How Do We Sabotage Ourselves?. 2
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Introduction
We all set up important goals in our lives at least if we want something we think it’s worth the effort. What we unfortunately do at the same time is sabotage those goals, deliberately or by accident, consciously or subconsciously, which manifests as us denying ourselves.
With weight loss, this phenomenon occurs more often than not. Be it out of the lack of will, biased opinion, an inability to be objective about one self, or some other reasons.
Each step of the way, from the beginning to reaching your goal is equally important, and must be carried out with discipline, patience, persistency, and focus.
But, why do we often fail with weight loss? Is it because food is involved? Is it because we are too passionate about eating, or we are just too weak to control our appetites? Do we even pick the right diet for us?
If you do lose weight, but you gain it back later…would you still consider you reached your goal? Or is your goal a permanent weight loss?
These questions are not overly simplified, for indeed we do make mistakes at the simplest stages.
How Do We Sabotage Ourselves?
Losing weight can fail even before it begins. This is the truth with every goal we strive for. While everyone realizes this, in this discussion we should attempt to divide the different stages of goals and see just how people sabotage each of them, as well as the general behavior during progress.
Goals
Goals are a very important part of our lives, and this has been the main focus of many motivational speeches and seminars in the past few decades. While everybody emphasizes the importance of goals, rarely do we realize the true nature and purpose of goals.
Goals are generally considered good for motivating people to act, to achieve something, to surpass one self, and to generally have a better sense of purpose in life. However, often, not enough effort is put in to the process of deciding what the goals are.
You would certainly agree that if you set up goals you are not really interested in, it will be that much harder if not impossible to achieve them. But, people do this often. They spend their time and effort on things they are not really and truly interested in, or as the old saying goes – their heart is not in it.
Every goal has stages, even if we do not think about those in a specific manner, which include:
- Conception
- Recognition
- The Set up
- Progression towards
- Behavior during the process of achieving
Conception is probably the most important part of the whole process, because as mentioned before it is of crucial importance that we choose only those goals truly worth achieving, from our own perspective. By worth, we mean that the goal is something really beneficial for us, and even more importantly that the process of achieving it will benefit us as much as the goal. This is very important.
You cannot and should pursue goals if the path towards them is bad for you in any way. This is where the first trap lies. When people get the resolve to achieve something, they are often so angry with themselves, that they deliberately choose a goal that is very far and hard to reach, just to punish themselves. The harder the achievement, the better it is.
The mistake here is that people do not realize hard achievements are that way because they really are hard. They are often so blinded by their desire to reform themselves that they think that rage will fuel them enough to surpass hard challenges, but challenges demand much more than anger.
If you are acting out of discontent or anger, you are most likely to miss out on listening to your own inner voices, that tells you if your goal is right for you or not.
Goals should come spontaneously, not out of anger or a sudden need for some solution to a problem.
To focus on losing weight specifically, it is a long process. It cannot be done overnight, and this is obviously why you cannot try and achieve it by force. It requires patience and discipline, and you cannot have those if you do not have a clear picture of why you want it.
For whatever reason you decide to lose weight, it needs to be stronger than your craving for food, self-doubt, self-pity, the desire to be liked, to be admired, and so on…
All very common reasons people use, and yet completely wrong and insufficient for motivation.
This means that setting goals of weight loss for these reasons can be an act of sabotage.
Recognition is the second stage, and commonly neglected or done automatically, when in truth it should be the stage of careful consideration. Simply put, this is the stage where we go ‘hmm, I really should do that’.
We go through only lightly considering our newfound goal, but here is where we should consider the benefits, our possibilities, and the steps we need to take in order to begin our journey this stage.
First of all, recognizing you have a goal is the same as recognizing you have a certain need. This occurrence means you’ve managed to make contact with yourself, that you are focused on listening to yourself.
Secondly, you should consider every aspect of your decision and how will it best benefit you. All these steps do not need to take too long. You just need to invest enough time in things that are good for you, that’s all.
The set up should be certain and decisive. No half measures, no hiding behind your own weakness. If you decided to eat 1800 calories a day, that rule is sacred. Do not break it for anything or anyone.
You must soon get in the habit of consistency. Do not skip your workouts or meals for anything that just comes up, like perhaps a friend asks you out for coffee or something like that.
It may be a tough sacrifice, but your friends should be glad you are doing something good for yourself. If you allow something like that to distract you, you will be distracted all the time because those situations will happen daily. There is always someone or something that will demand your attention.
What you must realize is that, even though it is good that you spend time with everyone else, this time you are doing something for yourself, and you must endure. If your friends truly love you, they will understand.
This set up must be realistic as it pertains to your lifestyle and your needs beyond weight loss, because if the setup is not realistic, then your weight loss efforts will be sabotaged before they begin.
Progression towards is a tricky period. Staying consistent and true to your decisions is only half the work. After some time of being consistent, for instance in a new dietary plan, you will get in the habit of doing it with much less effort.
What you must then do is learn what to do with your new energy. You will do all your chores, shopping, meal preparing, and workouts more efficiently with time, thus you will have more of it.
As you lose weight, and see the fruition of your efforts manifest, you may be tempted to let that over confidence sabotage your continued success.
Do not let this feeling disturb your routine. You may feel like you can allow yourself some time off of your plan, and that it won’t cost you anything if you skip a day or two. It is in this stage that most people flunk.
