Finding your why(s)?
Today’s post is about your motivation to lose weight. What are the reasons that will keep you going? Not just this month but the next, and next year and the following. Specifically, what are the reasons that will keep you going when it gets tough?
When you know why you want to stop overeating you will stop trying.
If someone were to give you £10 million if you lose 8 pounds (5Kg), would you be able to do it? Somebody is giving you tons of money if you lose weight and keep it off. How motivated would you be?
If money doesn’t do it for you. Think of something you truly desire? You can have it if you lose 8 pounds and keep them off.
Done, isn’t it?
Find your compelling reasons, your why(s) you want to stop overeating
Being healthy is an excellent good reason.
Is it compelling enough? Be honest with your reasons. Sometimes we tell ourselves we should want something but if it’s not true, you will know it and it will not work for you. You can’t lie to yourself.
Being healthy may be very compelling for you. Great. You need more reasons.
If losing weight is important to you, you will have many different reasons for why you want to lose weight. All together, these reasons will keep you going and determined.
They don’t need to be altruistic or for particularly noble reasons. At least not all of them!
Whatever motivates you. Feeling and looking good in your clothes, wearing a bikini on your next holiday and feeling confident, are perfectly valid reasons if they motivate you.
Why do you need several reasons, several why’s?
Because you will need them in different situations.
Being an example to your kids and eating healthy food will work well when you are preparing the family meals. Remembering this will help you make food choices that align with your goal and knowing why it is important to you will help with the choice and to stick with it.
Being an example to your kids might not work when you are dining at a fancy restaurant with your partner on a date night. What reason would work better in that situation? That’s where other why’s might be more compelling.
How to find several why’s
I use the following technique to find many why’s, to get to the bottom of why a goal is important to me.
Ask yourself 3 consecutive why’s
- Why do you want to lose weight? Because I want show my children how to eat healthily
- Why do you want to show your children to eat healthily? Because it will set them in a good path to have long lasting health
- Why do you want to set your children in a long-lasting healthy life? Because I want them to reach their full potential
- Why do you want to show your children to eat healthily? Because it will set them in a good path to have long lasting health
- Why do you want to lose weight? Because I love dressing up and feel that I look good
- Why do you want to feel that you look good? Because I like taking care of myself
- Why do you like taking care of myself? Because I value my own opinion
- Why do you want to feel that you look good? Because I like taking care of myself
- Why …?
You get the idea.
Do the same for 3 to 5 why’s, or for as many as you want. Make the effort to understand your motivations. They will keep you going.
We often start challenging projects because we think we want them, or we think we should want them, but without being really clear about the reasons we want to do it. You are much more likely to drop your goal if you haven’t intentionally worked out what your true motivations for wanting to change are. These reasons are for you and you only. Be honest with yourself.
I said earlier that any reason is good as long as it’s important to you.
There is one exception and it’s an important one.
Do you want to lose weight so that you can feel better about yourself?
It will not work. Sorry.
If you want to lose weight because you feel that shedding a few kilos will allow you to feel better about yourself, to be confident to go out to the world, to make your life feel different and brighter, I’m afraid two things may happen:
One, losing weight will be very difficult.
Second, even if you lose it, you will not really feel better about yourself. You may experience a short-term high, but you are unlikely to feel sustained confidence to go out into the world. And trust me, your life will not be different.
Feeling good about yourself, feeling confident, being happier, or any other feeling you think losing weight will give you has nothing to do with your weight.
If that is your reason, understanding why you don’t feel worthy or good enough is what you need to solve. It could be that you overeat to avoid feeling those negative feelings about yourself, also known as emotional eating, but it’s the negative feelings you need to get to the root of an unravel. Then, losing the weight and stopping overeating will be the easy part. You can and deserve to have both, feeling worthy and losing weight, but the order is important.
If this is resonating with you and how you feel, please get in touch [link]. What I have just discussed is a large area of the work that I do in the coaching sessions with my clients. You are not an exception. We all have mean, negative thoughts. They come so naturally that sometimes you need someone else to point out to you that they are just that, thoughts.
There is no amount of weight loss that will give you confidence or happiness.
The lack of control over food, the excess weight are symptoms. We want to fix the cause. Removing the cause will take care of the symptom.
