Here’s a great topic that has come up at Fearless Fat Loss before and that’s that there’s a big difference between wanting to lose weight and being ready and willing to lose weight.
It’s easy to tell yourself that you want to change but the real test comes when you’re in the moment and have to make those choices every day, every few hours, every meal, snack, or pass by the frig to either take the actions of one who is living a healthy lifestyle or one who isn’t. If you’re ready to change you’ll still have challenges but it will be much easier than if you’re only telling yourself that you want to change but you really aren’t ready to do it yet.
Week Twelve of Attacking Anxiety and Depression
This is week twelve of my self-experiment with Lucinda Bassett’s Attacking Anxiety and Depression program. If you’ve been reading along with my experiment since the beginning then you’re up to speed on what’s going on here but if you haven’t then please go back to my introductory post to read about why I’m doing this experiment on myself and how exactly it relates so well to the topic of weight loss.
This week is about being ready to change, something that you can relate to any area of personal growth and self-improvement. We all know that we cannot change any other person except ourselves but before we embark on changing ourselves it’s a good idea to get on the same page with yourself. What you say? How could it be possible that you aren’t already on the same page with yourself?
Well sometimes it’s easy to delude yourself into thinking unrealistically or not so clearly. You might think that you want something, whether that something is a slim, toned, healthy body or a new job. But are you ready to change and take all of the actions necessary to get what you want? Are you ready to learn some new skills? Are you ready to learn new ways of thinking and acting, new daily habits, new patterns?
Excuses Excuses
In the case of overcoming your stress and anxiety, week twelve is all about those excuses you can come up with to resist change even though the change is positive and will help you live a more productive life! I must say that this one lesson in the Attacking Anxiety and Depression program is so core to the topic of changing your lifestyle to get the weight off, keep it off, and build a strong, healthy body. There are just so many excuses you could use to resist the process of change, here are only a few:
- I don’t have time
- I don’t know what to do
- I can’t do it
- I’ll just fail anyway, just like before
- I can’t live without (insert any food here)
- I’ve been like this too long so I can’t change now
All of these excuses could be countered with the question, “if you don’t have your health, what do you have?” Living daily with severe health problems is no fun for anyone and obesity has almost eclipsed smoking (if it hasn’t already) as the #1 cause of serious illness and death in the United States. So, there really is no excuse for not putting your health first; if effects every single area of your life.
Anything Thing Worth Having is Worth Working For
In general most people don’t like to change and that’s fine because you’re not most people – you wouldn’t be reading this if you were. All you need to do if you’ve been struggling with making healthy changes in your life is get yourself ready and willing to change. Figure out what is holding you back, list your excuses and look at them in the light of day. Are they realistic? Are they true? Are they helping you in a positive way?
Anything worth having in life is worth working for and if you strongly desire to make a change then you can get yourself there.
What I Learned
Pretty much I’d say that I really applied the thoughts in week twelve of the Attacking Anxiety and Depression program more to the process of weight loss and fitness than I did to the process of healing anxiety and stress. However they certainly apply to the latter, too, for sure! After all, when you really look at either topic it’s all the same, meaning that resisting change and making excuses comes up around almost any kind of life change, if it’s a strong, long-standing habit you have.
If you really want to change a habit though, whether that is negative thinking that leads to stress, anxiety, and/or depression or whether you want to change your diet and exercise habits (and by the way changing your thinking is a large component of that!) to lose weight and get fit then you do it if you’re ready to.
Are You Ready?
And how do you know you’re ready? You won’t make any more excuses and you’ll do what you need to do. Until you’re there though, drop any self-criticism and love yourself today exactly where you’re at and work on being “willing” to change, which will move you towards being ready to change.
Photo by ecstaticist
