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How to Stay Motivated to Lose Weight and Feel Better

When the New Year comes around, do you find yourself wondering how to stay motivated to lose weight?

Embarking on a weight loss journey requires dedication, determination, and hard work. This is no small feat, which is why having a stock of motivation on hand is so helpful in achieving success.

Thankfully, motivation is not this super rare gift that only comes around occasionally. It is something that you can learn to manifest and tap into when you need it.

Let’s explore various strategies on how to stay motivated to lose weight, ensuring you remain committed to your goals.

How to Stay Motivated to Lose Weight

No more asking yourself, “How do I stay motivated to lose weight?” Here are some of the best ways to get and stay motivated.

Find Your ‘Why’

We all have something that pushes us to go after a goal, and that something is different for everyone.

Understanding your reasons for wanting to lose weight is essential to staying motivated. A strong ‘why’ serves as the foundation for your commitment and determination.

Identifying your personal ‘why’ will help you stay focused, even during challenging times, and remind you of the long-term benefits you’re working toward on your weight loss journey.

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Why do I want to achieve this goal?
  • What is pushing me to do this?
  • Who am I doing this for?
  • What will it feel like once I accomplish this goal?

Write down your ‘why’ and post it in a place that you’re likely to see it such as your work station, bathroom mirror, etc.

 

Set Realistic Goals

Once you know your driving factor, you can start to set goals. Here’s the thing: you need to be realistic with your goals and healthy habits.

Establishing realistic goals is crucial for maintaining motivation throughout your weight loss journey. Unrealistic expectations can lead to disappointment and frustration, hindering your progress.

When setting goals, use the SMART criteria. This ensures your objectives are clear, trackable, and attainable. All of your goals should be as follows:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Relevant
  • Time-bound

Track Your Progress

Monitoring your progress helps you stay focused, identify patterns, and make necessary adjustments to your weight loss plan. It also allows you to celebrate achievements and maintain motivation.

You can use fitness apps, food journals, and progress photos to track your weight loss journey. Choose the methods that work best for you and make it a consistent part of your routine.

For example, you can weigh yourself daily but calculate the average at the end of the week for the most accurate results. Or you can pre-program meals into a diet tracking app to save yourself time.

Make it Enjoyable

Just because you have to exercise doesn’t mean you need to spend hours and hours in the crowded weight room.

Choose the exercises and activities that you enjoy to make it easier to stay motivated and committed to your weight loss journey.

Try various workouts, such as yoga, dancing, or cycling, to discover what you enjoy most. Keep your routine fresh by incorporating new activities.

Combine exercise with socializing or hobbies to make it more enjoyable. Join a sports team, attend group classes, or engage in outdoor activities with friends.

The most important thing is that you’re consistent. It’s better to be consistent with a workout that you enjoy than to only show up to do a workout that someone else said was “perfect.”The same goes for nutritional consistency.

Don’t try to follow a diet just because it’s trendy. Follow those healthy habits that work best for you and your schedule.

Reward Yourself

Don’t just focus on the setbacks. When you achieve a milestone in your weight loss journey, be sure to celebrate that victory!

Rewards can boost your motivation and reinforce your commitment to your goals. Consider non-food-related rewards such as new workout gear, a spa day, or a weekend getaway.

Set milestones for your weight loss journey and plan corresponding rewards to celebrate your achievements.

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How to make money online

As we mentioned above, there are a variety of ways that you can make money online. Read on to discover 11 ways to make money online.

Find freelance work

Freelance work is when you work for yourself and complete projects on a contract basis. Even if you take on a contract to work for a company, you are still self-employed when you are a freelancer. And there are plenty of freelance jobs online. In fact, there are plenty of freelance websites that list jobs. Be sure to check out Upwork. They are the world’s largest freelance marketplace. Upwork offers a large volume of remote freelance jobs. You’ll see listings for freelancers as web designers, project managers, writers, graphic designers, and other specialties. Over 15 million freelancers get their work from Upwork and it’s free to join. There are also over 2 million jobs for freelancers listed on Upwork. FlexJobs and SolidGigs are also excellent sites for freelancers who are looking for work. In general, you will not have to worry about any scam jobs at FlexJobs. They research the jobs very thoroughly and monitor everything very closely. You can find many niche jobs on FlexJobs. Time is always money, even for a freelancer. If you need work fast, check out SolidGigs. They filter out all the jobs fast and then send you the best ones, thereby vetting the opportunities for you. With SolidGigs, you won’t waste time scrolling through dozens of jobs listed.

start a youtube channel 2023

There are many ways to make money online with a YouTube channel. The most popular way is to add AdSense ads to your videos. Every time someone clicks on your ad, you make money.

