“Disciplined, consistent, and persistent actions are more of a determining factor in the creation of success than any other combination of things.” —Grant Cardone, The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure

Discipline is essential, consistency beats intensity, and persistence conquers all. This is true for relationships, money, and your career path. It’s particularly true for those looking to lose weight.

Let’s explore these 3 character qualities in a bit more detail. They’ve helped me in my own life, and I hope they’ll help you too!

The Foundation: Discipline

The key to successful weight loss is maintaining a disciplined approach. It’s impossible to maintain a healthy lifestyle if you don’t have discipline.

It takes discipline to…

• …eat healthy food when unhealthy food is so readily available.
• …go to the gym and work out even when you don’t feel like it.
• …go to bed at a reasonable time.

When trying to lose weight, discipline is the foundation. All your efforts are built on this! Focus your time and effort on building that discipline so that your weight and health goals can become a reality.

The Secret: Consistency

When it comes to reaching your goals, consistency beats intensity, motivation, talent, and perfection. Maintaining a consistent approach throughout your weight loss journey is the secret to your success.

It’s easy to fall prey to the idea that you have to spend two hours in the gym and eat nothing but boneless chicken breasts and broccoli in order to be healthy. But that’s a recipe for flaming out like a shooting star.

I’d much rather you go to the gym for 30-45 minutes a day and eat an appropriate amount—and a nice variety!—of food. Come to think of it, I’d rather you spend the rest of your life doing 10-15 minutes in the gym daily, avoiding the standard American diet, than I would you drop your New Year’s resolution by mid-February.

Your results will be far better with simple consistency. Don’t minimize how far you can go at a sustainable but consistent pace over the years. Consistency pays off, so keep at it!

The Challenge: Persistence

Persistence is the third quality to have while you work toward your goal of losing weight and pursuing better health.

There are going to be obstacles along the way, but tenacity will allow you to handle them. You’ll have an injury or illness. A loved one will pass away. You’ll struggle financially. Your family and friends will disappoint you. Yet you have to keep going.

When someone is persistent, they refuse to give up even when the going gets tough. They find a way to keep moving forward in spite of the challenges and roadblocks. Perseverance enables you to maintain your course and not allow temporary setbacks to deter you from reaching your ultimate goal.

I don’t know what your particular challenges are, but I do know that we all have them. I also know that we can persist through them.

How to Implement Disciplined, Consistent, and Persistent Actions for Weight Loss

So how do you put these 3 character qualities into practice in your weight loss journey? Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can put your newfound knowledge about being disciplined, consistent, and persistent into practice in order to successfully lose weight.

Set Realistic Weight Loss Goals

A good place to start in implementing behavior that is disciplined, consistent, and persistent is to set reasonable goals for weight loss.

Set SMART goals: goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. If any of those things is missing, you’re starting a wish list, not setting a goal. If all of those things are present, however, it will be easier to maintain your momentum as you pursue health.

Create a System to Help Achieve Your Goal

Once you know your destination, it’s time to figure out your path. The way to reach your goal is to set up systems in your life that will almost inexorably cause you to achieve it.

Your system should act like a guardrail that tells you what to do and when to do it. For example:

• Your eating plan should encompass the food you eat, where you eat it, whom you eat it with, how much you eat, and the time frame around your eating.
• Your exercise plan should include when, where, how long, with whom, and doing what.

These guardrails will help you execute your plan whether or not you feel like it, making you much more likely to achieve your goals.

Prioritize Your Health

Your health is important. People are depending on you: your kids, your spouse, your siblings, your parents, your friends. A lot of people love you and need you to be at your best. You cannot be at your best when you are unhealthy.

It’s imperative that you prioritize your health. With few exceptions, your health should take precedence over all other commitments and diversions.

It’s hard to say no to the foods we all love but don’t love us back. It’s hard to say yes to increased activity that we know will benefit us in the long run when it doesn’t feel so great on our muscles right now. But good health sometimes demands that you tell others no so you can say yes to your future.

You and your family deserve the best you that they can get. Make your health a priority!

Track Your Progress

Before you start, determine your current level of fitness.

• Determine how much weight you can safely lift.
• Check your flexibility.
• If you can find a place that has the capability, get your VO2 max measured.
• Go a little crazy and find out your body fat percentage using a DEXA scan.

Gather all the facts you can, and recheck them every 3 to 6 months. These measures are objective rather than subjective: seeing these improvements will confirm to yourself that you are making progress, even if you doubt yourself on your journey.

Keep Yourself Accountable

Between those check-ins, how can you tell if you’re succeeding in your day-to-day life? You’ll need to log all that hard work you’re doing!

Keep a food journal and document your workout program. Wearing a FitBit and entering your meals and activity into a fitness app is a great way to monitor yourself.

You need some way of verifying that your system is operating as intended. This measured accountability is one of the best ways to keep you moving forward.

Surround Yourself with Support

Now, you know your objective. You’ve put processes in place that nearly guarantee success. You’ve wisely chosen to prioritize yourself. You’ve obtained your fitness baseline measures, and you’re holding yourself accountable.

The final thing to do is to find people who can assist you in achieving success.

Meet a friend at the gym. Employ a personal trainer. Take a picture of what you’re eating and ask for feedback from that friend who always seems to have their diet on point. You can even request that your friends and family help monitor your progress, support you on your journey, and serve as your cheerleaders as you advance.

Having a support system can help you maintain your drive by encouraging you to continue with your goals through difficult times.

You Can Reach Your Weight Loss Goals

Losing weight is a long journey that requires discipline, consistency, and persistence. An all-out sprint will leave you exhausted and frustrated a week, a month, or a year down the road. Your goal weight can be achieved, slowly yet steadily, if you give yourself enough time and grace to learn to make the decisions that prioritize your goals.

Losing weight won’t happen quickly. It demands a sustained effort over time. So remember: keep your eye on the prize, and never give up on yourself. You’ll be astonished at how far you can go on your path to losing weight if you have discipline, consistency, and persistence. You’ll also be amazed at how much better you’ll feel, both physically and mentally, as a result of your improved health.

I’m rooting for you!