Choosing to Believe

"If you were to take the most talented athlete in the world and put him or her in a room of liars and verbal abusers for two hours a day, you'd see the athlete's performance sharply decline.  The level of talent remains the same, the training continues, but the ability to win vanishes.  Why?  Because no one can listen to constant discouragement and be encouraged.  No one can have confidence undermined and still be confident.  No one can doubt his or her ability and still use it effectively.  What we believe matters a lot."

This quote has wide application for many areas of our lives, including this weight loss journey.  As I've shared before, the food part of this program is simple - it's the head and heart part that's the challenge.  What we believe about our ability to be successful in losing weight matters.  The kind of feedback and support - or lack of support - from others also matters.

We have to choose who and what we're going to listen to because there will always - ALWAYS - be thoughts and words that discourage.  Our struggles in the past can cause us to doubt our ability to be successful now or in the future.  For some of us, there are people in our lives who are natural-born naysayers and who seem to think it is their calling to say a discouraging word at every opportunity.  If we believe the negative thoughts we have and listen to the negative comments of others, this journey is going to be even more of a challenge.

When I was on 5&1, I had a lot of negative thoughts that ran through my head that caused me to doubt this program would work.  All of my past failure seemed to have a megaphone that shouted "give up, it will never work."  No one could have been more skeptical than I when I started on this program.  Thankfully I didn't have any nay-sayers in my life - my husband was supportive from the very beginning - but I believed a lot of lies about myself and my ability to change. 

My belief about what I could and couldn't do began to change because of two things.  First of all, while I "believed" I couldn't stay on plan for a month or a year, I knew that I could stay on plan for a day, so I took it one day (and sometimes one meal) at a time.  As each day on plan was added to the one before, the days turned into a week, then into a month, and what I believed about what I could and couldn't do began to change.  I realized that I had been believing a lie and I had allowed that lie to keep me stuck in a very unhealthy pattern.

Secondly, I surrounded myself with encouraging people.  The daily support and encouragement I received from others who believed I could do this was amazing!  I also drew a lot of inspiration and encouragement from reading about people who had reached their goal and I spent a lot of time looking at their success photos and reading their stories.  Realizing that others were successfully losing weight helped me believe that I could be successful, too.

Right now you may not believe you can be successful, but do you believe you can stay on plan for a day?  Do you believe that you can make your next meal a Medifast meal?  Start there, and by taking one tiny step at a time, you will not only change what you believe about your ability to lose weight on this program, but you will also change your life.

If you have nay-sayers in your life, find a way to mute their negativity.  You may or may not be able to avoid them, but by surrounding yourself with others who will encourage you, you can begin to get the support you need to continue moving forward.  You have the right to have the support you need!

The choices we make today go far beyond what we're going to put in our mouths.  We also have to choose what we allow to resonate in our hearts and minds, and we have to choose what we're going to believe.  Choose wisely :-)