Over the course of the past decade I have had many false starts on my weight loss journey. Here, we are no stranger to the fact that weight loss is as much about psychology as it is about technique. All the CICO in the world won’t help you if you can’t stick to it.
After many false starts, I concluded that perhaps I was simply deficient in willpower and discipline. And my weight loss journey paused for a long time, until two psychological puzzle pieces fell into place.
Now, for the first time in my life, I demolished my obesity and am only 15 pounds away from a normal BMI.
Below are some of my reflections on the psychological understandings on willpower and responsibility that I had to come to before things finally clicked.
The first thing that I had to learn was realizing that willpower is not something you possess, reserved for the special chosen few. Willpower is something you do. Anyone can have willpower - all you have to do is make the decision to do what you know you have to do.
In essence, willpower is deciding to do something and following through - consequences be damned. Oh, it’s going to suck, but you are gonna do it. Willpower is disregarding the future in that moment of making the decision: focus on the now.
The second thing I had to realize was that no one is coming to save me from myself. Life sucks. And no matter how much you complain about that, no one is going to solve it for you. If you want to change it, you are the only person that can change it. The burden of fixing your life rests entirely on you.
Internalizing that willpower is painful, and that reaching my goals will hurt, gave me a sort of grim and gritty determination, giving me the strength to continue on my darkest days. Internalizing extreme responsibility gave me a deeper sense of purpose, let me virtually eliminate cheat days, and helped me with consistency.
These were the two psychological puzzle pieces that, when put together, gave me a truly deep sense of purpose and helped me begin my weight loss journey in earnest.
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