10 Fears That Sap Your Motivation To Lose Weight*
Why is it so hard to motivate yourself to lose weight? I’ve been thinking about the reasons why this can be so hard after going through my own times of strong motivation where nothing could veer me from my path (even during those times of slow weight loss after you’ve been at it for a few months), as well as times of low motivation.
So why is it so darned hard to get yourself motivated to lose weight? It’s not like we’re talking about doing a short-term diet to lose weight but instead want to take action to make some healthy lifestyle changes. This simply means that you live daily life in a healthy manner, which is likely different from how you live now if you are overweight.
Since we aren’t dieting, we’re in it for the long haul. You don’t have to make a lot of changes up front if you don’t want to, but could instead make gradual lifestyle changes, incorporating a new change each week or each month. If you don’t exercise currently, you could start out by walking every day for 15 minutes. Or if you drink soda all day, a lifestyle change would be to cut back to one a day replacing the rest with water until you have replaced all sodas with water every day.
Therefore, if we aren’t making huge lifestyle changes up front (unless that’s what you want to do and you can stick with it), why is it so hard to find that motivation to get moving and change?
I think the main reason is fear. Fear, fear, fear. Fear of what you ask? How can you be afraid of losing weight when that’s all you ever think about and say that you want? Well, I think that there are many fears that can get in the way of your motivation to lose weight, fears that you might not even realize are there.
Here’s a list of 10 fears that could be holding you back from losing weight:
• Fear of Change:
Right now if you are overweight you are living an unhealthy lifestyle. If you are going to lose weight and keep it off, this will take changing how you currently live. Many people are afraid of change, afraid of the unknown. The thing is though that change is always happening, we can’t stop it, and it’s all around us. Change is a part of life. Also, if you don’t change your lifestyle to a healthy one, your body will change anyway; unfortunately, these changes will most likely be negative and could limit your life greatly.
Fear of change holds many people back from growing and evolving in their lives. If a fear of change is keeping you stuck and unmotivated to lose weight, here’s a solution: Get out a piece of paper and list all of the changes that you see yourself making to your lifestyle followed by the positive gains those changes will bring you. Here’s a couple of examples:
• Changing to whole foods instead of processed – more energy, clearer skin, weight loss.
• Changing your portion sizes – weight loss, taking control of your eating habits.
• Changing clothing sizes – trying out new clothing styles, looking better in what you
wear.
• Changing how you move and exercise – having greater mobility and flexibility.
• Changing your schedule to accommodate cooking and exercise – feeling good about making yourself a priority.
List as many gains as you can think of and when you think you’re done, write one more. Change makes life exciting and if you want to lose weight, that unhealthy lifestyle that you’re currently leading will need to change! When you focus on all of the gains that you will receive by making healthy lifestyle changes, you will really ramp up your weight loss motivation!
• Fear of Not Being Able to Follow Through
If you don’t have experience in what you’re about to undertake you might fear if you’re going to be able to handle it. If you’ve never had a regular exercise schedule you might fear how that is going to fit into your busy, daily schedule.
If you’ve never eaten a diet consisting of healthy, whole foods you might fear how you’re going to manage that. How will you shop for these foods? How will you cook them? Where will you find the time?
If you fear that you won’t be able to follow through with the actions needed to reach your weight loss goals, break it down into baby steps. After you write down your long term goals break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals. Focus on what you need to do to prepare yourself for the week ahead (plan out all of your meals and portions), do what you need to do (cook up some healthy, whole food recipes), and then just focus on each day, one at a time. If you just stick to your meal plans each day the weight will take care of itself, providing you are following a healthy eating plan.
You can go through the same process and take baby steps with your exercise goals. After all, it’s been all of those days of, “I’ll start eating better and exercising tomorrow” that have added up and gotten you where you are today, so let’s make a change now!
• Fear of The Good Life, a.k.a. Fear of Success
Yes, there is such a thing as fear of having a better life. If you’ve been living a particularly unhealthy lifestyle for years and years, you at least know what to expect. You know how people react to you, and even if you aren’t happy with that or how you feel, you know (or think you know) what each day will bring. What if you lost weight, had a lot of energy, and began to feel better about yourself? How would you act, how would other people act towards you? Will you get a lot of attention? Even if it’s positive attention, what will you say? If you’re not use to compliments, what if someone compliments you?
