6.02.2011

Excuses

To me, weight loss is a mind game.  When I am shoveling spoonful after spoonful of ice cream into my mouth, I tune out that little voice telling me, "This isn't helping you.  Please stop hurting yourself."  After that voice has been silenced, it's usually pretty easy to justify a reason why it is ok to eat myself into an ice cream-induced sugar coma.  I will tell myself, "Well, today will be a free day.  I'll start tomorrow and be super healthy from then on." 

I'm always trying to convince myself that waiting a few days to start a healthy lifestyle will not hurt anything.
  • "Today's Friday.  Monday will be a good day to start."
  • "I am going out of town tomorrow.  I'll start when I get back.  I don't want to be restrictive on vacation."
  • "Our annual family barbecue is coming up.  There is never anything healthy to eat there.  I'll just start when I get home."
  • "It's the 26th.  I should just start at the first of the month.  That way, I can see how much weight I can lose in a month."
Countless times I have sat down and made an extremely detailed weight loss plan, charting out the calories I'm going to consume, the exercises I'm going to do, and the amount of weight I am going to lose and then set the start date for somewhere in the future.  Usually I either blow right past that start date without a second thought about that immaculate spreadsheet I spent hours on days earlier.  Sometimes I will actually start the plan but fizzle after a couple of super-restrictive days.

Well, I don't need a crazy plan this time.  I have stopped and started this weight loss adventure enough times to know exactly what I need to do to lose weight.  The only thing standing between me and my goal of being a healthy, normal-sized person are excuses.

My advice to all you guys and gals who feel like you're on a sinking ship but aren't quite ready to jump into the water -- advice I'm going to follow myself -- is start RIGHT NOW.  I know there is always going to be something coming up that is going to be a weight loss obstacle.  But I can't just keep ducking under the hurdles.  I need to start jumping over them.
Posted by Lisa at 9:52 AM

2 comments:

  1. Chubby McGeeJune 2, 2011 at 12:20 PM

    BRILLIANT post! I feel like I've had this same discussion with myself so many times before, too.

    "Chubby, just start on Monday," and "Enh, you'll do better tomorrow...go ahead and finish that other set of cupcakes." Yea, yea, yea. Done it. A million times.

    It was brought to my attention that THAT thought was an issue when my mom decided to "quit" smoking. She's a cancer survivor and once she battled cancer and then battled her obesity, she went back to her teenage mentality and started smoking again and drinking heavily. This, of course, startled the crap of me. When she said that her New Year's Resolution was to quit smoking, I was stoked. Sadly, I woke up to her smoking in the morning...on New Year's Day. Her mentality was that "Monday" was officially the first day of the New Year...so she'd start THEN.

    That was when I realized how much I'd been kidding myself with my own mentality. I sounded stupid.

    START TODAY is the best way to go!

    ReplyDelete
  2. safireJune 2, 2011 at 1:54 PM

    Great post! Excuses was my forte and now I'm learning to cut the bs :)

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)