Motivation is a fleeting thing. It seems to come and go as it pleases. Once motivation begins to wain so often do the healthy habits we put in place to lose weight. For many of us, this is a problem as we begin to put on weight and feel like we have failed.
So what should you do?
Here are five steps to take when you lose your weight loss motivation:
Remind yourself this is normal
It’s really easy to look at other people on social media on health and fitness journeys and believe that they are machines that never waiver in their motivation. But that’s simply not true. Social media is often a highlight reel of people’s lives. Everyone on this Earth has struggled with feeling unmotivated. It’s really beneficial to acknowledge to yourself that this is totally normal. It’s likely not the first time you’ve felt unmotivated and it won’t be the last.
Acknowledging that this is normal is really important. When you believe you are the only one who feels unmotivated, it creates a feeling of shame. Often times when you feel shame, you hide. You start hiding from your goals and ignore the reasons why you are doing this. You start making excuses how just skipping a workout this one time won’t matter or you deserve to eat this chocolate cake. Before you know it, you are feeling shame for “falling off the wagon” on top of the original shame of not feeling like working out and now you’re in a shame spiral.
Shame has never been a good motivator. It’s important to exit that shame spiral by acknowledging that this is a normal part of all health journeys. This is something to be expected. It may not feel great and you might not love it, but it’s also something that won’t last forever.
Acknowledge that motivation isn’t a requirement
The second step to getting your motivation back is to acknowledge that it’s not required to do the things that result in weight loss. Yep, I said it. Motivation is not required to work out, eat a vegetable or stop eating at enough. Don’t believe me? Think about all the things you do when you simply don’t feel like it. Paying any bills at all would probably qualify. Going to meaningless meetings at work. Taking your car in for emissions testing. Flossing your teeth. You get the point.
Motivation is a great thing to have but at the end of the day, you don’t have to feel motivated to take action. What is far better than feeling motivated is feeling committed. Commitment to your health goals is much like your commitment in marriage. It is for better or worse, through thick and thin, and until death do you part. To strengthen your commitment, remind yourself of the consequences of not taking action, which is the next step to getting your weight loss motivation back.
Consider the consequences
Every action has a consequence, whether good or bad. When you lose your weight loss motivation, your ability to consider the consequences seems to go out the window too. You justify skipping the workout without considering the new sedentary habit you are creating. You eat the chocolate cake without acknowledging that this choice means you won’t lose weight this week.
Considering the consequences is not telling yourself that you’ll never lose weight because your undisciplined and a failure for skipping a workout or eating the cake. It’s just a reminder to yourself that your actions have an effect on the results you see on your journey. It is a moment of loving responsibility, not condemnation. Taking the moment to consider what you want right now in this unmotivated moment versus what you want most (meeting your weight loss goal) can be enough to motivate you to make the choice that brings long term success.
Count your wins
After acknowledging that feeling unmotivated is normal, reminding yourself that motivation is not required to take action and you consider the consequences, it’s time to start counting your wins. Everyone enjoys winning. When you are winning, you want to continue to play the game. When you are losing, you want to pack up your bat and ball and go home. One great way to get your motivation back is to count your wins. No matter big or small, it all counts! Start listing all the things actions you’ve taken on your weight loss journey, the non-scale victories as well as scale victories and you’re on your way to feeling more motivated in no time.
Take action
As discussed before, you don’t have to feel motivated to take action. So just get started. You don’t have to commit to never missing a workout but what about just doing five minutes right now? You don’t have to write an entire food plan, but what about just filling in what you’ll eat for breakfast. Don’t want to journal? Just write down how you feel today in a couple sentences.
Something is always better than nothing and you’ll probably find that when you get the ball rolling, it is easier to convince yourself to just go ahead and finish what you started. In fact, most of us don’t want to take action because we think it will be difficult or require a lot of work. But the reality is once you start doing it, you realize it wasn’t that big of a deal to begin with and will often find it easier to commit to completing the task.
And of course, when you take the action, celebrate it. Cue the confetti and tell yourself how amazing you are for doing it when you didn’t feel like it. You put what you want most over what you wanted right now and that is a huge accomplishment!
Your Coach,
Andrea