If you fear success, you’ll want to get to the bottom of why you don’t feel you deserve to be thin, fit, and healthy. Affirmations and mirror work can help you increase your belief that you do deserve to succeed in your goals of weight loss and fitness, and you could start with the simple affirmation, “I deserve all good”. When you believe that you do deserve optimum health and fitness, the lid on your motivation will be lifted and you will be able to surge ahead and go for your goals.
• Fear of Failure
Whenever you undertake something new it’s common to be afraid that you might fail. Maybe you’ve tried to lose weight before but never learned how to eat healthy and exercise productively, but instead were trying crash diets that never lasted, and therefore failed. Maybe you’re afraid that you won’t be able to keep it up, that you’ll change for a while but end up going back to how you used to be. You could be afraid to try for the first time, or afraid to try again.
Here’s a question you can ask yourself if you’re afraid to fail: what does it mean to fail at weight loss? Does it mean that you don’t lose weight every week, or that you give up on yourself? I think that the only way you can truly fail is if you give up and say, “to heck with it, I’m going to eat anything I want, who cares about exercise, and I’m not even going to weigh myself ever again. I’ll just buy bigger and bigger clothes!”
If you don’t give up on yourself you cannot fail. You might need to revise your game plan if you’re not getting good results and you might even backslide sometimes, but as long as you don’t throw in the towel, you cannot fail. So ask yourself this: “What happens if I fail?” Here’s the answer: You get right back up, re-commit yourself, evaluate what is working for you and what isn’t, and forge ahead. Just don’t ever quit on yourself!
• Fear of Giving Up your Best Friend
If using food is your lifestyle and you’ve made it your best friend, lover, and your confidant, then you’re very likely afraid to give that up. The fear could be intensified if you are also addicted to sugar, salt, fat, fried foods, certain textures of foods, or even dairy. You eat these foods because they make your feel better, so the thought of giving up your best friend can be scary. How will you feel? Won’t you feel just awful if you can’t get your high, if you can’t turn to food for comfort? You might even fear that your life will be boring if food is where you’ve been getting your excitement, love, happiness, or joy.
I believe that this fear in one form or another is at the core of many overeating issues. What I propose is replacing the food with productive tools to replace the behavior of using food for fun, entertainment, emotions, and as a crutch. Journaling is the best tool I can suggest: journaling your emotions, those same emotions that you would ignore before and eat over instead. Another behavior change is to replace food with other activities; sounds simple but it takes action.
Now I don’t mean that you shouldn’t eat when you’re hungry, but instead of reaching for the cookie because you’re upset, go for a walk or call a friend. Professional therapy can also be a huge benefit in helping your through sort through these issues.
Moving away from abusing food needs to become a part of your life if you want to not only lose weight, but also keep it off. I know that this is not an easy task; it’s something that I’ve struggled with for most of my life, too. Also, you cannot expect that you will heal your issues with food overnight, but given time, you can let that “best friend” go and see food as what it really is: fuel for the body.
• Fear of Being Different
Part of your unhealthy lifestyle might involve regular social activities that are focused around eating. Maybe you have a group of friends who meet every Friday at Chili’s, or maybe you get together every Sunday for a family barbecue or a down-home cooked meal. If your lifestyle includes many other people who are also living unhealthy lifestyles, you might fear being singled out for the changes that you’re making. How will you fit in if the social focus has always been on food? How will you be able to resist those fried creations offered at each gathering and be different, resisting those sugary sweet desserts, all of that food that saps your energy and has helped you become overweight?
If you’re afraid of being different from your family and friends, I hope that a heart to heart talk with them will take care of that fear. Hopefully they will be supportive of you and your goals, and you might even find some new lifestyle and weight loss buddies, which would be the best! However, if any of your friends try to discourage you from making healthy changes, you just might need to keep them at arm’s length. This is more difficult when it comes to your family, but if you are strong and committed in your goals of health and fitness, it won’t affect you as much as you may think. Also, you might find that others really don’t notice what you’re doing (i.e.: eating healthier) as much as you think they would.
