Motivation?
LaurieElla
Posts: 17 Member
Help!!! I have been eating horribly lately and while I KNOW what these things do to my body, that it only causes me to GAIN weight and that it really does taste horrible .... Its not changing my choices. Does anyone have any words of wisdom, motivation or something that will knock some sense into me? LOL
Also, if anyone would like to add me as a friend that would be great, more motivation and accountability would be great!
Also, if anyone would like to add me as a friend that would be great, more motivation and accountability would be great!
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I find that reading articles about what that food is doing to your body helps motivate me a ton! Try paleodietlifestyle.com and marksdailyapple.com and surf around for the articles. Knowing that corn and peanuts very commonly grow a type of mold (gross!) that is hazardous to my health is pretty motivating to me! Knowing the fact that soy is destroying my already feeble thyroid is a great motivator, etc, etc. The more you know the easier it will be
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Buck up, Binky? Seriously, you just have to do it. Good luck! 0
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Buck up, Binky? Seriously, you just have to do it. Good luck!
THIS.0 -
Let me offer a cautionary tale:
I knew, 15 years ago, that eating crap food was terrible for me. I stopped eating it and lost a lot of weight. I felt great. Then I decided that I really, really loved bread and all that crap that was terrible for me. So I went back to making very poor food choices and gained all the weight back.
Three years ago I was diagnosed with t2 diabetes. I immediately changed my diet to strict paleo, thinking that would fix everything. Guess what. It didn't. I now take meds every day to control my bG, and I spent the last 2 months of my last pregnancy injecting myself with insulin every day. I do not do cheat days. I do not follow the 80/20 rule. I am 100% paleo, all the time, but the damage I did to my body is going to take a long, LONG time to repair. Like, years and years.
Don't do that to yourself. I KNEW what was better for me. I KNEW what the potential consequences were. But I didn't care. Or, more accurately, I thought that I could just change later and undo the years of unhealthy living. I was such a dumbass. Seriously, don't do what I did.0 -
Sorry, but motivation has to come from within. Been there, done that and have made the choice for myself. BUT... no one could motivate me to do it, I could do it. Somehow, you'll need to dig deep and find out what your real motivations are. Only then will you be able to motivate yourself to do what you need to do. (just like with smoking, alocoholics, drug addicts, etc. Only you can make the decision to help yourself.)0
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Lots of great advice already. The only thing I would add is just to take baby steps with it all. Success with one meal makes you feel more in control and builds strength and motivation. Whenever I slip and lose motivation I always get back to it with baby steps. For me that means:
- the very next meal will be healthy, i.e not waiting until a set date, thinking too hard about it etc, just start right here right now. Thinking too hard about it can be overwhelming
- the meal after that will healthy
- if I fail then I will just try and make the following meal healthy - no excuses to yourself to eat rubbish for the rest of the day/week with a promise to start again Monday etc. You fall off then you get right back up there straight away.
- Soon when you start to string little successes together you have a day of healthy eating, then before you know it you've done a week of healthy eating and success really is the best way to build motivation. You start eating well, then you start feeling great and that really is the best motivation!
So.....can you make your next meal a healthy one?0 -
Wow. What a great thread!
@ehmayo: Thank you so much for sharing that fantastic, cautionary, horror story. I will treasure it always <no sarcasm there>.
@primalkiwi: I think that you and I share several chunks of brain in common. I like to think of it as "making the next right choice". I choose to eat THIS next healthy meal, to do THIS next work-out (especially when I don't feel like it), to start on the food prep for THIS next meal (especially when carry-out would be so much easier), to get my butt to the store to get the fresh foods NOW I need to fill my fridge, and so on and so on.
All of those little next right choices add up to a healthy lifestyle, like coins in a piggy bank. Plus its much simpler to wrap my head around than: "How can I possible enjoy life for the next X years without Doritos and Taco Bell?".0 -
When making decisions, I try to think which decision the future me will appreciate more! I also have learned my triggers. I cannot eat sweets~ paleo or otherwise~ without craving junk the rest of the day. So if I choose to indulge, I do it at the end of the day and go to bed.
