4 Ways to Make August Your Best Month Yet
Feel like skipping August? Thinking of putting your New You journey on hold until September? If you want to get ahead of the health game here, we share 4 ways to avoid procrastinating and make August count.
Ah August. (How? How is it August already?!) August is a funny month. Half holiday mode. Half back to school and routine mode. August feels like the Sunday of the months. You know you are supposed to be enjoying it because…well…It’s Summer. Still, there is a little niggling feeling in the back of your head that September is fast approaching bringing with it routine and back to school schedules. You can’t quite completely relax. It’s so tempting to ride August out as a moot month health wise as well. To eat and drink all the things. To start being healthy in September (which vies with January as the Monday of the months). To put off your weight loss journey a little longer. Did we mention it’s summer?
Pause just a second. How many times have you put off your weight loss journey? You are not alone. At New You HQ we have a drop-down menu of reasons as to why we can delay losing weight a little longer. It’s summer/I’m going to a wedding/it’s my birthday/it’s my cat’s birthday. Yes, you name it, we have already thought of it and used it. We are creative like that.
What if, rather than letting August fly by in a conflicting mix of ‘must relax/get school ready’, you used it to feel pretty amazing instead? How would you feel starting September a whole stone lighter*? Customers on our scientifically proven Total Food Replacement Plan lose on average 1 stone a month*. That’s a dress size! Imagine rocking up to the school gate full of energy and in a pair of smaller jeans.
If you want to get ahead of the health game here’s 4 ways to avoid procrastinating and make August count.
Delaying your weight loss journey will result in one thing. Regret. How often have you planned to lose weight for a holiday or an event then found yourself 4 days before the event considering an inch loss wrap and a lemon-water only diet? In the end, we kick ourselves. We regret the time wasted as deadlines approach, time runs out, and opportunity slips through our fingers.
Why do we do this to ourselves? The solution seems so simple: Just do it already.
Procrastination has many faces. Sometimes it’s simply choosing pleasure over discipline. Sometimes it’s an attempt to avoid something negative. And sometimes it’s getting paralysed by overwhelming expectations. If any of the following strike a chord with you, try our proven solutions.
1. The Task Isn’t Urgent
Whether it’s a crying baby, a pinging phone, or a deadline on the calendar, we tend to pay attention to what’s right in front of us. But it’s a lot harder to prioritise things that we perceive not to be urgent.
When we gain weight, we convince ourselves that we have all the time in the world to ‘sort it out’. From organising the airing cupboard to saving for retirement, we all have things we never get around to. As a result, tasks big and small sit neglected at the bottom of the to-do list for months, if not years. And for many of our customers, before finding The New You Plan, losing weight was on that to-do list as well.
Solution: Consider The Big Picture
This annoying tendency actually has some evolutionary significance. Humans are wired to consider the needs of the present much more strongly than the needs of the future, a phenomenon called temporal discounting. And this makes perfect sense: The present is in our face, so naturally we pay it more attention.
The remedy, according to a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, is to take on a broader perspective rather than nit-picking the details. Look at everyday tasks through the lens of a bigger picture.
For example, if you’ve been wanting to lose weight but just never seem to get around to it, take a step back. What would this mean for your life? What are your values and goals around your health? What’s the big picture? How different would your life be if you were at your ideal weight? Taking on a new perspective can jump-start the process of taking action.
2. We Don’t Know How To Start Or What Comes Next
Too often, we find ourselves procrastinating, because we’re not sure what to do first. We feel overwhelmed, confused, or disorganised. We put off getting started, because we’re not sure what the first step is.
This kind of procrastination is less an avoidance of the task, and more an avoidance of negative emotion. No one likes to feel incompetent or clueless, so who can blame us for turning our attention to Netflix or even cleaning the bathroom instead. Indeed, when we put off the task at hand by doing other tasks, it’s called productive procrastination. And anyone who’s ever organised the files on their desktop or shopped online for an upcoming event instead of doing work knows what we mean. At least finding the perfect outfit in advance makes us feel prepared.
If you are starting our New You Total Food Replacement plan for the first time or feeling a little unsure as to the process, we have a solution for you.
Solution: Build Confusion Into The Task
The key is to acknowledge that it’s totally normal to feel overwhelmed when you’re just starting out, especially if you’ve never tried Total Food Replacement before.
Therefore, build confusion into the task. Make “figure out steps” the first step. Check out our Get Started information. Reading our customer testimonials will give you a great insight into the plan. Our customer service team is primed to answer any questions too.
Remember, it’s okay for the beginning of the task to include a lot of pivots, do-overs, and plain old messing up. Check out our online community group Secret Slimmers for motivation too.
3. We’re Afraid Of Failure
A dash of perfectionism isn’t all bad. But sometimes high standards have the opposite effect. We delay starting our weight loss journey, convinced there’s no way we can meet the standards we set for ourselves.
Solution: Untangle Performance & Self-Worth
Perfectionism and procrastination are linked, but it’s not necessarily the sky-high standards that slow you down, but the sky-high standards mixed with a belief that your performance is tied to your self-worth. That combination can grind you to a halt.
Always remember the crucial difference between who you are and what you achieve. There’s so much more to your worth than your accomplishments – your identity, family, passions, experiences, travels, friends, politics, taste, knowledge, challenges you’ve overcome, and, most importantly, how you treat other people.
4. Some Of Us Work Better Under Pressure
We all knew (or maybe were) that kid at school who could crack open the textbook for the first time a few days before the final exam and still do better than those of us who planned ahead.
Solution: Know Thyself. But Also Know That Weight Loss Is A Science
Turns out those kids were planning ahead, just in a different way. There are two types of procrastination: passive and active. Passive procrastination is what we typically think of as procrastination: getting distracted by videos of cats and Snoop Dogg making brownies, to the detriment of our performance.
Active procrastination is more strategic — those of us who work better under pressure and prefer the adrenaline rush and intense focus that comes with a close deadline might choose to start later.
However, weight loss is a science. Our New You Total Food Replacement plan averages a stone a month weight loss* of our customers. If you are a ‘last minute’ type of person you need to factor this in to your plans. If you would like to lose 2 stone for example, you are going to need on average 2 months to do that. It might be less, in fact some our customers lose much more than 2 stone in 2 months, but we are talking averages here. Last minute might work for some deadlines but weight loss isn’t one of them.
If you want to leap ahead with your health goals use August as a springboard to a healthier New You. Click here to get started – right after you watch that video on how to escape quicksand.
Are you ready to get started on a really, really, really easy diet plan?
Getting started is the first step in your journey to a brand New You! To help you understand fully how our plan works, our Get Started page with designed specifically for people new to the plan.
Head over to our site where you’ll find tonnes of important information including how our plan works, the science behind it, loads of top tips, information on our meals, as well as real customer testimonials.
Click here to visit our Get Started page!