One of the most important steps in your weight loss journey is having the right reason WHY and this is something that shouldn't be underestimated in the difference it makes to your motivation, commitment and long term success.
After over 9 years supporting people to lose weight as well a lifetime of struggling with my own, I think one of the most common things I hear from people who are struggling to reach their goals is ‘I just can’t stay motivated’. I know I certainly used this as a reason for giving up on many a diet I’d attempted in my 20s and early 30s.
And whilst I definitely believe motivation is important, it may be a tad controversial but I fully believe that motivation is not the answer to long term success and relying on that will not help you achieve your weight loss goals. There are multiple things which you do need – motivation, discipline, willpower, commitment, strength to name but a few but one of the things that a lot of people don’t place enough emphasis on is their reason WHY?
For me, it’s that absolute starting point of any weight loss or transformation journey you are undertaking and it’s something you need to invest time in both at the start and continuously along the path to your goal and beyond and I always spend quite a bit of time with any of my weight loss clients working through their reason WHY in our very first session as well as coming back to it repeatedly.
I’d even go as far as to say that the reason most people fail to reach their weight loss goal is the lack of a real meaningful reason WHY.
I’d love to say it’s as simple as this quote makes it out to be, but I’d be lying! However, having that real reason WHY, really does make a big difference. Work is going to be required, change is going to be required but they become a lot easier when you have a real purpose or goal that really means something to you.
Speaking from experience
I was an overweight child growing up in a very loving family who all were overweight. ‘Dieting’ was a concept I was very familiar with from a very young age – I went to aerobics classes at about age 12 to ‘lose weight’, went along with my mum to slimming groups from a very young age and was always the biggest kid in my class at school. I convinced myself it was bad luck, genetic, big bones and as I got older into my teens and university days, I was very aware of being very overweight but not really ever thinking it was something I could do anything about and therefore never really tried.
After university, I moved to London and entered the ‘real world’ and it was then, at age 22 that I really started to understand what a difference my weight was making in the real world. I’d go for interviews for jobs and be judged immediately on my size before I’d even opened my mouth. And that was probably the first time I really started thinking about how I should lose weight in order to fit in more and to meet certain expectations.
I definitely became a lot more aware of the judgement of others and the pressures to fit in with society expectations and that’s when I started over a decade of yo-yo and fad diets and became firmly embedded in the exhausting hamster wheel of ‘on a diet / off a diet’ without ever really achieving anything – and actually, as each year passed, I’d end the year heavier than I started it.
A big turning point (and not for the better) came when I was 26, my mum had a sudden heart attack, she was 59 years old and she never recovered from it and died in intensive care 18 days after the heart attack. Whilst in intensive care, her heart consultant took me and my sister aside and in a very kind way, basically told us that with our own weight issues and now with a family history of heart disease, we were heading down the same path as my beloved mum and that it was very likely that me in particular (I was by far the biggest) may not reach my 50th birthday.
You would think being told that you were basically killing yourself would be enough reason to motivate me to actually lose the weight and make a proper commitment to change but oh no, I actually went on to gain more weight over the next 18 months – my dad was very poorly fighting his own battle with cancer as well us all having to deal with the loss of mum. After dad died, I was now a size 28, I still had no idea what I weighed but I was definitely the largest I’d ever been in my life.
I moved back to London and resumed my ‘normal’ life but by now, my weight was actually having a real impact on my health – both my physical health and my mental health. I was permanently tired, my self confidence was at an all time low, my knees ached, I was struggling to find clothes to fit and I was just very unhappy with myself.
I pretty much decided that all my problems would be fixed if I just lost the weight so once again, embarked on the cycle of fad (and often absolutely crazy) diets which I’d stick at for a couple of weeks, find hard, lose motivation and give up.
The light bulb moment
I simply woke up one day and decided I didn’t want to live my life like this.
It was just a normal day, nothing special was happening or coming up that I had to ‘diet for’, no-one had told me I should do it, nothing out of the ordinary had happened but there was a massive shift in me internally – I wanted a different life, I wanted to be happy, I wanted to feel better about myself and I didn’t want to die.
It was probably the first time in my life that I was choosing to make a change for me and my own internal reasons. And that week, I joined a slimming group (Slimming World) and that’s the last time I started a diet and that is now 12 years ago.
