Tough Love: Weight Loss Edition

In the beginning of June I wrote a blog entitled “Tough Love” on another site. It received a lot of positive feedback there, and was voted up to a Featured Blog Post just over a week ago. That’s when the backlash began. You know you’ve written something worth sharing when you get personally attacked for your point of view! However the positive responses have vastly outweighed the negative, so I figured it might be a good idea to share it here, too. Here it is in its entirety:

I haven’t been terribly active on here but I do read all your blogs. Being an outsider in all of your weight loss journeys, I see the patterns. I generally try to be supportive and keep my mouth shut when I don’t have anything supportive to say. But I’m getting a bit fed up here. I have a LOT of SparkFriends. I read ALL of your blogs, even if I don’t comment. I try to like all of your statuses (unless they’re bad news). And I’ve noticed some stuff. Here’s some tough love for you:

STOP FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF. It doesn’t fix anything. Don’t focus on the negative, you only bring yourself down (and everyone else who has to read it all the time).

STOP STARTING OVER. How many times will you restart before you realize you’d be at goal if you’d just KEPT GOING? So you screwed up a day or two. It doesn’t mean you’re back at the beginning.

STOP MAKING EXCUSES. “I don’t have the time.” You MAKE time for things that are important to you. “I have no motivation.” Motivation is fleeting and if you spend your time waiting to feel motivated you’ll never get anything done. “I’m a bad cook.” Surely you can grill some damn chicken and microwave a steam bag of veggies for Spark’s sake!

STOP EATING SO MANY PROCESSED FOODS. Yes, processed foods are convenient. But they’re also loaded with salt and cost more per serving than making a meal from scratch. Eating healthy DOES NOT have to be expensive. I cook for two on $75 a week. HEALTHY FOOD.

STOP MAKING UN-ACHIEVEABLE GOALS. Maybe you want to lose 30 lbs next month. That’s great in concept, but mostly impossible unless you get bariatric surgery. You want to go from a couch potato to working out 6 days a week? That’s great, you don’t need to do it by tomorrow. Take your time.

STOP LYING TO YOURSELF. Did you work out as hard as you could have? Did you make as many good choices as you could have? At some point you have to recognize your own patterns and stop pretending. Pay attention to your own behavior. Give yourself a legitimate grade, then don’t beat yourself up about it, just modify the behaviors that are detrimental. You CAN do it. You’re capable.

NEVER GIVE UP. Yes this is hard. But the ONLY way you fail is by giving up.

Am I perfect at this? NO. Gosh no. You don’t have to BE perfect to get the results you want. But instead of focusing on RESULTS, focus on the PROCESS, and the results are just a bonus.

Okay folks, rant over.

I hope my fine readers here will get some benefit out of it, too! Feel free to leave me a comment about it below!