround you are successfully completing the goal that you want to achieve, you're more likely to believe that you can do it, too. Find friends that have some habits you admire. Skip the lunchroom snacks and spend your break with a crowd that eats a healthy meal. Instead of going to happy hour with your buddies, find a few friends that want to hit the gym and exercise.

You can also surround yourself with positive messages electronically. Sign up for newsletters that provide healthy messages, fill your Facebook feed with posts from weight loss coaches and successful dieters, and follow health-oriented Twitter feeds.

Social Persuasion. Talk to your family and friends. Let them know that their encouragement and positive messages make a difference. Then, make it a habit to acknowledge the compliments when you get them.

If your friends and family are not supportive, this is another area where social media can help. Several recent studies have found that positive messages sent electronically can help people lose weight. Get connected with others and with me! Sign up for my newsletter, my Facebook page and my Twitter feed. You’ll find messages from me and other dieters who have lost weight.

Learn to Relax. If you have intense emotional reactions to situations, your self-efficacy with regards to your ability to handle that situation will probably be low. Take some time to identify the situations that cause you to react strongly. Then, learn relaxation techniques that will help you to manage them with a calm demeanor.

If the concept of self-efficacy is new to you, don’t worry. Simply your awareness of your positive and negative beliefs may help you change the things you need to adjust in order to lose weight. Remember to start small, make changes gradually, acknowledge your successes and move forward from there.

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How to Lose Weight With Exercise

A good weight loss program requires that you eat well and get plenty of physical activity. You might already know how to monitor your calorie intake to eat the right amount of food, but how do you lose weight with exercise?

This course will guide you through a program that will help you get leaner, fitter, stronger and more flexible. You'll lose weight and feel better about the way you look and feel.

 Yes, I Can Lose Weight!

Many factors can impact the success or failure of a new diet or exercise program, so we often spend a lot of time researching and choosing the best weight loss program, finding the most effective workout or eating the right foods. But there are also psychological factors that can affect whether or not you lose weight. One of these factors is self-efficacy, and it’s easy to change.

What is Self-Efficacy?

Self-efficacy is your belief that you can successfully carry out a specific task. If you start your weight loss journal with the words, “I can lose weight!”, your self-efficacy with regards to weight loss is probably high.

Self-efficacy generally relates to a specific goal. For example, you may have strong beliefs that you are capable of skipping a high-calorie late-night snack. That means your self-efficacy regarding late-night snacking is high, but you might have doubts about whether you’re going to get up early the next morning to work out. Your self-efficacy regarding the morning workout is low.

Self-Efficacy vs. Self Confidence.

It might seem as if self-efficacy is just another version of self-confidence, but that’s not true. Let’s use an example: say Carol is a graphic designer who has worked her way up the corporate ladder to become the head of her department. She's proud of her accomplishments, comfortable in social settings, strong but respectful in dealing with her boss, and positive about her personal relationships. Carol has a strong sense of self-confidence.

But let’s say that Carol is overweight. She's tried dieting repeatedly, has worked with personal trainers to stick to an exercise program, and has even gone to weight-loss camps to shed her excess pounds. Nothing has worked. Carol now believes that she just can’t lose weight. So even though Carol is self-confident, her self-efficacy about her ability to lose weight is low.

Why Does Self-Efficacy Matter?

Researchers have found a strong link between one’s beliefs in her ability to successfully perform a task, and her completion of that task. Quite a bit of research has been done with regards to self-efficacy and weight loss — most confirming a relationship between strong beliefs (either negative or positive) and actual success.

To see why it matters, let’s go back to our example of Carol. Let’s say that Carol’s new diet coach has identified a weak link in Carol’s diet: she's good for most of the day, but she tends to eat too many of the cookies and cakes that are left in the lunchroom at work. Let’s say that Carol has never been able to pass up those treats in the past, so her belief that she can do it now is minimal. When she's faced with a tray of brownies, she's not likely to muster the willpower to walk away, because she knows that she always fails anyway. Her attitude is, “why bother to make the effort?”, and she eats a brownie. Carol’s beliefs about her abilities have become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But let’s say that her diet coach was able to build her self-efficacy. The coach was able to remind Carol of the many other situations where she has successfully passed up treats in order to stick to her diet. He tells her that he believes she can do it. Now, when Carol is equipped with the belief that she can, in fact, walk away successfully, she's more likely to do so when she's faced with the tray of brownies.

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Best Tips for Losing Weight

Don't have time to diet? People who are busy often say that lack of time is a reason that they can't lose weight. Who has extra hours in their day to read complicated diet advice books or surf websites for the best weight-loss plan? That time investment may not be necessary.

The best tips for losing weight are the same in almost every diet and exercise plan. They are often packaged differently, but the bottom line for almost every weight-loss program is the same. If you can master these three basic principles, you'll be on your way to successful weight loss.

3 Fast Weight-Loss Tips

Understand serving sizes. If you choose the right foods, but eat too much of them, your weight-loss plan won't work. In fact, a common mistake by dieters is to overeat organic foods and foods that are perceived to be healthy.

Portion control is an essential skill for effective weight loss. Chicken breast is great for you, but not if you eat too much of it. Almonds? Yep, they're healthy, but not if you eat more than you need. Healthy snacks? They are better for your body than junk food, but they'll still cause weight gain if you overeat.

Stick to these portion sizes when planning your meals:

1 serving of cereal = size of your fist

1 serving of a starch (rice, pasta, potato) = half of a baseball

1 serving of cheese = 4 stacked dice

1 serving of fruit = baseball

1 serving of margarine or butter = 1 dice

1 serving of meat, fish, poultry = a deck of cards

Count calories. Some weight-loss plans may advertise that calorie counting is not necessary. But the bottom line is that weight loss happens when a calorie deficit occurs. Nearly every diet is some variation of calorie restriction to achieve a calorie deficit.

Calorie counting may seem like a time-consuming skill. But with the availability of mobile apps like the one at CalorieCount.com, it has become easier for people who are busy to track their calories. If you have a smartphone, calorie counting will take no more than a few seconds; your totals are stored so that you can review them at a later time.

After you start counting calories, you'll learn how many calories you consume in a typical day. Most people can reduce their daily intake by 500 calories per day to see a healthy weight loss of 1 pound per week.

Move more. Sounds obvious, right? But this doesn't necessarily mean that you have to exercise. For some people, exercise works against them. If you complete a hard workout in the morning and then spend the rest of day laying on the couch, you will probably end up burning fewer calories from movement than a person who does not exercise and who makes non-exercise activity a part of their daily habit.

Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) is the term used by scientists to describe the calories burned from your non-workout movement. Whether you exercise or not, be sure that your NEAT is maximized every day. Consider some of these activities. The calorie burn for each single item is small, but if you participate in some movement each hour, your NEAT at the end of the day will be significant.

Putting away laundry = 26 kcals/15 mins

Moving furniture, boxes = 100 kcals/15 mins

Playing/running with your kids = 40 kcals/15 mins

Walking while carrying a light load (<15 56="" kcals="" minutes="" pounds="" span="">

Most people will achieve some results with these three basic tips for losing weight. Of course, there are some instances where underlying issues, such as a medical diagnosis, may make weight loss more complicated. But for most people, weight loss boils down to a simple equation: eat less, move more.

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