With hindsight, I now look back on the years I spent on and off a diet, and the biggest difference has absolutely got to be the fundamental reason WHY. I’d always embarked on a diet because of external pressures or reasons or because of what other people thought of me or had told me or for a particular upcoming event. Doctors had told me ‘you need to lose weight’, caring friends and family had told me ‘we are worried about your weight’, society hit me from every angle of what is ‘normal’ and judged me purely based on my size. These reasons didn’t resonate with me internally – they didn’t have enough meaning to me inside and what really mattered was finding my reason WHY that was my reason and mine alone.
It sounds simple but one change to how you think about your reason WHY can make a huge impact on your motivation and commitment to the changes you are making.
Why finding your own personal reason WHY is so important?
No one wakes up every day feeling totally motivated and committed to the goal they want to achieve – whether that’s weight loss, exercise, business, etc etc – there are days when you really just can’t be bothered, there are days when life gets in the way, there are days when you have much bigger priorities or issues to deal with.
I like to compare it to the worse job you’ve ever had in your life – you dread going every day, you spend the day counting the minutes until home time, you dream of finding a better and more enjoyable job and you may put hours of effort into finding a new job – BUT you still show up every day, you still work your hours, you get through it in whatever way you can BECAUSE you need the reward at the end of the week or month – your pay cheque. You need that money to pay your rent or mortgage, pay your bills, buy your food, buy clothes, save up for a holiday or a special event and no matter how unmotivated you feel, you turn up to work each day because of what it brings you.
If you want to lose weight and reach your weight loss goal, you need to find that reason WHY which means you turn up every day no matter how much you don’t want to. For all us that reason is completely unique and that’s why it is something you need to invest some quality time in thinking about it and working it out. It has to be something that really matters to you and hits you in your heart.
It could be health related, it could be physical related, practical, vanity, emotional – there are no right or wrong answers but it has to be something that really means something and that you can picture or imagine – for example, just saying ‘I want to be healthy’ may not be a strong enough reason WHY – dig deep into that, what does that mean to your life, what are the benefits to you, what impact will that have – for me, I definitely wanted to be healthy (doesn’t everyone?) but I had to really drill into what exactly that meant for me – I didn’t want to have a heart attack before I was 50, I wanted to live a long and happy life without being a drain on other people, I wanted to be able to support and look after myself for as long as possible, I didn’t want to follow the family trend of Type 2 diabetes.
On days when motivation had taken a walk, I’d remind myself of how important my reason WHY is to me, I’d picture what life would be like if I gave up trying and then I’d picture what life would be like if I pushed on through. More often than not, having that strong reason WHY was enough to drag me through the days when I did struggle.
Review, Review, Review and Redo, Redo, Redo
You need to keep this reason WHY alive and meaningful to you – write it down somewhere and read it daily, share it with friends, family and colleagues (if you want to) to make it even more real and to get their support, spend time picturing the life you are going to lead when you reach your goal, use visual motivation tools, make it your phone screensaver – whatever works for you to keep your reason WHY at the front of your mind.
Also, it’s important to repeat the exercise every now and again.
If your initial reason WHY was to lose weight to fit into your favourite pair of jeans and feel confident in yourself when you look in the mirror – what happens when you reach that goal? You need to find a new reason WHY to keep you focused and on track.
For me, I remember a doctor’s check up appointment as a clear stumbling block in my focus – I’d lost about 6 stone, I felt really good in myself and the doctor gave me really good news – my blood pressure was normal, my cholesterol was normal, my blood sugars were normal and I was in pretty good shape health wise. Suddenly with those results, my reason WHY was not as valid as it had been at the start – I was nowhere near my goal weight but that fear of a heart attack before I was 50 was no longer there. I struggled for a few months to build momentum back up again and my weight loss stalled completely until I sat down and really had a think about my new reasons WHY that had meaning in my life to me right now.
My health has remained and will always remain very high up on my list of reasons WHY but there are times when I need a different focus or goal to work towards so I often revisit my reason WHY to make sure it’s relevant to me right now.
I love helping people discover the best ways to work on their mindsets and habits to help them reach their weight loss goals and if you would like to find out more about my 1-2-1 coaching programme or how I can help you, please do get in touch.
Email me or phone/message: 07834 442607
Join my free Facebook support group for weekly live sessions, more tips and strategies and motivation:
Pingback: Support: why its a necessity for weight loss – Meal Plans Made Easy