Are you feeling stuck in your diet or weight-loss efforts? When motivation leaves, it’s easy to get stuck and lose hope of things ever being different.
Perhaps you keep promising you’ll change, but you never follow through. Maybe you set goals, but can’t seem to ever get started on them.
When you’re stuck, everything comes to a stand-still. You may even wish for a crisis of some kind, because you’re convinced it’s the only thing that will get you going.
Instead of working on your roadblocks, you blame others for why you don’t take action. Yet, if someone offers you advice, you get defensive and respond, “You don’t know what it’s like for me.”
Stuck is depressing
Everyone gets stuck now and then, especially in areas such as weight loss or regular exercise. But you can also get into a rut with your job, with a relationship, or even with keeping up your home. As you become discouraged or depressed because nothing changes, the rut just gets deeper.
Eventually you can’t see any alternatives to your miserable life. You start believing you have no options and that nothing can overcome your current situation. Instead of taking risks or trying new things, you just stay the way you are.
People who become stuck tend to stay that way for a long time. By holding on to their negative attitudes and beliefs, they continue to reinforce their lack of motivation. Before you can get out of the trap of being stuck, you may have to address the excuses that are keeping you there.
Denial
When you’re in denial, you just ignore the whole picture. “My weight isn’t really so bad. There are other people worse off than I am. Besides, I’m in pretty good health for an overweight person.”
As you explain why you aren’t taking action, you convince yourself that being stuck isn’t your fault. Denial gives you a legitimate reason to avoid looking at your needs and admitting the truth about your life. Instead, you decide something else must be the reason you can’t change.
So you blame work, kids, an insensitive husband, a demanding boss, your back problem, even the weather for keeping you stuck.
Denial lets you pull the shade over your eyes and not even try to work on motivation or other changes in your life. You become so convinced you can’t change that when someone suggests a solution, you quickly explain why it won’t work.
• You just don’t understand my situation
• I tried that and it didn’t work.
• Yes, but…(this becomes your standard response to every suggestion)
Facing the truth
If you’ve been living in denial, look closely at the truth in your life. If you were totally honest about how you feel or what you think about your health, would you approach your excuses differently?
Think about your reasons for not making changes, then decide if they are correct or if you’ve just convinced yourself you can’t do anything about your issues.
Are you too comfortable?
Perhaps you’ve become too comfortable with things as they are and don’t see any reason to live differently. You like being able to eat whatever you want, skip your exercise routine, and use food to cope with your stress.
Because you don’t have to follow any rules or standards, you can enjoy the freedom of not taking responsibility for your health.
When you feel “too comfortable,” you don’t see any reason to change. You might complain about your miserable situation, but it never bothers you enough to do something about it.
But are you really comfortable? Do you actually enjoy feeling so tired or squeezing into pants that don’t fit?
Maybe underneath all your excuses, you’re simply afraid. What if you aren’t strong enough to stay on a diet plan until you reach your goal? What if you fail again, repeating the embarrassing weight gain you’ve experienced in the past?
Worst of all, what if you aren’t happy once you lose the weight. Rather than deal with your fears and insecurities, it’s easier to ignore the them and act like you don’t care.
Hitting bottom
Maybe you’re convinced you have to “hit bottom” before you can change. When do you suppose that will happen? And how will you know when you hit it? In truth, hitting bottom is related to how you define it.
Instead of waiting for a disaster, you can create your own version of the bottom–right at this very moment. Decide you’ve had enough and that you don’t want your situation to continue a minute longer.
Then take any action, even a small one, that indicates you’re doing something about it. Once you make a few changes, use them to build additional motivation and help you climb out of the hole you’ve defined as the “bottom.”
Time for a decision
For over ten years, Joan had been the office manager for a large corporation. She had a great income and solid job security, but the politics and stress in her department were getting to her.
For months, she complained about how unhappy she was at work, yet she couldn’t bring herself to change jobs.
One day, as she described how trapped she felt, her weight-loss counselor gave her a piece of paper with the following words on it:
How long do I want to live like this?
She was told to respond to the question by the end of the next week. Her answer had to be specific, such as deciding to keep things the same for another six months or perhaps a year.
Joan took the paper home and taped it to her refrigerator. That evening, she kept reading it and thinking about different time frames.
Suddenly it hit her! She didn’t want to stay in her current situation at all, not even one more day. The next day, Joan resigned from her job.
She told her counselor, “When I realized I didn’t want to live that way any more, it became the catalyst to changing my life. I just wish I had done it two years before.”
Just the beginning
Once she took the first step, Joan found other changes came more easily. Over the next six months, she started a consulting business, lost 50 pounds, and applied for the Peace Corps. She also became an avid exerciser, riding her bike ten miles each way to her office and back.
At age 51, two years after leaving her “awful” job, Joan received her first assignment with the Peace Corps and began traveling the world. She was absolutely not stuck any more!
Now it’s your turn
If you are tired not making progress with your weight or other areas, use Joan’s question to jumpstart a new segment of your life.
First, define your current situation, being very specific about the areas where you feel stuck. Then ask yourself the big question: How long do I want to live like this?
Think carefully about this, then be very specific in your answer. Do you want to keep things like they are for another few days or a few years?
No answer?
Realize that NOT responding to the question is actually answering it. What you’re saying is that you don’t want to change. Instead, you want to live “like this” indefinitely.
If that’s not true, sit with the question until you come up with an answer. Make a clear decision that you are ready to change now. Then set up an action plan for making it happen.