THE New Year is here so let’s attack 2019 with gusto in my four-week fun Boot Camp! There’ll be no pain but lots of gain – and most of all, I’m going to make it really enjoyable. At Christmas so many people completely lose the plot with food and drink and daily routines go out of the window. So here’s the chance to slip back in the groove and get motivated to shift some more inches with my New Year weight loss Boot Camp!

Work with me over the next four weeks and we’ll get you achieving your goals!  This first blog is a quick recap on goal-setting and a couple of tasks to kick you off. Then we’ll follow this with lots more advice and tips.

This year I’m involving two of my expert friends in my New Year weight loss Boot Camp and they’ll be helping you succeed – so there’s NO excuse!  The first expert is Brian Mayne, who’s a goal-setting expert.

For over 20 years his Goalmapping system has been helping companies and individuals worldwide to achieve huge success. Bryan’s also an international speaker on the subject.

He’ll be helping you to create amazing goals using his Goalmapping system. I’ve been good friends with Brian for nearly 15 years and his system helped me transform my life so I thought I’d share the magic around a bit!

Brian will be taking you through the Goalmapping process and his system is free to use. You might like to take a look here . I’ll be recording a video with Brian later this week and I’ll be sharing it with you.

So firstly – let’s kick everything off by quickly revisiting the whole reason for setting goals.  A goal provides a target on which to concentrate your effort.

Our brains are like goal-seeking missiles – they love it!  Goals give you direction and allow you to focus on what you want to achieve.

And a hugely important part of this process is that it helps you KNOW specifically what you want so you’ll be aware when you’ve achieved it.

If you have a destination in mind, you have to know what it will look like when you get there!

By setting goals you’re also able to measure your progress because you have start and finish dates. They make you accountable.

So we’ll kick off my New Year weight loss Boot Camp by thinking about the big goal.

When you’re creating your goal, please make sure it’s meaningful – getting attached to the emotion of WHY you want this goal is essential because that’s what’s going to help to drive you!  Here’s some possible goals:

* A size goal.  These are the BEST goals because one of the major aims of losing weight will be to get into smaller clothes and you’ll FEEL GREAT when you do! You could easily set a goal to drop a size during this four week Boot Camp.

* A health goal.  Some people want to get their diabetes under control…great goal!

When you’ve worked out your goal, the next step is to break it down into baby steps.  This is the key to consistency and habit formation.

Habits give us the results we want but the real reason habits matter is that each action you take is like a vote for the person you want to become. And we become what we repeatedly do.

Small daily actions and small wins take you towards your goal, enabling and empowering you to form good eating and lifestyle habits which will result in sustainable weight loss.

And this is where the importance of small wins comes in. Small wins help you feel like you’re regularly accomplishing something.

You need the big goal but the small wins motivate you to keep on going – and eventually that big goal is reached.

The small daily wins trigger a shot of dopamine, the pleasure neurochemical, and this is crucial for motivation.  If you have dopamine working with you rather than against you then you’re on to a winner.

This is why it’s important to jot down three small wins at the end of each day because that’s the power that will help motivate you to succeed.

The small wins can be improvements in what you’re eating, your movement or the way you’re feeling. How you’re feeling is fundamentally important to your weight loss journey because that’s what’s going to give you the fuel to keep going!

So the task for the first week of my New Year weight loss Boot Camp is to identify your goal and during the week you’ll have Brian’s help if you choose to create a Goalmap.  It’s a lot of fun and can be used in every area of your life, so I thoroughly recommend you do it!

For the next week I’d like you to identify those baby steps which will take you towards your goal and make sure you achieve two or three of them every day.  Here’s a suggestion:

ONE: Listen to your Slimpods EVERY day. Obviously, listening to your Slimpod (and other pods if you have them) is crucial if you’re to lose some inches!  It’s only nine minutes (and you’ll be asleep in two!) so make it your first task to focus on this.

TWO: Complete your success log and write down your wins at the end of the day. This is easy to do if you’re following the habit plan and have identified your baby steps because all you have to do is block out a little time each day to complete your action and there you have the win! Couldn’t be simpler. And of course Slimpod makes habits so easy to create that soon you’ll notice you won’t even have to think about what you’re doing.

THREE: Could be to consciously change your diet slightly and buy fewer processed foods or refined carbs.  You’ll notice you won’t miss them at all. OR you could do 15 minutes exercise every day (or you could do both!!)

So now’s the time to get to it with my New Year weight loss Boot Camp and lose some inches! For the next seven days, feed back every day by using the comments section below or post in Slimpod Club on Facebook.

I’ll be looking out for you! If you have any questions for Brian, please post them below and I’ll make sure he answers them in the video.

If you’re a member of our private Slimpod Club group on Facebook, then we’re running some special motivational threads in there for the next few weeks.  If you’re not on Facebook then watch out for my blogs/vlogs over the next four weeks because they’ll really help you.

Do let me know how you’re getting on with my New Year weight loss Boot Camp. I love reading your comments.