After determining why you want to lose weight and setting up your goals, there is still no guarantee for success.  Unless we develop some long-term success strategies, then once we reach our goals, we can get off track.  This has been my experience, but creating long-term success strategies that are continually adjusted has helped me maintain my weight.  This has also helped me work on my overall wellness – physical and mental health – which is important in reaching and maintaining your weight loss goals.

While there are several areas to focus on when strategizing for long-term success, the first step is understanding your identity.  Then you need to determine how weight loss will help you identify how weight loss will define and support your identity.

Understanding Identity-Based Habits for Long-Term Success

The Power of Self-Concept

Habits and what we think of ourselves reflect the type of person we believe ourselves to be.  Often, when we are struggling with our weight, what we think about ourselves is based on what we see in the mirror or what we hear from other people.  This makes changing our mindset about who we are, or we see ourselves becoming extremely difficult.  In turn, it makes changing behaviors that contradict this identity difficult to sustain.

Our behaviors that we have developed over a lifetime align with our identities and thus, feel natural.  They also require less willpower to sustain.  Therefore, it takes a lot of work and willpower to change those habits to reach the identity we see ourselves achieving.  Taking small steps and slowly changing actions is a vote of confidence for the type of person you wish to become.  This requires focusing on overall wellness – mental and physical health.

Identity vs. Outcome-Based Goals

In previous posts I talked about setting goals beyond noticing weight and size.  Similarly, for long-term success, we need to understand the differences between outcome-based and identity-based goals.  Understanding these will help develop long-term success strategies.

Outcome-based goals focus on specific results like weight and pant size.  Identity-based goals focus on the person you are becoming.  They are important because they help establish lasting results because they change the system, not just the outcomes. They establish a mindset built through small continuous changes over time.

Therefore, focusing on losing 50 pounds is important, but it does not lend itself to establishing sustainable change. Setting an identity-based goal of becoming a person who prioritizes heath puts the focus on maintaining a lifestyle beyond the weight loss. 

Discovering Your Health Identity

Identity Reflection Exercise

Here is where you start thinking about who you are becoming and how you will establish a lifetime of success. In this exercise, focus on your mental and physical lifetime wellness. One supports the other, it’s a balance.

1. Envision Your Ideal Self

What kind of relationship does the person you are becoming have with food, exercise and self-care?  How does the person you are becoming feel when they look in the mirror or are in public? How does the person you are becoming talk about themselves?

For this, I really had to dig deep into understanding how the way I talked to myself about myself impacted my relationship in other parts of my life.  Then I took note of my unhealthy relationship with food, exercise and other areas of my life.  For instance, when I’m bored or depressed, I tend to eat without thinking about it.  When I’m overly stressed, I tend to binge eat and don’t exercise.

2. Examine Your Heroes

Who do you admire for their approach to health? What qualities do they embody?

For this, I didn’t look at celebrities or popular fitness trendsetters on social media, not that this is wrong. I looked to people I knew and had a close relationship with. This also gave me an outlet to go to these people to personally learn from them. Some had achieved goals I was hoping to achieve like marathon running. Others had well-rounded mental and physical wellness routines.

3. Recall Your Best Moments

When have you felt most aligned with healthy living? What identity were you embodying then?

This is where I really started to recognize that depression and my weight were in many ways aligned. I found that when I felt best was when I was able to maintain exercise routines and eat well during previous weight loss journeys. When I learned this, I began to understand what happened to get me off track before. During this period, I also recognized I felt best when I was praised for physical accomplishments when I powerlifted and played sports.

4. Identify Core Values

What principles matter most to you? How does health support these values?

Think back to when you set your SMART goals and your purpose for your weight loss journey.  This will help answer these questions. For me it was a matter of being there for family, setting an example for my nieces and nephews along with my students and being an inspiration for people struggling with similar experiences to mine.  I was then able to evaluate how my health supported my values.

