Do We Hold Our Feet To The Fire?

In my past (failed) "dieting" attempts there was one consistent theme no matter WHICH program I utilized. 

I was motivated by emotional pain and conflict.

Then I would wonder why I "lost" motivation as I became more successful, and I would wonder "why" it was "so easy" at the beginning to stay on task and on program, and "wish" I could just BOTTLE that motivation to take with me through my journey.

It was a typical pattern for me.  I'd feel miserable, awful, shameful, guilty, and be in emotional and/or physical pain due to my size, so I would vow to "Do it this time!" to GET AWAY from the pain and conflict, the shame of needing a seatbelt extender, the guilt of having let down my family again, and, I would go GUN-HO!

Here's the thing about that:  We know we can be 100% committed when our feet are ON the fire.  It hurts.  It burns.  It is right there in our face with the pain and the blisters.  And we don't like being there, standing on the fire.  SO we are PER-FECT, right?  We weigh everything, we measure everything, we track our water, we make on-plan choices, sometimes we even say no to social events because this dang fire hurts and we want off it as soon as possible!

A few weeks or months pass (or weekdays if you are a weekly fire-stander).  We are feeling GREAT!  We are feeling EMPOWERED!  We are feeling GOOD about how GOOD we are being!  We are putting distance between us and the fire-pit!  But here's the thing, we also notice that as we are finding SUCCESS, our MOTIVATION seems to be slowly dissipating as we are feeling BETTER about ourselves. 

SO, we have the gung-ho no-holes-barred weekend where we have whatever we have been "denying ourselves of" for the last weeks or months (or days LOL) and guess what!  We feel miserable.  We feel guilty.  We feel shame.  We feel emotional pain and conflict again....which, oddly enough, seems to be EXACTLY the environment that we SEEM to have conditioned ourselves to NEED in order to commit to getting ON PLAN and doing the things we know we need to do to be successful.  Feeling horrible about ourselves.
And we say "OK That's IT!  I'm going to DO this thing!  Again!"  Poof, our motivation appears again and we are ON TARGET.  Until the next success.  Until our emotional pain and conflict become less and less, and our motivation with it.  So we hop on the fire AGAIN and hope that THIS TIME the memory of the pain will be sufficient to keep us on task.

And then it isn't.

So what do we do? 

I'll tell you what I did.  You see, I had lost 120 pounds with Take Shape For Life and I was feeling AMAZING!  I had energy, I felt good about myself, but I couldn't get that last 30 pounds off because I was in an oscillating pattern.  What did that oscillating pattern look like?  Well, it wasn't gaining ALL of my weight back, or even MOST of my weight back, or even SOME of my weight back because I had vowed to myself I would never let that happen again.  The memory of the fire and the pain was sufficient to keep me in a maintenance "holding pattern" for a  year and a half.  But I couldn't seem to "muster" the "motivation" to handle the "last 30" and truly live a life in optimal and ultra health.

And then it hit me.  I was WAITING to feel MISERABLE and BAD about myself, I was waiting to FEEL sufficient emotional pain and conflict to motivate me to "finish the job" and stop hovering just on the cusp of overweight and healthy weight.  But you see I was never going to feel that way again because I did vow to do whatever it took to maintain my losses, and I was DOING that. 

So now what!  What about the "last 30"? 

I decided to take my own advice, and look towards the AWESOME things I wanted to bring IN to my life as a RESULT of becoming Optimally and Ultra Healthy.  I looked FORWARD with hope and optimism and began to, literally, CREATE HEALTH in my own life.  I continued to master healthy habits and practice them DAILY, fine-tuning them not because I felt miserable and HAD to, but because I felt AWESOME and WANTED to feel even AWESOME-ER!  (I know that isn't a word) 

I began to be ON PLAN every single day because I WANTED to, not because I was sick and tired of being sick and tired - because I was neither sick NOR tired having lost 120 pounds and I was feeling really GREAT!  I realized there are 7 days in a week that I can be ON PLAN, not just Monday - Thursday!

And that is what I had been doing!  I had been on my eating plan Monday - Thursday, and then Friday - Sunday was deviating enough to make me feel bad enough about myself come Monday morning that it would "keep me" on plan for the next Mon - Thurs cycle.

Guess what?  By deciding to "create health" in my life I BROKE THAT CYCLE!  And I didn't even have to feel horrible about myself to do it!  That is the beauty of creating health in our lives AS OPPOSED to "solving a problem" because when we go on a "diet" to "solve a problem" we are really saying that WE are the problem, that something is WRONG with us that needs to be FIXED.

I say kick that mentality to the curb!  We are beautiful, wonderful, valuable, precious, capable, powerful human beings!  We are WORTHY of the effort it takes to create optimal and ultra health in our lives!  And it DOES TAKE WORK!  But it is a JOYFUL work and not a DRUDGERY if you will ALLOW it to be a JOYFUL process of creating something awesome in your lives.

It's only a big bummer if we make it a big bummer.  It's only a deprivation if we are focusing on viewing US as a problem that needs fixing, and if we continue to view the "yummy food" as desirable.

Yummy fatty decadent sugary food only has one purpose, to make us feel BAD about ourselves.  I'm never going down THAT road again.

I didn't come up with this stuff out of thin air, I was inspired by the materials found in Dr. A's Habits of Health Chapters 3 and 4, and I'm simply describing how I applied it practically in my own life to achieve the health I desired and am living in now (BTW I did continue my journey, attained a BMI of 21, and am at the same weight now I was when I got married almost 23 years ago!).
Rinse and Repeat!