Have you ever wanted to do a weight loss challenge but couldn’t find one that suits all of your needs or appeals to your own goals? If so, we have great news for you. It is super easy to create your own challenge that you can do on your own or with a group of friends, and what’s better, it is completely customizable from beginning to end. If you’re looking for additional support, Functional Medicine Los Angeles may offer personalized plans to enhance your weight loss journey.
Why a Weight Loss Challenge?
Weight loss challenges allow you to have accountability, stay motivated, and use a short-term goal to lose weight. When you are looking at the amount of weight you want to lose, it can feel really daunting. You calculate an average amount of weight to lose and look at the weeks and months it could possibly take.
But if you were to break that down into shorter segments in the form of “challenges,” it would make it a lot more fun and feel attainable. Plus, the challenge is great to start off with since you are consistent throughout the entire thing, whether it is 21 days, 30 days, 90 days, or longer. Consider visiting Functional Medicine Burbank for a more holistic approach to weight loss.
Here are 8 simple strategies that will help you put together your own weight loss challenge.
✅ Decide How Long the Challenge Will Last
The first thing you need to decide is how long you want your challenge to last. This really depends on your personal weight loss goals and what you are using the challenge for.
Some popular lengths of time include:
- 14 days
- 21 days
- 30 days
- 60 or 90 days
Just keep in mind that you want to do the same thing each day during the challenge, so you don’t want to make it too long. Going past a month is quite a bit of time to commit to this. If you need professional advice, Functional Medicine Studio City might be the right place to guide you in your decision.
✅ Write Down Rules or Guidelines for the Challenge
Once you know how long your weight loss challenge will last, you can then choose the “rules” for the challenge. Since you are creating it for yourself, this is where it gets fun! You are able to choose anything and everything you want, again depending on your goals.
You might have just one thing you are trying to do each day, like exercising for 30 minutes or staying within your calories, or you could have a short list of rules and guidelines for the challenge.
Again, remember that these would be done every single day of the challenge, so keep that in mind before you make it too difficult.
Some rules might include:
- Follow a specific diet
- Stay within your calories or carbs
- Hit your daily protein goals
- Exercise for 30 minutes every day
- Go on a walk every day
- Track your food, water, and exercise
- Drink 100 ounces of water
✅ Create a List of Goals for the Challenge
Your goals are what you hope to achieve by the end of the challenge, so basically what the benefits are. Why are you creating this weight loss challenge? If it is just so you can be consistent each day for 30 days or so, then your goals can be related to that.
On the other hand, if you are trying to push yourself to lose those last 5-10 lbs, then that might be your goal. It is good to have these goals written down to stay motivated throughout the challenge.
✅ Choose How You Will Track Your Progress
For a good weight loss challenge, you need a way to track your progress each day of the challenge. It can be as simple as a checklist where you mark off you have completed each rule of the challenge, on each day.
You can create this yourself or find other printables people have made that you are able to customize and print out yourself. If you can’t get your hands on that, just write it down in a journal or planner with your list of “to-dos” each day that you check off throughout the challenge.
✅ How Often Will You Need to Check-In?
It can also help to choose how often you will need to check in with your weight loss challenge. Most challenges do require doing this every day, as most of the goals will be daily goals. But if your challenge is just to go the entire length of time while being in a calorie deficit or sticking to your diet, you might not need to do this every day. In that case, you can break it up into weekly check-ins.
✅ Will the Activities or Tasks Change or Remain the Same Every Day?
A really important detail to make note of when creating your challenge is whether every item is the same throughout the challenge or if it will change.
For example, some people like to increase how much they do each week of a challenge, instead of trying to do everything all on day one. This can help with long-term results. You might start with doing exercise just 3 days a week, then 4 days, then 5 days and so on.
It is up to you to decide if this will be an option in your challenge, or if you prefer keeping it simple by having the same tasks to do each day of the challenge.
✅ Make a List of Ways to Stay Motivated
The hardest part about completing a weight loss challenge is staying motivated the entire time. The longer the challenge is, the more motivation and willpower you will need. So, it helps to start the challenge with a list of ways you can stay motivated throughout the days or weeks ahead.
There are many different ways that people are motivated during a challenge. This might be having a friend you can lean on who is also doing the challenge with you, posting it on social media every day for accountability, or just being able to check those boxes each day in your planner.
Consider past challenges you have done and what gave you the most motivation, then add that to your list.
✅ Create Checklists for Check-Ins, Motivation, and Tracking
Lastly, it is highly recommended that you create your checklists. We have talked about this briefly in just about every tip on this list, but this really is such an important strategy to use. Be specific with what you want to track each day and how you prefer “checking in” during your challenge.
Again, this depends if you are doing it alone or with a group of people, and whether it is private or public. The more organized you are, the more efficient you will be at completing your own weight loss challenge.