Writing and Weight Loss

Do you know those people who say, “Do something for 21 days and you’ll form a habit.”?  Well, that’s not me.  In fact, do something for six months and it still may not be a habit.  After three months I’ve forgotten what the goal was or I’m looking to cheat on it…and the more I cheat, the farther away I get. After six months, I’ve had enough time to forget where I was going, why I wanted to go there, and to make up excuses as to why it wasn’t a well planned strategy in the first place.

My biggest, most profound actions have always been the result of full committal to one, possibly insane, but relatively short-termed goal and then, moving the goal and the goal post and re-committing.  Take weight loss.  I have never had luck saying that I’m going to lose 20 lbs.  Instead, I string in front of me a long list of carrots.  Weigh yourself daily and don’t gain any weight from one day to the next. Go to the gym every day the first week.  Eat paleo one week.  Eat vegan the next.  Shake.  Don’t shake.  Give up alcohol for two weeks.  Clearly, some carrots are more motivating than others.  Let me find something that works, something that makes me feel like I’m winning, then I get a surge of endorphins…the little motivators that keep my mind on go.

When something gets old though, that’s when it stops working.  So for example, take going to the gym.  I signed up.  I scheduled a trainer.  And then broke my foot.  Not to be deterred, I worked to adapt my expected routine to accomplish what I could.  All the while, cursing my body for betraying me.  I was able to set a goal that I would complete my adapted work-out every day over the course of a two-week business trip.  And except for one day, I met my goal.  But what happened upon returning was something I didn’t quite expect.  When I got home and the goal was no longer looming and I had more time and flexibility to get in my workouts, over the next two weeks I went only half the time.  I expected my goal to sustain me, but instead I made excuses and found all the reasons that I should be doing other things, why I shouldn’t focus in my goal.  In reality, the conditions had changed and the goal needed to change as well.

So, I’m a day late getting started on a 30-day blog challenge.  I’m setting a goal to stick to, for now, this one, insane act.  But when the conditions around me change, as they will with the coming holidays and my children coming and going, I know that I will serve myself better setting mini-goals and keeping that goal post moving.  So, here’s to writing at 2:30 a.m., if that’s what it takes.  And oh yes, losing 10 lbs during the next 30-days.  It’s just another goal post.