Therefore, perhaps this isn’t so much about a fear of being different, but more about being strong in your own resolve and doing what is best for your own health and fitness. No one else can take care of you like you can!
• Fear of Losing Friends
This fear ties into the previous fear of being different. What if your current friends don’t want to get together to go for a walk instead of eat? What if they put you down for the positive changes you are making because they are afraid to make their own changes? Will they drop you because you’re not like them anymore? If you change your lifestyle and get healthy and fit, does it mean that you will have to find some new friends? That could be scary. So many fears can come up around this area; it’s worth taking a look at.
This fear can be closely related to the fear of being different, because if by being different you are living a different and healthier lifestyle than your current friends, you might fear that you won’t have anything in common anymore and that you will lose them. Especially if the main event of your social gatherings is centered on food, you could expect a shift in the dynamic of your friendships.
One way of looking at this fear is to firm up your life’s priorities so that you can move past the fear and allow yourself to feel that motivation (and take action!) to lose weight and get fit. In my opinion, your health should be your top priority because if you’re not well, you’re not able to be there for anyone else; not for your friends, family, co-workers, not anyone. Putting your health first isn’t being selfish, it’s a way of loving yourself. If your friends don’t support you in this and act threatened by the changes you are making, it might be that you will need to seek out new social groups.
On the other hand, it just may be that this fear is more of an excuse that you’re using to keep from getting on the healthy track and once you start making those changes (and even suggest that you meet up with friends for a walk or any activity that isn’t food focused), you could find that your friends fully support you and even get on a healthier track themselves. You don’t know though, until you take charge of your own health and set your goals and priorities in your life.
• Fear of Eating Food you Don’t Like
If you have a diet mentality you just might think that you have to struggle to lose weight, which includes eating strange foods that you don’t like. There are many crash diets out there that promise that, “if you only eat x and y, you will lose weight”. Maybe you’ve done this before, even though you couldn’t stand x and y. Now you’re trying to motivate yourself to change but you’re afraid that your life will be horrible because the only way to lose weight is to eat foods that taste bad. If this were true, it would be a scary proposition for anyone!
This fear is very easy to overcome; it just takes willingness to open your mind to change and try some new things. If you fear that the only way you can lose weight and get healthy and fit is by eating a bunch of foods that taste awful, I can understand why you would not be motivated to lose weight! Also, even though you’re probably not eating the healthiest of foods in your daily diet currently, I bet you like their taste.
What you can do is get out a piece of paper and list all of the whole foods that you do enjoy. If it’s been a long time since you’ve eaten anything that isn’t boxed, frozen, or pre-made, this could take a while, but maybe not. It just depends on what you eat right now. You might come up with a short list (i.e.: carrots, whole grain rice, chicken breast, red peppers), or if you’re lucky, it’s very extensive.
If your list isn’t very long, this is where being open trying new things comes into play. If you want to get off the processed foods and on to a healthy diet of whole foods, many of which you cook up at home into healthy meals, you may end up trying foods you never have before, or that you haven’t eaten for a long time. I think it’s important to give new foods a try (the last one I tried was a star fruit – I didn’t like it), but even more important is that if you don’t like it, don’t include it in your meals.
The quickest way to turn yourself off from eating healthy is by forcing yourself to eat foods you don’t like because someone told you that they would help you lose weight. Be open to trying new foods, include lots of whole foods that you do like, and let the ones go that you don’t.
One thing to remember on this: the longer you are eating clean and off of the preservatives, additives, refined sugars, unhealthy fats, and excess sodium, the more your tastes will change. You’d be surprised how good plain steamed broccoli and cauliflower tastes when you’re eating clean, but if you’re eating a lot of junk foods, the plain steamed veggies taste pretty bland. That’s been my experience, but I’ve also heard this many times before from others.
• Fear of Always Being Hungry
Even with the wealth of information available that tells you that you must eat to lose weight (not eating slows your metabolism and causes your body to store the little you do eat), many people have been misinformed and think that to lose weight you must stop eating. That’s a scary prospect, thinking that you’ll be uncomfortable and suffer hunger pangs all day. Anyone who has this fear wouldn’t have much motivation to change.
