Managing Expectations

How do we manage expectations, especially when reality doesn't meet our expectations?  How do we avoid the danger of frustration and disappointment when things aren't going as we thought they would - and should - go?

I think we all start this program with high hopes that the weight will absolutely melt off because we want to get to our goal as quickly as possible.  We know that women lose, on average, 2-4 pounds per week and men lose 3-5 pounds per week, and we often expect to see a 4-5 pound loss every week.  When we're staying on plan and the scale is moving at a slower pace than we expected, it can be incredibly frustrating and discouraging.  We may see others on plan who are losing faster than we are and that only feeds our own frustration.   We may have set a goal of losing a certain amount of weight or reaching our goal by a specific date, and if that date comes and goes and we didn't quite hit the mark we set, discouragement sets in.  Rather than celebrate how far we HAVE come, we focus on the fact that we fell short of our goal.

One of the things I realized when I started on Take Shape for Life's 5&1 program was that I had absolutely no control over how fast my body relinquished the weight.  All I could control was whether or not I stayed on plan.  I made the decision to follow the program as long as it took, knowing that if I did that I would eventually reach my goal - and I did!  I will be honest and admit that those weeks when the scale only moved a pound, or when it didn't move at all, were frustrating - of course they were!  But I knew that I'd done all I could and I knew I had to trust the process and stay on plan regardless of what the scale said, knowing that eventually the scale would catch up.

On this weight loss journey, and in life, there are things we can control and things we can't.  Like the wonderful Serenity Prayer, we have to learn to change the things we can change, accept the things we can't, and ask the Lord for the wisdom to know the difference.  What we can control is whether or not we choose to follow the path and do all we can do, and we can choose our attitude.  Choose wisely :-)