January 22nd - The Mystery of Motivation My motivation is yet to wane.  I get a little despondant from not losing as fast as I would like, but it's not affecting my food choices.  I am also tracking absolutely everything that goes into my mouth.  I am still counting fat content and calories as well as points because I don't think there's such a thing as too much knowledge when it comes to your own health.  I will have to make sure I have a good method for tracking once I get back to work - maybe getting a diary especially for writing my eating in it?  That's probably what I'll do. Thinking about things that keep me motivated, I've listed the following things; My size 15  jeans my leather jacket my t-shirts my low-cut tops my summer dresses my size 14 jeans!! all the great lingerie I have sitting there going to waste my little black dress my size 13 jeans :) I was wondering why I have motivation at the moment, and at other times struggle with it.  It's a mystery and it's an important one, because sometimes it feels easy to stick with a healthy eating plan, and other times impossible.  For me the last couple of weeks (or 11 days to be exact) have been characterised by a constant hum of motivation, even when I feel I'm not losing weight.  Whereas for the last couple of years, it has been an absolutely constant struggle to get some motivation happening. So what's the difference?  OK, firstly for me, not being depressed is really important.  I think it probably is a real compounding factor for a lot of people (and possibly more particularly women) who are large.  The difficulty of course with that is that if your self-esteem is affected by your weight (which of course it often is), it's hard to shift your depression while being large, and on the other hand, its hard to do something about your weight when you're feeling depressed.  What's the solution to that? There are a few different solutions I guess.  Mine has been to work on things in my life a bit at a time, and I think I always knew there would come a time when I would do something about my weight.  I didn't feel hopeless, and I guess I'm just lucky I hadn't been really overweight long enough to get hopeless about it.  Bit by bit in the last couple of years I have been piecing my life together in different areas, and now the time was right to focus on my weight.  But don't get me wrong here, I am not taking credit for being in complete control of everything.  I see a lot of factors as being luck - finding a wonderful man who helped me feel loved was a good dose of luck for instance.  However, I guess I will take credit for taking opportunities when they came my way.  And i DID spend a lot of time after a terrible previous relationship getting very very clear with myself about what a good relationship was, and who was the kind of person I wanted it with. I guess it's a theme.  Reflect truthfully about where you are and why, what you want, and how you're going to get it.  That applies to health, relationships, careers, hobbies, etc etc.  It doesn't mean you'll get where you want to be in the way you expect necessarily, but at least if you have a plan you can revise it.  If you don't plan anything you'll probably just keep treading water. OK, I've gone right off the point I meant to make about my motivation, and I wanted to talk about my motivation with my health plan at the moment.  Here's the deal - my goal is to be healthy.  Part of that means that I expect to lose weight and I am wanting that to happen.  However, the MAIN thing is that I want to be healthy.  What that means is that regardless of whether I show up a loss in the scales or not, I KNOW when I eat an apple instead of chocolate that I am doing my body good.  Weight is not the only issue in health, and there will be times when it seems my weight plateaus for reasons unknown to me or others (it's a common theme in the online journals I've read that people will do everything right one week and not lose, another week they will pig out and be 1kg lighter).  See weight loss becomes an instant gratification versus delayed gratification dilemma for a lot of people.  Do I give up the joy of eating this chocolate now in order to see a loss on the scales in 6 days time? When the question is asked like that, we deprive ourselves on the proviso that we are going to get what we want later in the piece.  When that doesn't happen and the scales don't show a loss, it's very easy to lose motivation ("why do I bother, it doesn't make any difference, I might as well eat the damn chocolate").  I've been through many times like that. Now I know I'm only 11 days into this thing, but my mental state feels different.  And I think that that's the reason why - because I am doing this for my health, not just to lose weight.  So the dilemma for me is an instant gratification versus a different instant gratification with the added bonus of likely delayed gratification as well.  Do I eat something that's not good for my health, or do I eat something that's good for my health?  Because my goal is health, the choice is an easier one.  I get the instant reward of knowing that I have done something healthy.  I guess I'm now at an age where health issues have become more pressing (as discussed at the beginning of my journal) and I can use these as a motivating force.  I really do want to live a long healthy life, and unless I pull my arse into line, it ain't gonna happen.  Anyway, that's my thought for the day.  My goal is health. Simple. <<Back    Home    Next>>