Current Weight: 177.4
Weight Lost This Week: 0.6 lbs
Total Weight Lost: 8.9 lbsI've heard it said that motivation is what gets you started, but habits are what keep you going. I am finding there is a big difference between motivation and habits. I'm definitely motivated to lose weight. I have not slipped back into any sort of "I don't care: slump. But, I do not yet have the habits in place to make consistent progress. Exercise is an occasional occurence that I have to majorly gear myself up for instead of a regular ritual as it should be. I don't need motivation to exercise. I have that in the form of swimsuit season looming in the next couple of months. What I need is a habit in place to make sure I do it. Even tracking my daily points on Weight Watchers is not yet a habit for me. I have days where I do great and track everything that enters my mouth and other days where I just wing it for no real good reason other than it's not yet second nature for me to do it.
So, I wanted to know some tangible steps I can take to start forming new habits and did what everyone does - Googled it. Here are some common sense steps, taken from this blog post I found:
Seven Steps to Developing a New Habit
First, make a decision Decide clearly that you are going to begin acting in a specific way 100% of the time, whenever that behavior is required. For example, if you decide to arise early and exercise each morning, set your clock for a specific time, and when the alarm goes off, immediately get up, put on your exercise clothes and begin your exercise session.
Second, never allow an exception to your new habit pattern during the formative stages. Don’t make excuses or rationalizations. Don’t let yourself off the hook. If you resolve to get up at 6:00 AM each morning, discipline yourself to get up at 6:00 AM, every single morning until this becomes automatic.
Third, tell others that you are going to begin practicing a particular behavior. It is amazing how much more disciplined and determined you will become when you know that others are watching you to see if you have the willpower to follow through on your resolution.
Fourth, visualize yourself performing or behaving in a particular way in a particular situation. The more often you visualize and imagine yourself acting as if you already had the new habit, the more rapidly this new behavior will be accepted by your subconscious mind and become automatic.
Fifth, create an affirmation that you repeat over and over to yourself. This repetition dramatically increases the speed at which you develop the new habit. For example, you can say something like; “I get up and get going immediately at 6:00 AM each morning!” Repeat these words the last thing before you fall asleep. In most cases, you will automatically wake up minutes before the alarm clock goes off, and soon you will need no alarm clock at all.
Sixth, resolve to persist in the new behavior until it is so automatic and easy that you actually feel uncomfortable when you do not do what you have decided to do.
Seventh, and most important, give yourself a reward of some kind for practicing in the new behavior. Each time you reward yourself, you reaffirm and reinforce the behavior. Soon you begin to associate, at an unconscious level, the pleasure of the reward with the behavior. You set up your own force field of positive consequences that you unconsciously look forward to as the result of engaging in the behavior or habit that you have decided upon.
Most people say it takes 21 days to make a new habit. According to those steps, there are 2 things I am going to do every single day for 21 days and see how it affects my weight loss -
1. Track everything all food and activity choices (no exceptions).
2. Get some form of exercise.
Something I've been good about is the third step, which is to tell others (hello world wide web), but the second step, never allowing exceptions during the formative stages of a new habit is the key for me right now I think. I can rationalize anything, and it shows.
This past week, I lost a little over a half pound, but did not make it to my 10 pound weight loss like I had wanted to. Never fear, I am also learning that not achieving goals does not mean they should go away. Just set a new one and keep going. So my goal is to reach that 176 mark by Easter Sunday. (and then possibly reward myself with a Reese's PB egg or three. Just keeping it real, but I promise to track the points for all three of them.)
photo credit: EvelynGiggles via photopin cc
