"The key to staying motivated to lose weight is similar to the [amount of] fuel in a car—you don't need the motivation tank to be full to drive, you just need to prevent it from running empty," says Joshua C. Klapow, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and author of
Living SMART: 5 Essential Skills to Change Your Health Habits Forever. "I tell people not to waste precious time and energy on staying highly motivated because motivation has a natural rhythm. Most people see a drop in motivation as a signal of failure, but it's not," he says.