You can also promote products in your videos on YouTube by wearing or using certain products in your videos. Add a link to your online store to get people to visit your store and buy your items or contract with third-party companies to promote their products. Just make sure you have a compelling offer for your viewers.

Another way to make money on your YouTube channel is to create sponsored content. This way, you can make a profit by endorsing branded products or creating content marketing videos.

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Dropshipping can be a simple (and profitable) business model. You don’t have to pay for storing your inventory; instead you act as the go-between. Find suppliers online who will sell you products wholesale, then mark it up and earn a profit for yourself.

From computers and clothing to jewelry and health food, there are thousands of suppliers who can provide you with your inventory. When you do this, you will need to have an website and/or e-commerce storefront of your own to market and sell the products.

Take online surveys

Believe it or not, you can make money online by taking surveys. There are online survey websites where you can take a survey in your spare time and earn gift cards or cash. Just keep in mind that some paid survey sites are better than others.

Branded Surveys is one way to earn money online by taking surveys. It’s also a favorite of many. They have a sign up bonus, competitions, a loyalty program, and competitive payouts. You can earn up to $5 for each survey that you complete.

Create a blog

Blogs are a popular money-making tool because they’re easy to create and offer many routes for monetization. If you have some knowledge on a subject, you could create an online course and sell your expertise to people who come to your blog. Or, maybe you’ve got a blog that specializes in a particular topic, You could sell digital products related to that topic—like guides, templates, ebooks, and more—to folks that visit your blog.

If you don’t have your own goods to sell, you could become an affiliate marketer. Affiliate marketing is a way to earn money online by promoting other people’s goods on your site. Whenever someone clicks on the link, you receive a commission from the sponsoring company. There are plenty of affiliate networks that have an extensive list of companies for you to join and become an affiliate marketer with.

Another way to make money with your blog is to put AdSense ads on it. Every time someone clicks the ad, you make money. It can be a great way to earn passive income.

Develop an app

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Write and publish an ebook

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Become a virtual tutor

Tutors are always in-demand. Whether you are a teacher or someone with specific knowledge, you can help learners improve their grades and prepare for exams. Just keep in mind that you should have the teaching experience and a subject-specific certification. This will help create credibility for both parents and students.

Do some research, so you will understand your audience. From your skills, pick topics that you will feel confident teaching. Having specialization certification or an advanced degree will give you an additional advantage.

There are a lot of teaching methods you can implement when you are a virtual tutor. You can use interactive activities, slides, storytelling, and even gamify your course lessons. Being a virtual tutor is one effective way to make money online.

Become an influencer

Influences are people who help persuade potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media or YouTube. If that appeals to you, start thinking about what your niche could be. Maybe you’re interested in fashion or travel. Maybe you’ve got a lot of say about tech or fitness gear. Consider your strengths, and pick a niche that allows you to showcase those strengths.

Once you pick your niche, it is time to market to an audience. You can do this with a blog or on social media platforms. Once you start building your audience, you can start selling to them. If you become popular, you might get the opportunity to represent specific brands and make money by promoting their products.

Build websites

Using a service like Mailchimp, you can easily build a website that looks sleek and professional. If you’re building a website from scratch, you can even buy a domain through Mailchimp that aligns with a particular topic or business.

Just keep in mind that it’s best to pick a niche before you start creating websites. Put together a nice portfolio of the website that you have created, then get out there and market yourself.

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What Is a Nameserver?

When a user enters a URL in their browser, like “fayitgm.com, there needs to be some way to connect that URL with the underlying web server that powers the website at that domain name.

Think how difficult it would be if you had to enter the actual IP address of a web server every time you wanted to visit a website. You wouldn’t be able to remember whether it was 159.89.229.118 or 159.89.229.119 — it would be a mess!

