When you talk to people about
exercise and weight-loss you’re likely to get the reply “I’d love to do that
but I just don’t have any motivation.” It’s true, motivation is the hardest
thing to come by when you’re working to either lose weight or exercise more, so
that really makes motivation the most important ingredient in a new life style.
But, how do you get motivated? I wish there was an easy answer, some sort of
formula that said ‘do this, than do that and viola, you’re motivated’, but it
just doesn’t work that way. When I’m asked how I got motivated to lose weight I
really can’t give a definite answer, I just did, however, after thinking about
it all week I can tell you some things that have helped.
I don’t know about you but,
when I’ve decide to lose weight and get healthy for the first week or two I’m
all gun-ho! After a couple of weeks, however, not so much! Usually it’s because
I miss eating sweets, or drinking soda etc. So this time I tried some simple
tricks. First, with the HCG I have so little calories to take in each day that
I really couldn’t cheat. I learned quickly not to do empty calories like soda.
I found that flavored water (like Crystal light), made a great substitute for
soda and without the calories. With the HCG I dropped the weight so fast that I
felt the success right away and therefore was motivated to keep going. After
all who would not feel motivated after losing 42 pound in 40 days! With a
normal diet however, the success is not as immediate, so you have to be
motivated to stay on it. Try finding little things to motivate you, like how
long did you make it on the Elliptical when you first started? How long can you
go now? Successes don’t need to be huge or grand to motivate you. Make
competitions with yourself. For me, when I first got on the spin bike I thought
that with having been working out for several months 20 minutes on the spin
bike would be pretty simple. Yeah, not so much, I only made it 3 minutes before
I thought I was going to die. So my new competition with myself was to work
hard to get to 20 minutes on the bike. I can now do 30 minutes on that bike!
Use little successes to stay motivated. Why? Because:
Success begets success!
Remember that motto, success
begets success. Use your small successes to stay motivated to reach your big
successes. For example: The first weeks of a diet you lose a lot of weight,
then you start slowing down, when this happens most people get discouraged and
start cheating on their diet thinking that because they didn’t lose the same five
pounds this week, only one pound, well then they are failing, but they’re not.
Why? Because they still lost one pound. Even if you only lost a single
pound you’re one pound closer to your goal. I blame Biggest Loser for this
attitude. Everyone is so disappointed when a contestant only loses one or two
pounds, well of course they are. People on the Biggest Loser spend every day,
all day, exercising and working on their diets! It’s only natural that with all
that time they’re spending working on losing weight that they feel like a
failure for losing only one pound. But people, be realistic, we don’t spend all
day every day exercising and working on our diets. We have normal everyday lives
to live. We have dinners to attend, business lunches, kids to get to events
etc. Finding the time to exercise, planning our healthy meals, all of that is
hard when your time is already stretched thin. My philosophy is that, if I’ve
lost a pound I’ve been successful at losing weight....because I’ve lost
a pound. As long as I don’t gain I haven’t failed. Many feel like they failed
because they cheated, that is not
true. So you ate a candy bar today, well fine, don’t do that tomorrow and you’re
good. Cheating is not failing, GIVING UP IS FAILING. As long as you don’t give
up you haven’t failed. Keep going and you’re succeeding.
Use each pound you lose as
your motivation. Think to yourself, “I’ve lost three pounds this week, next
week I’m going to lose another three pound.” Then work for that goal. Did you
lose just that one pound, like I said that’s cool, but think about what you did
to drop from your normal two or three pounds to that single pound. Maybe you
had a couple of candy bars, or maybe your skipped a day of exercising, didn’t
drink enough water. There is a reason you didn’t lose
as much, find it and correct it. Did you do everything right? Well then maybe
your body is getting use to the amount of exercise you’ve been doing, sucks I
know, I just had to move from ½ hour a day cardio to a full hour (ICK), because
my body adjusted to the amount I’ve been doing. You need to challenge your
body, vary your exercise to get different results. For maximum results do at least an hour of cardio a day, and vary
the cardio; running, rowing, spin bike, elliptical, stair stepper etc. Find
several different kinds of cardio and mix it up. You’ll start losing again
soon. Also, use that need to change as motivation too, your body is getting
stronger, CONGRATS!!! You’ve accomplished the goal of getting healthier. That
success can beget more success is losing weight.
One thing I did when I first
started out was not to tell everyone that I was on a diet. I told my best
friend and the lady I bought the HCG from. I didn’t even tell my husband that I
was doing this. Why? Because once you’ve told people you’re dieting they start analyzing
everything you put into your mouth. You’re already analyzing all of that, you don’t
need others to analyze it for you. So keep it to yourself. People didn’t know I
was dieting till I had already lost 60 pounds. Now at 85 pounds off everyone
notices, even if they don’t know it’s your weight that is changing. I had one
lady a couple of weeks ago that swore I had gotten a different haircut, when
she finally said “Well something is different about you” I told her I had lost
85 pounds, her reaction was priceless, you know the whole jaw drop and bug
eyes. HA HA!! It was great. That success of telling people how much I’ve lost motivates me to keep going. Once people learned
I was working on losing weight, and they saw the success I’ve already had,
their cheers, kind words and encouragement gave me the motivation to keep
going. Now my motivation comes from them. I have become, as I said in my last
post, a role model for others. That motivates me when I’ve been on the treadmill
for 30 minutes and I’m dripping in sweat and my legs are burning and I just
want to quit. I can keep going and moving for another 30 minutes because I don’t
want to disappoint, I don’t want to discourage, so I keep going. Success begets
success. I have 40 pounds left to go, but that is only a third of what I’ve
already lost, so easy peasy as my son would say. I’ve done that, I can do it
again. I’ve been successful and that
will help me to continue to succeed is this final push to get to the ultimate
goal.
Success begets Success.