While rewarding yourself with a day of freedom, more often called cheat day, you should take care not to do this at crucial points for your body.
Be informed about your dietary plan and how it affects your body. Sometimes it is more important to stick to your plan for a few days more than it is to reward yourself in the short term because it will pay off in long term.
Behavior during the process of achieving represents more of a psychological moment than physical. With weight loss, once you are near your goal, you are already looking lean and fit. The question is should you stay true to your goal and keep going until you get to that desired weight, or should you relax a bit.
An effective weight loss regimen needs to be something you can do for the rest of your life, not something you endure for a time and then revert to your old habits. This type of “temporary diet” thinking is the greatest sabotage pitfall.
The weight loss plan is something you should be comfortable with, something you can live with for the rest of your life. It is the only way you will ensure long-term and permanent success.
The Clear Mind
So far, one can definitely conclude that goals and success requires determination, awareness, patience, vigilance, but also a clear mind. If you do not have a clear view on things, you won’t achieve the goal.
You must also be exact and precise with setting up your goals.
If you want to lose weight, you must ask yourself more questions. What weight would you want to have? What is a good weight for you to be at? What do you need nutrition wise? What about exercise?
These are very important questions that very well determine the very nature of your weight loss goal.
Distractions
There are things that may distract us during our journey towards our goals. How should we behave and how relentless must we be?
If your weight loss goal demands you to respect a nutritional plan, have a good workout 4-5 times a week, and generally be in good health, than you will probably do better if you start skipping out on drinking in a bar with your friends every weekend.
This is not a joke. Although it is naturally important to socialize, you need to understand fully what your goals and decisions carry with themselves. The higher the goal, the higher the effort, and everything that comes with it.
You will be besieged from all sides with things, opportunities, and people who all can deter you from your goal, unintentionally and only if you let them. You must try and balance this to the best of your ability. Do not overly commit to your goals, because nothing should demand your full dedication, especially since it is something you should life with for the rest of your life.
Secondly, as mentioned, your friends or family should understand and support you in losing weight or in anything good that you want to achieve. The trouble here is that you may not really want to explain it to everyone. Explaining your decisions or goals to someone can take away your energy, or your passion. Some people actually prefer to hide their new resolutions, and only show off after they’ve been achieved or they are well on the way.
But, you will have to tell it to somebody, probably those closest to you, so pick your time and pick the shortest version.
Reaping The Benefits
When setting up goals, you are actually setting up the type of benefits you will enjoy after you achieve it, and thus here lies the importance of the recognition and the set up.
You may not always realize the full rewards of your goal right away, but it is good to have some idea because it will provide motivation.
For instance, if your goal is weight loss and you are looking to achieve it because you will be more attractive and desired, we can conclude that your goal i.e. the benefits of reaching it is insufficient as a motivational source and can thus fail quickly. First of all, your desire to be liked and to be attractive may be very strong, as with most humans, but it won’t be stronger than your hunger and craving for your favorite junk food. Once your belly starts hurting, you will forget about the importance of being liked by strangers and only worry about how to satisfy your hunger.
Secondly, being attractive and desired is not a good motivation at all. It is too weak for anything constructive. As mentioned, being liked by strangers will not provide enough fuel to deal with overcoming all the difficulties of permanent weight loss that requires a profound effort.
If you do not want to set yourself up for failure, you must first carefully consider all aspects of your motivation and decisions. Choosing a wrong goal, having the wrong motivation, or one that isn’t even something you really want means setting yourself up for failing.
But, how can we know what to choose? How to know what will yield the most satisfaction for us if we can’t know for sure until we’ve reached it. Some constructive consideration and planning is mandatory.
Only you can answer what it is about being overweight that bothers you most, and then let that be your motivation. Think back to something you really wanted and were able to achieve, what was that like?
If self-hatred, fear, rigidity, inner critical voice, or even getting out of your comfort zone propagates self-sabotage in your life, you will have to address these issues in order to stop being your own worst enemy.
Avoiding Sabotage
We can sum this up by viewing various different sources of sabotage for your weight loss goal.
We’ve discussed the psychological and physical aspects along with habits and state of mind.
Sources of sabotage
- Insufficient awareness
- Wrong reasons and motivation
- Not enough determination
- Inability to have discipline
All these have been addressed in the previous discussion, but all are actually part of a bigger whole, that is YOU.
You yourself are your own biggest ally or your own worst enemy.
If you want to lose weight, the best way to do it is to be your own best friend, and be kind to yourself, rather than hating and punishing yourself with extreme diets and workouts. Your weight hasn’t built up overnight. It was the product of your way of life and years of living recklessly, eating unhealthy, and not caring about yourself.
In some countries, they still refer to physical activity as a way of being respectful to yourself, having a cultural conscious. Moreover, when you think about it, being overweight actually means you are not respecting yourself or your body enough.
This is not to judge anyone, we all get reckless sometimes, and all of us have lived irresponsibly at some points of our lives. Gaining weight actually doesn’t even qualify as the worst mistake people can make, but it can also be the hardest thing to deal with.
Finding the right reasons and the correct method, will put you well on your way to long-term success. Many real problems, those true hardships, cannot be solved so easily, but are well worth the effort.
Losing weight is just another journey and it can actually even be fun, if you let it be. If you put real effort into it, do it the right way, and get out of your own way, the rewards you will reap will be enormous.