Creating Your Identity Statements

Here is where you identify to yourself who you are becoming. You recognize your importance and value yourself. Craft positive, present-tense statements that describe your new identity:

• I am someone who prioritizes eating foods that energize me.
• I am a person who moves daily because it makes me feel good.
• I prioritize sleep and recovery to support my mental and physical well-being.
• I keep commitments to myself because I am important.

Identity Alignment Assessment

Now, it’s time to evaluate your current habits, environment and relationships. Start by identifying elements of your lifestyle that reinforce or contradict your desired identity. When you recognize these habits, create a plan to begin aligning aspects of your life with your new self-concept. The idea is to not change these all at once because it is not sustainable. Remember, this is a process.

I started with focusing on changing my snacking habits. I needed to be more conscious why I was hungry.  First, I set a schedule for eating meals and snacks.  Along with this, I focused on drinking more water. When I was bored or anxious, I would take a walk or find an activity to shift my focus.  It was a start, then I grew from there.

Implementing Identity-First Behavior Change

Small Actions That Reinforce Identity

As previously stated, focus on changing habits slowly and in small increments. It’s all about becoming consistent and not about changing everything all at once. As discussed in a previous post, celebrate successes no matter the size. As you become consistent in these behaviors, expand on them to become part of your established identity.

Identity-Based Decision Making

As you move through the process of developing long-term success strategies, decision making will be one of the most challenging factors. Overcoming decision making challenges often starts with asking yourself a question when you have to make a choice.  The main question I asked myself was, “will this support my long-term success of who I want to be?”

One of the ways to help with making decisions is to pause before you make any decisions.  Pausing allows you to gather yourself and your thoughts before making a choice. This eventually becomes a habit. Tell yourself what is important about your new self and remind yourself of what matters.

Environmental Identity Reinforcement

Similar to supporting your SMART goals, creating an atmosphere in your home and other spaces that reflects your new identity. Create visual reminders like notes on spaces you frequent or reorganize your fridge and pantry.

Outside of personal space, curate social media and other information sources to support your new self-concept. When I did this, I focused on curating my social media to remove negative people or spaces that triggered me.  I also determined what influencers supported my goals. Along with this, determine what people support your desired identity and you. Removing negativity from your space supports your mental and physical wellness.

When Identity Meets Real Life

Identity-Based Flexibility

Now that you’ve established your new self, the next step in developing your long-term success strategies is to challenge situations that don’t support your identity, realistically. Not every situation or person will support you or your goals.  In social situations, for instance with food, pause to ask yourself if this aligns with the new you. Sometimes having something in a smaller portion supports this.

Establish boundaries to protect your identity. As you become more confident there are people and situations that will challenge you. When struggling with food, especially in group settings, plan ahead by reading the menu before going to a restaurant. If it’s people, use positive self-talk or it’s okay to break the relationship to protect your well-being.

If you get off-course, setup protocols for how you recover when your actions and identity misalign. Often it takes reminding yourself that one setback is not the end. Having a support system is extremely important in this situation.

Identity Evolution

Understand that as you go through your weight loss and wellness journey that your health needs and identity will evolve. As you reach SMART goals or become consistent with small changes, expand and build on them.  Allow yourself to grow and change your identity statements as you become healthier. Be sure to balance consistency with focusing on new aspects of your health identity.

As I evolved, I changed fitness goals to running longer distances and trying harder hikes. This led to a change in my identity and my statements. I began pushing the limits of my own health to determine how my identity was changing. This also required me to change my relationship with food and mental health because my identity was evolving. It’s a continuous process.

From Conscious to Automatic

Eventually, over time, you will find that your behaviors and identity will become aligned and automatic.  You won’t think about what you are doing anymore, it will be natural.  Celebrate this! Shift your focus to new areas of identity development.  When you notice this, recognize you have moved from “I am becoming” to “I am”.

Changing your self-identity into who you are becoming takes time. It is a lifelong process that constantly evolves. The best part, as your self-identity positively evolves, you become more confident and self-aware.

The next step in developing long-term success strategies is to build systems, not goals.