What stops your wheel--or wheel-power? (Rimshot!)
In my own mind I have started to feel willpower in a new way. I have had a long time to think about this phenomenon and about what makes me stop my efforts and slide (certainly anyone who has ever started more than one diet or fitness program knows that the restart is evidence of a backslide) and here is what I have learned:
A great defeat is sometimes just a small defeat until you let it go.
Case in point: Years ago I was trying Body for Life. A program that centers around a 90-day challenge and combines good protein with good carbs, short bursts of cardio and weight training, and a weekly free day. It's a motivating program and can be fun and productive, especially if you do it with a partner or friend.
At the time I was playing my scale tricks. (You know, weighing on one foot, holding on and balancing, moving the scale around the bathroom--done right you can pretend to lose several pounds a day.) At the end of the 90 days I weighed on a real doctor's scales. I found that I had lost significantly less than I had tricked myself into thinking I had lost. But here's where it gets complicated--and emotional and confusing. I remember myself in that moment of reckoning. I remember my great depression realizing I hadn't been as successful as I had hoped. Reality hit me like a proverbial ton of bricks. That disappointment caused me to backslide. Or let me phrase that differently--I allowed that disappointment to start a backslide trend in my motivation and my actions. I chose it. I took that moment of disappointment and depression and I used it to fuel my old negative patterns. I gave up.
The Reality: I gave up and threw away 90 days of very hard work and good attitude--and I had actually lost a fair amount of weight and improved my fitness level. What I should have done in retrospect was take a moment (or a day) and mourn my denial, be grateful I caught myself at my own weighing game, maybe have a "free meal" and then go back at it with a renewed sense of vigor.
The Hard Truth: Sometimes this "renewed sense of vigor" thing I just spouted off about is just nonsense. The reality is that sometimes the process of losing weight and embracing fitness is just miserable and challenging and horribly hard--and that's okay--it's still worth it.
The me of today knows that what I needed to do was just do it anyway, even if it felt bad, even if I wasn't thrilled or didn't feel the vigor, or the positive mental attitude, or anything good. Successful transformation happens when you can begin again no matter how you feel about it. No matter what the circumstances. Even if you feel horrible. Get up, eat right, get to the gym, get some sleep, take your vitamins and do it again. And again. And again.
And again, and again, and again, and again is the sound of the wheel beginning to turn. And every day that you do it, every day you slowly move that wheel, it gets easier. What I need to learn, what I am constantly struggling with and re-teaching myself is that my motivation will falter again. I will stop again. What I must constantly relearn is that stopping is just the moment I take before I begin again.
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