FIND YOUR WHY

What I hear most of you saying now is “Why? Of course I know WHY I want to lose weight. So I am not fat anymore!”  Let me challenge that. If fear of “being fat” or not “wanting to be fat anymore” was enough of a WHY, then WHY are about 70% of our Nations adult overweight and/or obese? Not wanting “to be fat” is apparently not enough. I do a really powerful exercise with my private weight loss counseling clients that you should do for yourself. I call it The Power of 7 Why’s. You can use this exercise to examine your WHY for ANY goal you have, but we are going to focus in this blog on your weight loss goal. Here is the exercise. Answer each question with one sentence and truthfully. Do not repeat your answer from any of the previous questions. Once you run out of answers without needing to repeat a previous one, you have found your why. We ask 7 questions here, but you can go further or shorter depending on when you hit you “need to repeat point.”

#1: What is your objective? For example: “I want to lose 40 pounds”

#2: Why do you want to (INSERT ABOVE OBJECTIVE HERE)? For example: “Why do I want to lose 40 pounds? Because I want to stop feeling like I am fat all the time.”

#3: But why (insert your answer from above here)? For example: “But why do I want to stop feeling like I am fat all the time? Because I feel like a failure for being overweight.”

#4: But why (insert your answer from above here)? For example: “But why do I feel like a failure for being overweight? Because I was raised to succeed in all the things I do, and I feel like this is the only area of my life that I have been a total failure.”

#5: But why (insert your answer from above here)? For example: “But why is this the one area of my life that I have been a total failure after being raised to succeed? I am not sure. Maybe, I have let all my other business in life succeeding at other things be an excuse to not work on my weight.”

#6: But why (insert your answer from above here)? For example: “But why have I let my business in life be an excuse to not work on my weight. Because it’s been easier to make excuses that I am too busy to work on it. I have been afraid to try and fail like I have so many times before. I am afraid of failure.”

#7: But why (insert your answer from above here)? For example: “But why is it easier to make excuses that I am too busy to work on it?  Because I have been afraid to try and fail like I have so many times before.

MY WHY: (Take the last statement and summarize) For example: “I am afraid of failure.”

You see how we went from a very “not deep” WHY to a deep WHY? Now of course this doesn’t magically solve your problem, but it provides you an answer of WHY you need to do this. This way, you can do the internal work to support your WHY in order to have better success. Once you find your WHY, put it on your screen saver on your phone, write it on your bathroom mirror, find a way that forces you to see it and read it every day. Read it aloud every day and work on your WHY. If you are afraid of failure, you can read some self-help books on this subject. Or you can get a coach to help you work on ways to conquer your fears. Or get an accountability partner to challenge you every day and ask you how you conquered a fear today.  At least you have actions you can take to boost your WHY STRENGTH and this will help you get closer to your weight loss and fitness goals.