Find Your Why
For many of you, weight loss gets stalled in the murky area of competing desires. On one hand, you want to be slim and feel good in your body and on the other hand, you want to continue to eat dessert and not spend time planning your meals. This is called ambivalence. The bad and the good simply offset each other, so you’re ambivalent about change.
Change happens when either the reason “why” becomes clear and more appealing than the reason to stay the same or the reason “why not” gets too painful to continue.
When I start coaching my female weight loss clients, the first thing we do is get really clear on her pain points and the reasons she wants to change. Motivation can come and go during your journey, but your reasons for the journey need to sustain you during the low times!
I’ve created a free worksheet to walk you through this process.
In order to harness your true motivation you need to do 2 things:
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Get clear on the pain the extra weight is causing you - Write down all the reasons why you dislike having it...paint a vivid image. Once clear, don’t spend much time here but do understand what you are truly moving away from.
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Get clear on your real reason for change. For most women the reasons are multiple and each reason is layered. About 5 to be exact! Think about peeling an onion where losing weight is the first layer. And each layer we go a little deeper until we get about 4 or 5 deep. In order to dig that deep, after each answer you give, ask yourself “why?”
By doing this exercise, you’ll find out one of two things (both are actually great news!):
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Your pain or your desire for weight loss actually isn’t greater than the discomfort involved with achieving that goal. Meaning there is no change necessary, so stop beating yourself up! You must own that decision. You can’t complain or talk nasty to yourself about your body if you decide that your current body is actually the best solution to ambivalence.
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You’ll find that you just needed to dig a little deeper to find your compelling reason for weight loss - your “why”. It was there the whole time, but it was masked under more superficial reasons. Congrats...get ready to wow yourself with what you’re capable of doing!
I encourage you to print this and hand write the answers - especially if you’re not aware of your real why. Physical writing encourages the mind to open up.