Everyone can lose weight, and you are not an exception. It’s not that diets don’t work and weight loss programs are bad. The real problem is that people rarely stick to the program or diet they have chosen.

Let me ask you one simple question:

Do you expect a dish to be good if you stop cooking at the middle of the recipe?

There’s no need to answer of course. This is the real problem with losing weight: people stop in the middle. And the hardest thing to do is to stick to your weight loss program from the beginning to the end. Here are seven ways to keep your motivation and get to the successful end.

1. Pick an easy weight loss program. There is no point in choosing a weight loss program which is impossible to follow. Trying to lose too much weight in short time might be very discouraging and even dangerous for your health. On the other hand, aiming to lose just few pounds in a month may not sound too motivating at the beginning, but it’s easy to start it and stick to it. And no surprise, it’s easy to be achieved. Once you complete an easy weight loss program you can always try something more challenging, can’t you?

2. Select diet with food you enjoy. The idea here is similar to the previous one. Following a diet with food you enjoy is a lot more motivating than trying to eat tasteless things you hate and hoping to be able to stick to doing it for months. Yes, most probably you will not be able to eat everything you like, neither you are going to eat only what you like, but at least choose a diet in which the food you like predominates. It’s pointless to try the Dukane’s diet if you are vegetarian for example.

3. Join a group. Having friends motivate you makes you more powerful. If it’s hard to stick to your weight loss program alone, it’s much easier to do it together with other people. Both the success of these who succeed and the failures of these who fail can serve you as motivators. Just try to avoid groups with total losers as they can easily draw you into a mood of weakness, demotivation and loser’s mindset.

4. Blog your way to losing weight. Making things public is a sure way to stick to it. Maybe you can live with yourself if you fail with your weight loss effort. But what about failing after hundreds of friends and strangers have read about your weight loss journey? Wouldn’t you be afraid to fail in public and confess you are weak? Most people would, and that’s why blogging about your way to losing way is an excellent way to ensure it will be successful. Now it’s easy to set up a blog and you can even do it for free on Blogger or WordPress. So why wait?

5. Award yourself often. Nothing will keep you more motivated to keep your diet than knowing you will be rewarded for every significant milestone. It can be 7 days successful sticking to the program, or a pound lost or even because it’s day 100 from the beginning. Don’t reward yourself with food, instead use stimulus like drinks, extra rest, sex, walk, going to movies or whatever you love and is not food.

6. Connect physical activities with something pleasant. Physical activities are important part of every sane weight loss program. Whether it will be fitness, jogging, exercising or something else, they should be included to some extent. The big mistake that many people do is to choose a program which requires them to make exercises they don’t enjoy or even hate. How can you expect to stay motivated if you do this? It’s very important to either choose activities you like or somehow connect them with things you like. For example if your weight loss program includes jogging, perhaps you can run to some place you like to visit. Use your imagination instead of excuses that will stop you of following your path to success.

7. Track your progress. It’s very important to know how you are doing. Seeing that you make some progress and how fast you make it will help you make it even better and faster. Seeing that you don’t make progress may slow down your motivation but perhaps will show you that you have to choose another weight loss program. Both outcomes are better than just relying on your memory which can often mislead you that you are doing better or worse than the real results. There are many software programs and online services which can help you with this.