Another common misconception is that you must eat very little (and starve!) to lose weight. This is so untrue, and this unhealthy dieting (this really is dieting) is a good way to mess up your metabolism and grind it to a halt. Consequently, after you stop eating (or not eating, LOL!) this way and you return to your old habits of overeating, the weight can pile back on quicker than you can blink. It’s because the fire of your metabolism is out and it’s not burning the food for fuel that you’re now putting into your body in abundance.
Now, it is true that there is a big difference between being stuffed, satisfying your hunger, being hungry, and feeling like you’re starving. If you normally eat when you aren’t hungry and overeat beyond the point of being full, when you begin to limit your portions and eat whole foods, you’re probably going to feel hungry when it’s time for your next meal or snack. If you can’t remember the last time you felt hungry, you might think you’re “starving”. If you don’t eat all day (for over 8 hours for example) then yes, you probably are “starving”, but if it’s been 2 hours and you’re eating sensible portions, you’re most likely feeling hungry.
You do not need to be constantly hungry in order to lose weight. You actually need to eat to lose weight, and it’s also important to drink plenty of water (at least 100 oz. a day). Thirst is often confused with hunger but water is also vital to maintaining good health.
• Fear of Cost
It’s an unfortunate fact that the non-nutritious, fat and sugar-filled, fried, tasty convenience foods often cost less than nutritious, healthy, whole foods. Not always (I find that I spend more on food when I’m eating unhealthy), but this could be a fear of yours. It’s a subject that I’ve come across more than once, but it does need some detailed study and comparison of facts (i.e.: Little Debbie’s are cheap, but Stouffer’s, Lean Cuisine, and other pre-packaged unhealthy fare is not). Either way, money is a touchy subject with many people, and quite often is a subject filled to the gills with fear. Add your money fears to the thought that you’ll spend more on healthy fare, and you’ve got another fear that can squash your motivation to lose weight.
Here’s an easy way to overcome this fear if it’s holding you back from getting off those processed and junk foods and onto a healthy diet of whole foods: keep a daily diary of all of the money you spend on every food item you buy. Do this for one month. Include the coffees, Cokes, drive-throughs, groceries, snacks, everything. Now the next part you’ll need to take on faith, but if you can push through this fear and make the leap to clean eating, keep the same daily diary of the money you spend on food. Right away you’ll see the drop-off of the coffee (unless you like to buy black coffees without the foam, sugar, caramel and chocolate syrups, etc.), the fast food, and snacks. Do this for a month and see what you come up with.
My experience has been that when I first changed to clean eating, I spent some money up front. On what? Spices. Since I dumped the salt and sugar, I learned to cook with spices and herbs, but they aren’t cheap. The thing is, once I had my supply, I didn’t buy them again for at least another 3-6 months at the earliest. Besides the spices though, I found that I was spending much less on whole foods. A large part of the reason is because of not eating as much food, and also because I shop at Costco for many of my food items.
One other part of my experience is that I don’t buy everything organic. I know that this is the preferred way to go but this is the truth of the matter for me currently. If you do, then you will be spending a little more on organic whole foods, but you know what? How much less are you spending on all of those medications that could be prescribed for all of the medical ailments that result from obesity and inactivity? How often do you get sick when you’re eating clean compared to when you’re filling up on the gunk in processed foods?
While there can be some truth to the cost difference between eating healthy and eating junk foods, you could ask yourself if you’re just using this as an excuse to stay where you’re at. If you are, that’s OK because you’re being truthful with yourself and now cost is no longer an excuse, but if you’re not using cost as an excuse to change and get fit, then look at how much you’re saving in your quality of life and life experience by giving your body the optimum, premium fuel to run on.
There are really a myriad of fears that could be running around in your head, holding you back from losing weight and getting healthy and fit. Your job is to identify them and learn whether or not they are rational or irrational fears. Just like with any process of self-improvement, you are the one who has the answers to this since no one knows what you think and feel better than you do.
This article is meant to be an exploration of the fears that could be tamping down your motivation to move forward, change your lifestyle, and lose weight. It’s meant to get you thinking about where you’re at if you’re struggling with your weight loss motivation today.
*http://www.thefitshack.com/2007/12/12/10-fears-that-can-sap-your-motivation-to-lose-weight/
PHOTO:vancouverpersonaltraining.net
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