the snowball effect

Im feeling the same way as you today.. Losing weight is so hard.

Yep, all too familar with that rant. Been there, done that.

Go to bed tonite. Tomorrow morning wake up with an attitude adjustment, pull up the bootstraps, get some motivation out of the sock drawer and start the journey anew. One day at a time, one pound at a time. You CAN do it, we ALL can do it. We're all on the same journey.

Redacted.

"And for a few minutes, you think about your goals.
And you make new goals -- really optimistic goals.
And you get excited!
But then you think about what it would mean to achieve said goals.
Then you remind yourself of all the previous failed attempts.
And you tell yourself you can't do it. "

This was a big problem for me. And my answer may sound a bit philosophical.

Look at our world. We celebrate "transformation". We celebrate the woman who went from a size 22 to a size 2. We celebrate the person who won 36 million dollars, or the olympic gold. We as a culture tend to focus only the big victories and many of these victories rightfully merit celebration. BUT this makes even individuals feel that they are failures if they didn't do something spectacular. So we make big goals. We make grandiose plans. And then we think about it, even getting there seems so tough.

Here is what worked for me.

1. I made short term goals only. I find a lot of people dream of how life will be strutting in a bikini, but for me that was so far down the line, I knew it would get discouraging fast. I aimed for 15 pounds weight loss first. Or being one size smaller. That seemed more doable and realistic in the course of 3-4 months.
2. Celebrated small victories. So I am still 164 pounds, and thirty pounds short of my goal weight. But hey, when I started, if you had seen me do one girly pushup, you might have feared for my LIFE because I was wheezing and flailing through it. Now I can do 20 proper pushups, and I celebrated. I used to struggle with 5 pound weights, but now I curl with 15. It may not seem as much because I don't look like the "after" picture of a Brazil Buttlift transformation (yet) but these are tangible goals that improve all the time, and focussing on them gives me a more healthy way of accessing my progress.
3. Made small changes. Losing weight is hard. A lot of things that I had to do was so singularly unpleasant. The hour long cardio, the grunting and sweating like a pig while lifting weights, the paying attention to what I ate, and the terminally slow weight loss because I am in my late thirties and my metabolism isn't what it used to be. But, I focussed on small changes first. My first goal was- I am going to do 30 minutes of cardio every 2 days. Then it was, I am going to do 30 minutes of weight training thrice every week in addition to cardio. Then, I changed what I ate for breakfast- from skipping it, to having something healthy. Slowly over the course of 2 months, I changed my lifestyle in manageable bits. Now, not as glamorous as a woman who went all out, but I felt like this way I was setting myself up for success.

Finally, a word of encouragement. Losing weight is rather like quitting smoking. Many of us will have set backs. Many of us will relapse and gain all of it back. We will feel miserable. We will feel like failures. There were times when I would be going on a great cycle and then see someone with an effortlessly slim body and feel like hitting my head against the wall, while simultaneously eating something buttery and salty. But, I told myself, she probably doesn't have my numeric genius so it all works out. You have to find things about yourself that make you happy and proud of yourself now, so that you can rely on it when the going or the starting gets tough. That way weight loss just becomes an enhancer for the wonderful person you are, rather than the goal in itself. ...If that makes any sense.