That quote is posted in one of the halls I walk through when I do laps of my work campus. I'm not usually moved by cheesy motivational-poster-style quotes, but I've thought about this one a lot. It makes me wonder about what I'm doing differently this time -- why I'm having better results and more lasting dedication than I've ever had, and why I feel cautiously optimistic that this approach might really last. It's reassuring to count the ways:
No restrictions, no guilt: I can eat anything, but CICO guides me towards eating healthy. Counting calories is the only way for me to reliably use portion control, and I veer towards healthier choices because those are the foods that make me feel fuller longer. I don't feel like I'm depriving myself. If I want to really indulge, I can budget for it, with no regrets or guilt after the fact.
Predictable, reproducible results: Weight loss has always seemed a bit mystical. I'd eat healthy for a while and gain weight, then give up and binge on crap food and lose weight. A successful approach would stop working for no apparent reason. It felt like something was going on behind the scenes that I couldn't get a grip on. This is probably why there are so many different weight loss scams, because if you don't learn the physics of weight loss, you're likely to try (and believe in) just about anything out of desperation. With CICO, I know that if I meet my calories for the week, even if the scale doesn't move exactly 2lbs on weigh-in day, it'll catch up. I can count on it. Science! That reliability makes it so much easier to stick to.
Out with motivation, in with discipline (and/or magical thinking): When I successfully went vegetarian 17 years ago, I didn't depend on motivation. I just told myself I could no longer eat animals, period, cold turkey, no more cold turkey. In my head it was a physical impossibility. That's the same way I'm approaching my calorie limits. I don't need to rely on fleeting motivation because I've banished any consideration of eating over the limit, because it's magically impossible. This removes any wiggle room or decision making on my part. In a weird way it hardly even requires discipline, because I've made this practice totally non-optional.
Fewer goals = less opportunity for failure: I definitely have goals on this journey, and they're very important to me, but I resist setting new goals that could potentially harm my progress. For example, sometimes my fiancee wants to set a goal for how many days in a week we'll go to the gym. I understand she's just trying to motivate herself and plan her life and I'm being a total drag by rejecting that, but I also know how life gets in the way, and how I can feel negative towards obligations, and how my brain fixates on failure. I don't want to set goals that I don't have control over or that I think I might not meet, and I don't want to make the goal activity a punishment that I have to force myself to do. If I agree to a 3x/week goal for the gym, and then I get sick and can't go for a couple weeks, that pinch of failure is going to nag at me. Even if I'm not prevented from going, the obligation will cause me anxiety and make going to the gym feel like a shitty thing.
I have a tendency to over-goal, like a conditioned rodent pressing a lever to receive the treat of a motivational "win". But eventually I always lose some, and the effect is a net negative. Motivation suffers death by a thousand cuts. I've learned that it's better if I just do the best I can every day and feel good about whatever I get done, even if that means achieving less due to not stretching myself. Not sure if this is a healthy mindset, but it's working for me.
Never quit quitting: This is a good follow-on to the "fewer goals" thing, because to stick to CICO, the only thing I have to do is not do something, and keep not doing it. An external force could prevent me from going to the gym, but realistically, there's no external force that could make me overeat. I have control. And while I'm only 5 months in, I haven't quit yet, nor have I even entertained the idea of giving up, so that's new.
What things are you doing on your weight loss journey this time that you've never done before?
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