Nameservers play an important role in connecting a URL with a server IP address in a much more human-friendly way.

Nameservers look like any other domain name. When you look at a website’s nameservers, you’ll typically see a minimum of two nameservers (though you can use more). Here’s an example of what they look like:

  • ns-380.awsdns-47.com
  • Ns-1076.awsdns-06.org

Only instead of serving up a website, those nameservers help direct traffic.

To illustrate the role that nameservers play in directing traffic on the Internet, let’s look at a real example.

Let’s say you want to visit the fayitgm homepage. On the surface, this action is simple: you type “fayitgm.com” into your browser’s address bar and you see the fayitgm homepage. Easy, right?

But behind-the-scenes, the high-level process actually goes something like this:

 

  • You type “fayitgm.com” into the address bar and hit enter
  • Your browser sends a request to that domain’s nameservers
  • The nameservers respond back with the IP address of the website’s server
  • Your browser requests the website content from that IP address
  • Your browser retrieves the content and renders it in your browser

In order to visit a website you must first access a Domain Name Server. If there’s an issue with In the the decentralized naming systems responsible for turning hostnames into IP addresses, you might experience a message such as “DNS server not responding”.

content-management-system

Content Management System

What Is a Content Management System (CMS)?

A content management system, often abbreviated as CMS, is software that helps users create, manage, and modify content on a website without the need for specialized technical knowledge.

In simpler language, a content management system is a tool that helps you build a website without needing to write all the code from scratch (or even know how to code at all).

Instead of building your own system for creating web pages, storing images, and other functions, the content management system handles all that basic infrastructure stuff for you so that you can focus on more forward-facing parts of your website.

Beyond websites, you can also find content management systems for other functions – like document management.

How Does a Content Management System Work?

To give you an idea of how a content management system works, we’re going to take a whirlwind tour of the WordPress interface (WordPress is a good example of a content management system).


Let’s start with creating a piece of content. Without a content management system, you’d need to write a static HTML file and upload it to your server (sounds complicated, right?).

With a content management system like WordPress, you can just write your content in an interface that looks a good bit like Microsoft Word:

That’s a lot simpler, right? Similarly, to upload and manage media, like images, you can just browse the media library instead of needing to actually interact with your web server directly:

The content management system isn’t just a backend management interface, though. It also makes all of the content that you create show up for your visitors exactly like you want it to.

What Makes up a Content Management System?

On a more technical level, a content management system is made up of two core parts:

  • A content management application (CMA) – this is the part that allows you to actually add and manage content on your site (like you saw above).
  • A content delivery application (CDA) – this is the backend, behind-the-scenes process that takes the content you input in the CMA, stores it properly, and makes it visible to your visitors.

Together, the two systems make it easy to maintain your website.

What Are Examples of Popular Content Management Systems?

WordPress, which we showed you above, is the best example of a popular content management system. While there are certainly other content management systems in existence, WordPress maintains over a 40.0% market share on websites with a known content management system.

Note that when we mention “WordPress”, we’re not talking about WordPress.com. Instead, we’re focused on WordPress.org, which is the website where the actual open-source WordPress content management system is stored. Beyond the self-hosted WordPress software, other popular content management systems include:wordpress

  • Joomla
  • Drupal
  • Magento (for eCommerce stores)
  • Squarespace
  • Wix
  • TYPO3

There are also lots of other less well-known content management systems that target themselves to large enterprises (with an expensive price point to match).

What Kinds of Websites Can You Build with Those Content Management Systems?

Most content management systems are pretty flexible nowadays. While there are some that focus on a specific use – like Magento and eCommerce – most of the popular content management systems can be used to create essentially any type of website.

  • Static websites
  • Blogs eCommerce
  • stores
  • Forums
  • Social networks
  • Online courses
  • Membership sites
  • Portfolios Etc.

What Is the Best CMS Platform?

This is a little bit like asking, “what is the best flavor of ice cream?”.


Sure, everyone’s got their answer, but it’s difficult to come up with a factual argument for one content management system being the best in 100% of situations.


What we can do, though, is return to the numbers and make a suggestion that there’s a reason WordPress has such a dominant share of the content management system market:


For most types of websites, it provides the most user-friendly, flexible solution. It’s not always the best option, but it is the best option most of the time.


