April 7th - Focus Today I put a post on the SFL Forum which seemed to strike a chord with a few people there.  So, in the spirit of extreme laziness (or should that be efficiency), or even just in the interest of making my thoughts known a little more widely, I'm going to post the entry (with some minor adjustments) here as today's journal entry.  For those of you who read it on the SFL forum, feel free to take a nap from this point onward. ***** Recently, I've been thinking about what what words we use to describe our mental state and our behaviour regarding our weight loss efforts.  How many of us talk about being 'good' or 'bad' (eg I've been good this week so I'm expecting a loss). Also people talk about being 'strong' versus 'weak'. I've decided I prefer to use the terms 'focussed' or 'not focussed' on weight loss.  To me this makes sense, because often the reason why I found it hard to get things going with my weight loss was because there were other issues demanding my time and energy.  In other words, they were taking my 'focus'.  When things unexpectedly pop up, we become sick, get busy, run late etc, it is obviously harder to keep 'focussed' on our weight loss. I don't think the term 'not focussed' on weight loss has anything like the negative connotations that the words 'bad' or 'weak' have. Regardless of where our weight is at, carrying around such negative beliefs about ourselves is not going to help our self-esteem any. Of course secondary to that, it makes it harder to feel positive about our weight loss, particularly if you are already struggling at present. We don't deserve to be chastised by our inner voices like a nasty old schoolmistress. That's not the kind of language we would use to encourage any one else who was struggling with something that is difficult. Think of how you would ideally encourage a child if they were adjusting to a difficult change - lots of positive reinforcement for ANY behaviour in the right direction, and lots of positive reminders and prompts about how to make the changes. When they struggle with that change, sit down and help them work out where they went wrong, and what they need to do differently the next time. This is going to be the most effective way to deal with ourselves also. Lots of encouragement, and reminding ourselves that this IS a difficult but doable change that will take some trial and error and lots of positive reflection to see how we can keep improving on our progress to date. I'm off to a party tonight - let's see how my focus goes there... <<Back    Home    Next>>