Staying Motivated When It Isn't Fun Anymore

Happy Friday everyone! I hope you've had a good week and are ready for the weekend (these 4-day work weeks really help the weekends come around a bit faster, don't they!).

Are ready for an on-plan weekend? If you've had a good week on plan and have seen the scale move in the right direction, you are probably (hopefully!) planning on staying on track over the weekend, too (you are, aren't you??). But what if you've stayed on plan all week and the scale hasn't moved? What if it hasn't moved in a couple of weeks? Staying focused when we're not seeing the results we want is an entirely different matter, and I understand how hard it is when the scale is stuck. I know how easy it is to think that we "might as well enjoy" ourselves since we're not losing weight anyway. I've seen people rationalize that "maybe a weekend of eating off plan will jump-start my metabolism and get the scale moving again." You can probably already guess that I strongly caution against slipping into that mindset!

How DO we keep motivated when the scale refuses to budge? How do we keep our focus when progress is painfully slow? Our fast-paced, instant-gratification society sets us up to expect immediate results all the time, so many of us aren’t accustomed to waiting for much of anything. In my past life (before Take Shape for Life/ Medifast), I actually left one drive-through line at a fast food restaurant because I decided it was too long and went to another fast food restaurant where I could drive right up and order my food without waiting! Never mind the fact that it was fast food to begin with, or that I didn’t even have to park my car and get out to get it – I wanted the fast food FAST (are you beginning to understand how I got to 268 pounds?) That need for instant gratification kicked in over and over again with past weight loss plans because my desire to lose weight quickly dissipated when faced with the temptation of the day, and I chose the immediate thing over waiting to get what I really wanted – a thin and healthy body.


When I was on Take Shape for Life/Medifast's 5&1 plan, I finally realized that the weight didn't come on in a day and that it wouldn't come off in a day, either :-). I set up a spreadsheet to track my weight loss week by week, and what I saw was a lot of variation in how much I lost each week, but I also saw that those small weekly losses added up. I knew it was impossible to gain weight on less than 1,000 calories a day, and I knew that as long as I stayed on plan my body would eventually have to give up the pounds (and it tried hard sometimes to hang on to them). Like most of you, I had weeks where I only lost 1 pound, and I had several weeks when I didn't lose anything. Of course it was discouraging to see the scale stuck, but I'd look back at the losses I'd recorded over the previous weeks and realize that the scale would start moving again - it HAD to.


It's really the "reap what we sow" principle. If we are sowing good habits, they WILL eventually give us the return we're wanting - it is inevitable! We don't always see those results right away, but we can be confident that we WILL see them in time, if we're willing to give it time :-).


In Michigan, the weather is finally warm enough and the threat of frost is finally past, so farmers are out in their fields planting their summer crops. A lot of work and sweat goes into the planting, and then all they can do is wait and keep weeding and watering. Those seeds are germinating under ground, but it will be a while before they sprout, and even longer until it's time to harvest what is now being sown. If the farmer decides after a couple of days that nothing is happening because he's not seeing results, and if he stops watering and weeding, guess what? He won't end up with much of a crop. The harvest comes as he continues to do the hard work and as he patiently waits.


You are sowing your own seeds right now that will soon give you a harvest of good health. Your part is to do the hard work, whether you feel like it or not, whether you're seeing results at the moment or not. Even when you aren't seeing results, things ARE happening, both in your body and in your mind. You are leaning to choose the hard thing now, you are choosing to forgo the instant gratification, in order to gain something far better - what you REALLY want!