It’s August and that grand plan to lose weight and get healthy that you were so gung-ho about in January is now a distant memory. Looking back this is the same thing that happens every year. You may even be feeling down on yourself about it, or you may have thrown your hands up, figuring you just don’t have it in you to stick to it.
We’ve all done it; we tell ourselves we are going to start a diet and exercise routine and we have the best intentions, and we start, and then we make it like a week, maybe, then we fall off. Sound familiar? So, why does this happen? Well, there are a few possible reasons:
- You don’t have clear or realistic goals.
- You don’t have a clear why.
- You are trying to change too much, too fast.
I have been working out and doing some form of dieting for about 25 years. That said, it hasn’t been perfect the entire time and I have had many times where I fell off the proverbial wagon. Exercise has been the one constant. Even during times where I wasn’t on a specific diet, I always did some sort of exercise consistently. When it comes to things like nutrition, hydration, and my vices (i.e., bad habits), however, it has been less consistent. Some of this is because, having tried every diet known to man, I wasn’t always following a realistic diet approach. For example, diets that eliminate entire food groups. They aren’t sustainable for life and inevitably be it within the first month or after a few years, you go off it, because it’s impossible to sustain for life.
In other cases, particularly the times I declared I was going to go on a diet, cut alcohol, stop smoking, cut sugar, go to bed earlier, and read more, or some similar litany of things I was going to start doing consistently tomorrow, I would fall off the plan within a few days. I know, big surprise. After much reflection, research, and a whole lot of life experience, I found the reason I would fail came down to one or all three of the reasons noted above.
See, what we fail to realize when we set out to lose weight, start exercising, stop drinking, or make whatever other changes is that we are really embarking on changing ourselves. In order to make any of these types of changes, we have to change behaviors and habits, thought patterns, beliefs. But what we do is we focus on the end result we want, and we just do what we think will get us that result. It is similar to going on a road trip, without picking a destination or route. So, let’s go more in depth into these three factors of our failure to make lasting change.
- You don’t have clear or realistic goals.
So, following the example of wanting to lose weight and get healthy, you need a clear and realistic goal. You need a long-term goal; the ultimate destination, and you need shorter term goals along the way. It’s not enough to just say I’m going to start a diet and exercise next week; you need a clear realistic goal. So, let’s say you’re starting at 200 pounds. What is your goal weight? What do you want to weigh? Let’s say your goal is 150 pounds, so you want to lose 50 pounds. This is your long-term goal. You didn’t gain 50 pounds in one month, so it’s not going to come off in one month, probably not even within 6 months. So, you need to be realistic about how much you are going to lose and the amount of time it will take.
This is one of the biggest factors in why we fail – unrealistic expectations. We set the bar and expectation way too high for ourselves and then when we don’t see those results, we get frustrated and give up. So, start with a clear and realistic goal, like, I am going to lose 50 pounds in one year. Next set short term goals to get you to the long-term goal. You want to set more than one. You want a weight loss goal, such as I am going to lose 10 pounds in the next 6 weeks. You want goals for how you will lose weight, such as I am going to exercise for 30 minutes at least 3 days each week and I am going to track my macros daily and check my progress every 2 weeks. - You don’t have a clear why.
If your heart is not in it, you’re going to have a heard time reaching your goals or making any lasting change. You need to dig a little deeper than wanting to look good in your swimsuit or that dress. You want to get to the heart of why you want to lose weight and get healthier. One of the best ways to do this is to start with looking at what you aren’t happy with. What are you sick and tired of? Then you can flip these around into your objectives, which will lead you to your why.
I’ll give you an example of my why. I was sick and tired of crying when I got dressed in the morning. I was sick and tired of avoiding the mirror. I was sick and tired of feeling drained of energy all the time. I was sick and tired of being depressed. I was sick and tired of feeling like a shell of myself and, as a single parent, I knew I had to figure something out fast. Flipping all this around, it became, I wanted to look and feel better. I wanted more energy. I wanted to feel like myself again. And, most important, I wanted to be a better me for my kids. My why became: so I can be the healthiest, happiest version of me, for my kids. Once you have a why that is greater than a number on the scale or dress size, your goal rises to a level of importance that it drives you to succeed. This is key for the long game. - You are trying to change too much, too fast.
This is one of the biggest factors that cause us to fail and it’s the one I’ve done repeatedly. It is cliché, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. The version of you that is fit and healthy and happy isn’t built in a day either. Yet so often we decide we want to lose weight and then we go and expect to lose 50 pounds in 2 months. Have you ever watched the show My 600-pound Life? You know how the doctor is always telling them that they have to lose a certain amount of weight before they get approved? The reason for that is because he knows that if they don’t change the underlying behavior to why they gained the weight in the first place, that the surgery is futile.
All these crazy fad diets or plans we make to lose 50 pounds in 2 months are the same thing. It is too much too fast, and it does not take into account what we are really trying to do, which is to change ourselves. Being healthy and fit requires different habits than being overweight and out of shape. Changing your habits requires changing your behaviors and your thoughts, which is best done in small, incremental steps. You cannot go from no exercise and eating whatever you feel like to perfect nutrition and 5-6 days of exercise a week. It is overwhelming and drastic from the starting point, which will only cause frustration and feelings of defeat.
If you want to make lasting change and reach your goals, you need to break it down and focus on changing a few specific habits at a time. For example, instead of going from not tracking your food and not exercising at all, start with tracking what you eat and exercising three days a week for a month to start. Once you have established these new habits, look at where you can raise the bar. Perhaps now that you are used to tracking, you’re going to cut sugary drinks out, or cut out that high-calorie morning latte, or replace processed foods with fresh foods. Or, you might add more time to your workouts or add more work out days. Similar to the first changes you made, you give yourself time, say a month, to establish these new habits. This breaks it all down into manageable changes while also giving you the time and space to establish the changes.
So, these are a few of the factors to why we often fail when we set out to lose weight and get healthy. This is one of my passions and something I love to help people with. You absolutely can reach your goals. You are not hopeless; you just haven’t had the right tools to get there. I’m launching a great new program very soon that is all about helping moms become their happiest, healthiest, and most spiritually aligned version of themselves, so stay tuned for that.
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