You’ve had it. You’re SO over it.
After four months of hard work and effort making better food and lifestyle changes – all in the name of weight loss – it suddenly does not seem worth it anymore. Perhaps you’ve become a little blasé about it and old habits have started to creep back in, or perhaps ‘life happened’ and something else has taken a higher priority and needs addressing.
Whatever the reason was, you’ve become less consistent with your efforts. You might’ve even called it quits and come to a dead stop with the changes you had made, reverting back to the old behaviours that lead to weight gain.
Cue the guilty thoughts and feeling like a failure:
‘I just have no self-control’
‘I don’t have enough willpower’.
You are not alone, and what you’ve experienced is fairly normal.
Losing motivation and having relapses are to be expected when one goes about implementing change.
Yet not many people are told to prepare for this – after all, nobody wants to be told that they would likely ‘fail’ at some point. How could the diet industry possibly sell a product that way?
In fact, they would probably capitalise on your fragile post-failure state by selling you yet another product that promises to whip you back into shape.
And contrary to popular belief, willpower is not something that you (or a dietitian!) can magically unleash by mentally beating yourself up or getting a good ol’ ‘kick up the bum’. If anything, studies have actually suggested that doing so will have the opposite effect on willpower.
Instead of giving up at the first signs of ‘failure’, the trick to handling relapse is to recognise the signs that it is happening, catch it early and focus on small strategies to power you through this phase back into active change.
Here are some top tips on getting your motivation back again:
Rethink your goal
Previously you may have prioritised the actions required for the goal of ‘weight loss’ and were more than happy to make the sacrifices that were required. After all, everyone only has a limited amount of time and resources in a day. Lately, however, other things in life have clearly taken over in terms of priority which is why you struggle to ‘find’ motivation to do those actions again. This is a typical response to a weight loss goal, as weight loss goals tend to be all-consuming – that is, until they become a bit too hard and the wheels start to fall off the wagon. The pursuit of weight loss can drive our thoughts in a direction that takes the focus away from our health, as well as sap us of the energy to make those positive, life-long changes we are hoping to achieve. It can also beat down our self-esteem and lead to a ‘why bother’ mentality. So, instead, try to look at the underlying issue that could be helped with diet and lifestyle changes, rather than the weight itself. This could be one of the reasons you initially wanted to lose weight, for example to broadly improve your health or to deal with a particular condition such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arthritis or diabetes; or to feel more comfortable in your body or to feel better about yourself. All these things can be helped without a focus on weight, and in some cases changes to diet are THE thing that will help them. You can find more information on shifting from a weight to a health goal in this series of articles.
Reduce your expectations
Adjusting your expectations around ‘what should be done’ to ‘what can be done’ to suit your current motivation levels, available time, and ability may be the better strategy. If you are able to achieve even 5% of what you were doing originally, you’re still making a positive change. Often, we get caught up in all-or-nothing thinking, and this generally leads to abandoning changes that are helping to improve our health. Do not let perfection be the enemy of progress!
Act now and set goals for TODAY
Delaying or procrastinating is not going to make your woes go away. Don’t wait until next Monday. Don’t wait until all the biscuits are gone, or for the weather to ‘stop being so horrid’, or until ‘work gets less hectic’.
If you wait for all the stars to line up in your favour, you could end up waiting a long time. And as each wasted moment passes, the task you’ll have to get onto is only going to get more difficult.
Set yourself one, small, achievable goal that you can complete today. The more small goals you score, the more momentum you build. This momentum is what drives your motivation for continuing change. For example:
- I will stand up and walk briskly around the couch during the ad breaks whilst watching Gogglebox tonight.
- I will get my breakfast foods set up on the kitchen bench before I go to bed, ready to throw together in the morning.
- I will set a reminder on my phone to pick up a salad kit on my way home from work tomorrow.
- I will check in with my tummy while I’m eating my dinner tonight and decide when I’ve had enough to eat.
- I will have a glass of water and fill up a jug/water bottle when I finish reading this article.
Master your environment
Changing your food environment to suit your goals becomes an important strategy when willpower is low. This is because it takes a huge amount of willpower to stay on track in a food environment that is not conducive to your goals, making it particularly difficult when you haven’t got much to spare.
- Shop from a shopping list: If it’s not on the list, you’re not buying it. It’s a simple rule that helps you to avoid falling victim to the supermarket tactics that are designed to prey on your impulses. See that chocolate on half price ‘special’? If you truly want it, put that on the shopping list for next time. So what if you miss out on a little bit of savings? You know that these ‘specials’ roll around every month – it’s really not that special.
- Ensure healthy options are within easy reach:
- Fill a jug of water and leave it somewhere convenient on the kitchen bench;
- Place a fruit bowl somewhere visible so hungry hands can reach in easily; and
- Make whole food options such as wholegrain cereal, grainy crackers, nuts and seeds a pantry staple.
Plan and be organised
Failing to plan is planning to fail. You do not need to plan every single aspect of your day. However, coming up with a plan around one simple aspect of your goals means that you’ll be needing less “willpower” at the time – you’re just letting your more motivated self, take care of your less motivated self in the future.
For example, if your goal was to “pack my own lunches and bring them to work 3 times this week”:
- Which days will this be? Can you schedule this into your phone calendar?
- What meals will you prepare? Which day will it be assigned to?
- Create a shopping list – do you need to buy convenience options? Or ready-to-eat options? Will you be ‘topping-up’ a bought lunch with some healthier options?
- Can you set a reminder to organise lunches the night before so you’re not rushing in the morning?
You can certainly rely on meal plans from the internet in a pinch, if you absolutely have nothing left in the tank to plan your own meals. In the long-term, however, planning your own meals is the best option as you can then adjust to suit your food preferences, capacity and schedule.
Wondering about shifting from a weight loss goal to a health-focused one? Check out this article.
Want support achieving your goals? We are here to help! Book an appointment to get started today!
