Sunday, September 16, 2012

Excuses

Excuses ... lately I seem to have a lot of them when it comes to my weight loss and activity/exercise ...
 

  • I'm too tired ...
  • It's raining ...
  • Just a few extra cookies or chips won't hurt ...
  • I'm having some "issues" ...
  • I have this "thing" going on ...
 Really, we all have excuses for whatever it is we don't want to get done.

I started posting a "meme" on Facebook just about every day this past week to encourage and motivate me and others. (I didn't even know what these little picture things were called; my daughter had to enlighten me.) One of them said, "Because today is another chance to get it right." Lately, I have been feeling that every single day I have failed on my weight loss plan.  Instead of looking at the long-term progress made, I've looked at the day's failures.  And then I begin making excuses (see list above).  I've always been a good excuse-maker.  I know a lot of people who are good excuse-makers...I'd wager that I'm better at it than most people.  And I can make you feel pretty lousy if you question my excuse!

So what's behind my excuses? What's the reason I make them? I'm still trying to figure that out. Part of it is a desire to be perfect. If I can't get it perfect, I either want to quit or start over. I'm a little obsessive-compulsive and it bothers me when things aren't just so-so. I'm also a pleaser. I want everyone to be happy; I want to fix everything to make it right. That behavior leaves me depleted and without much left over for me. Looking back at my first year on Weight Watchers, I can remember feeling guilty that I was taking such good care of myself. No one else was suffering or complaining ... meals were still cooked, laundry was still done, etc. etc. I just made preparing my own meals and exercising a higher priority than I ever had before.  But I still felt guilty because what I was doing was not only changing me and my habits, but changing things for those around me also.

Uh-oh ... there it is ... change.  That is probably the biggest reason for my excuse-making.  It is easy for me to go back to the familiar and stay the same. It is frightening to me to see my habits changing, to see my body changing.  It is, at times, exhilarating, but it is also unfamiliar.  It requires a new way of doing things and sometimes a new way of thinking.  It was appropriate that the topic of our meeting this week at Weight Watchers was about habits. It is so difficult to break an old habit, or establish a new habit. It all has to do with that word "change." But baby stepping my way out of the bad and into the good can make habit-changing simpler.  Each baby step will make me stronger and stronger, more skilled, more self-confident, and more successful.

My goal for this week of habit-changing is to not use any of those excuses (and not come up with any new ones either!), but just get the job done.  It won't be perfect ... it doesn't have to be perfect.  And every day IS another chance to get it right!