How to Beat the Scale with Little Victories
Do you let the bathroom scale define your mood and/or rule your life? Do you sometimes feel like you’ve got such a long way to go to get to where you need to be that it might not even be worth trying? In today’s blog post, I’d like to share three helpful insights, hard-won from work with 1,000+ overeaters:
- It’s very difficult to lose one hundred pounds: It’s much easier to lose one pound, one hundred times! Focus on the next right move, not the long term goal. Like Socrates said to the youth who asked how to get to Mt. Olympus: “It’s easy – just be sure every step you take is in the direction towards Mt. Olympus.” Another way to conceptualize this is to understand that direction is more important than speed. If you’re trying to get to New York City from the mid-Atlantic ocean and point your ship westward towards Manhattan, you’ll get there eventually, no matter how slowly the ship is moving. But if you’re headed east you’re more likely to end up in London. So celebrate simply pointing your ship in the right direction, and every tiny step along the way.
- Sometimes your “Big Why” can be too big! It’s common advice to articulate and amplify a “Big Why” for losing weight – a vivid portrait of what the future holds for them if and when they manage to stick to their diet. In fact, I’ll often ask clients what benefits they might accrue if they didn’t break any of their rules for one full year. We’ll go way beyond weight loss into other areas of health and wellness, relationships, etc.
Excerpted from Psychology Today
