Why is it so easy to sabotage our weight loss efforts with excuses? We’ve all done it—thought of a thousand reasons why our weight loss efforts just “can’t” work. It’s a cruel cycle if you participate. Here are some things you may have said to yourself (or to others) recently:
“I can’t eat right today because there’s just no healthy food in the house.”
“I can’t run because it hurts my knees. Guess I’ll watch TV instead.”
“Well, I ate a candy bar today—I might as well blow the whole day now.”
Sound familiar? Excuses are the main reason people fail to lose weight. We make insane rationalizations in our heads and weight loss eventually becomes something to do “tomorrow.” Only the elusive tomorrow never seems to come—not really, anyway.
So what can you do to avoid the excuse trap? Realize that it’s not a yes or no sort of deal. If you can’t do one thing or don’t choose to, try something else. Say you’ve got bad knees—understandable. So don’t run. That doesn’t mean you can’t walk. It doesn’t mean you can’t find an alternative exercise.
If you ate something bad, don’t dive into goodies for the rest of the day—get back on track! No, it won’t be a perfect weight loss day, but it won’t be a complete loss either.
The sooner you realize that the only limitations you face are the ones you put on yourself, you’ll start to lose weight. So go ahead, write all of your excuses down on a piece of paper. Then, next to those excuses, write down how you plan to combat them this week.
Drop me a note and let me know how you did! Good luck!