For a deeper comparison of some of the popular content management systems, you can view our posts on:

WordPress vs Drupal

WordPress vs Squarespace

How to Build a Website with a Content Management System

Want to build your own website with a content management system? If so, the general process looks something like this:

  • Purchase web hosting and a domain name
  • Install your content management system of choice on your web server Configure the content management system to dictate how your site looks and functions
  • Start writing content using the content management system’s interface

It’s actually surprisingly simple. And hosts like Kinsta can even help install the content management system for you (WordPress, in this case), so you can jump straight into building your site without any technical setup.

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What Is WordPress?

What is WordPress? At its core, WordPress is the simplest, most popular way to create your own website or blog. In fact, WordPress powers over 40.0% of all the websites on the Internet. Yes – more than one in four websites that you visit are likely powered by WordPress.

On a slightly more technical level, WordPress is an open-source content management system licensed under GPLv2, which means that anyone can use or modify the WordPress software for free. A content management system is basically a tool that makes it easy to manage important aspects of your website – like content – without needing to know anything about programming.
The end result is that WordPress makes building a website accessible to anyone – even people who aren’t developers.


What Kinds Of Websites Can WordPress Make?

Many years ago, WordPress was primarily a tool to create a blog, rather than more traditional websites. That hasn’t been true for a long time, though. Nowadays, thanks to changes to the core code, as well as WordPress’ massive ecosystem of plugins and themes, you can create any type of website with WordPress.

For example, not only does WordPress power a huge number of business sites and blogs, but it’s also the most popular way to create an eCommerce store as well! With WordPress, you can create:

  • Business websites
  • eCommerce stores
  • Blogs
  • Portfolios
  • Resumes
  • Forums
  • Social networks
  • Membership sites
  • pretty much anything else you can dream up.

Here’s how to install a WordPress theme
What’s The Difference Between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?

WordPress.com is a for-profit, paid service that is powered by the WordPress.org software. It’s simple to use, but you lose much of the flexibility of the self-hosted WordPress.

All you need to do to get started with self-hosted WordPress is purchase web hosting and a domain name.

Who Made WordPress And How Long Has It Been Around?

WordPress was created as a standalone project all the way back in 2003, originating as an offshoot of a previous project called b2/catalog.

WordPress is open-source software, so nowadays it’s made by a huge community of contributors. But if we were to trace WordPress’ origins back to its roots, its original creation was a collaboration between Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little.

Since then, Matt Mullenweg has largely become the face of WordPress. And he’s also the founder of Automattic, which is the company behind the for-profit WordPress.com service.

The history of WordPress between its founding as a blog platform back in 2003 and today is a long one…

But suffice it to say, WordPress has pushed forward and, thanks to its contributors and huge community, developed into the most popular solution to create any type of website.

 
Who Uses WordPress

WordPress is used by individuals, big businesses, and everyone in between! On an immediate note, we use WordPress! So the very site that you’re looking at right now is powered by WordPress. Lots of other well-known entities use WordPress as well. Here are some of our favorite examples:


Can I Install WordPress On My Personal Computer?

Absolutely! There are several good reasons why you might want to install WordPress on a local computer. You are building a new site from scratch, install a new theme or plugin or you just want a safe space to experiment with your existing website, without fear of breaking it. In this case, we recommend a free tool called DevKinsta that allows you to install WordPress on your Mac or PC.


WordPress Is Flexible

We’ve touched on this already, but WordPress is great because it lets you create pretty much any type of website. Better yet, your website can also evolve with you. Want to add a forum to your existing WordPress site? No problem – just install the bbPress plugin! Want to add a social network? No worries! Just use the BuddyPress plugin. You’re never locked into a specific set of functions – you can always adapt and evolve.


So What Is WordPress? It’s The Best Way To Build A Website

WordPress is the most popular way to build a website for a reason. If you want to build any type of website, from a blog to an eCommerce store, WordPress is a great option. Just remember that self-hosted WordPress.org and WordPress.com are not the same things. And, in most situations, self-hosted WordPress.org is what you want to build a website.

Self-hosted WordPress.org gives you more ownership as well as access to all the perks and benefits of the WordPress community.