FAT BURNING SECRETS : PROVEN TIPS

Losing weight can be a roller coaster of emotions. There are days when your pants fit a little looser and you feel like celebrating, and then others when you feel defeated after you step on the scale and see the number hasn't budged.

“Losing weight is hard, plain and simple,” says Amy Airbus, a licensed therapist at Talkspace based in the New York City area. “The delight of success, when we reach a point we’re proud of achieving, is a powerful high. The sting of disappointment, shame, anger, and doubt creeps in when expectations aren’t met.”

Generally, this comes when life gets in the way of your best-laid weight loss plans. Airbus says things can start out great — you establish an eating and exercise plan and commit to letting go of problematic old habits in favor of forming positive new ones. And then something happens that throws you off course — maybe you can’t resist a slice of cake at a friend’s birthday party, or work interferes with your gym time. “We’re left to work through the disappointment and frustrations of falling off the wagon in order to get back on,” Airbus says. “It becomes a mental game as much as a physical one.”

Diet and Weight Loss Mistakes — and How to Avoid Them

It’s completely normal to take these setbacks personally. “When we cheat on a diet, we mistake the behavior with the person and absorb the failure,” Airbus says. “The day we decided to eat all the cake at the party becomes a hangover of sugar and regret, and can make us feel horrible about ourselves."

It helps to know that setbacks are part of the process. “Losing weight is a marathon, not a sprint,” Airbus says. She says to picture your weight loss journey as a graph, where the particular day may not have been so great, but overall your progress is trending in the right direction.

If you need help along the way, pick up these inspiring books that depict what the weight loss journey is really like.