Another thing if my motivation is no where to be found, I will make a list of reasons I'm eating right/exercises verses reasons to be lazy. There are never many in the lazy column.0 -
My path has taken years, and is nowhere near complete! For years, I had family members trying to bribe me with all sorts of things to lose weight. Wasn't going to happen. I started with low carb and gradually transitioned to more primal than anything. Over time (and I mean a long time), I've started craving the good stuff more than the bad. I've lost about 20 pounds since initially starting low carb and have about 40-50 more to go. I know I'm in this for a long haul, so the time frame doesn't really matter to me as long as I keep the downward trend. When I eat right, I have tons of energy, feel great, and exercise long and hard. A few weeks ago I threw caution to the wind and decided to indulge at my favorite Mexican restaurant. I felt like a slug for 2 days after, bloated, miserable, no energy, no exercise - just blah. Needless to say, I'm over that place. I hope you can find that motivation from within you as positive things happen and just take it a day at a time!0
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I just know that whenever I slip, I know I will feel awful. And at this point I am so tired of feeling awful that slipping is no longer an attractive option. Yes I love cheese, but I REALLY don't like the way it makes me feel. I miss tomato sauce, but I don't miss being sick for three days after eating it. I find it really helps to focus on the result of eating the food when I have a craving that just seems to bad.0
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Sorry, but motivation has to come from within. Been there, done that and have made the choice for myself. BUT... no one could motivate me to do it, I could do it. Somehow, you'll need to dig deep and find out what your real motivations are. Only then will you be able to motivate yourself to do what you need to do. (just like with smoking, alocoholics, drug addicts, etc. Only you can make the decision to help yourself.)
Yep!0 -
Motivation: that's tough.
Sometimes it's the little things that motivate us more than the big things. 9+ years ago I was motivated by a big thing...diabetes. I lost a bunch of weight, got it under control and kept it under control for more than a year. Then life took some turns and I started slipping and sliding. Just couldn't get back into the groove. Gained it all back - weight and uncontrolled blood sugars. You would think that would be enough to motivate me again. Nope. .
Last May it was a little thing that motivated me (relatively little). I had to have oral surgery. I had to get my fasting blood glucose down to a "reasonable" level in less than 2 weeks or that abscessed tooth was not going to be coming out as scheduled. I hit the low carb diet hard. Got the BG down just enough. Had the surgery. Then I figured, heck, I'm over the worst part, the first week, I might as well keep going.
After that, every little success, every little NSV, every good doctor's report gave me motivation to keep going. I think I might have let the motivation dwindle if I hadn't been told about MFP. Because now, along with the accumulating successes and NSVs, I'll read about others' successes and it motivates me.
So, find 1 motive, big or small, to choose your next meal wisely. Find a small motive for cleaning the junk food out of your kitchen. (Maybe it's just time to Spring clean that cupboard or refrigerator.)
Set a goal of eating clean for 1 meal, then 1 day, then perhaps the next day and so on and so forth. Next thing you know, you'll look back and you've eaten clean for days on end.
Perhaps a good motive would be just to prove to yourself that you can.0 -
Motivation to me is all about loving myself. I'm doing this to be healthy, to be confident, and to feel powerful. All of that means that I'm doing this because I love myself enough to take charge of my health. Even if I cheat, even if I crave bad stuff sometimes, I will not give up and I'll just jump right back to the "Good Ways" in my next few meals, because I want to give myself that gift 0
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I watch U Tube videos on primal living. Especially Dr Lustig, The Bitter Truth, it scares me into compliance each time. Good luck.0
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Thanks you for this thread! Agreed that motivation comes from within, but this kick in the pants/ arm of support is EXACTLY what I needed to start this next week!0
