Weekend Challenge - Why?

Finally Friday - Yay! We made it to Friday! Every week we post a WEEKEND CHALLENGE! This week’s challenge is to Define Your Why.

The key to making your New Year's Resolution a Reality is defining your  WHY.

The number one New Year's Resolution is to lose weight and the sad fact is that most have already hit that first bump in the road and thrown in the towel.  Defining your health and fitness WHY is a key component in your success.  Why do we fail?  Why do we wish to succeed?  In answering these Why's lies your aha moment.  This is an easy challenge, if you are honest with yourself.  Sometimes self-discovery with blatant honesty is the most difficult challenge of them all.

Brainstorm for your Why

This weekend I challenge you to sit down with a piece of paper and do a little brainstorming.  Remember that while you brainstorm you do not critique, that's the kill switch on your creativity.  You'll critique later.  Divide the paper into two sides: WHY and WHY NOT.  Set an egg timer for 3 minutes.  Write down all the reasons that pop into your head for why you want to become more fit and healthy, why you want to lose weight.   List every reason from the noble to the selfish; wanting to live longer for your kids to wanting to look good naked, health reasons or skinny jeans.  Every thing that  comes to mind, no matter how shallow.  Do the same thing for your why not, giving that egg timer another 3 minutes.  Be brutally honest.  It's hard, I'd rather play Xbox 360 than workout, I love fast food...what ever they may be.  Maybe you're lazy, maybe you just don't know where to start.

Now We Critique

Look over your list thinking about how important each of the things you wrote down is to you, rank them from 1 to 10, from not important to critical.  Do this for both sides, then rewrite your paper.  You already know your why, this just helps you visualize it.  I'd put money down that your WHY list is way better than your WHY NOT list.  After you rewrite your list so it looks neat, look it over again.  Define your biggest WHY.  Why is it important to you that you lose weight, get fit, get healthy?  Welcome to your AHA MOMENT!  List your goal in terms of this why.  For example: "I will lose weight because diabetes, stroke and colon cancer run in my family."  Or "I want to lose weight to rebuild my self esteem."  "I need to lose 25 pounds so I look great for my wedding."  "Losing 50 pounds will allow me to play with my children."  "I'm tired of being a puss gut that embarasses my wife and gets winded tying my own shoes, dropping 30 pounds will make me the man she married."  Be honest, make it personal, be specific.  The more specific you are the better!   Stick this reason why where ever you will see it: on your mirror, on the refrigerator, on the microwave.  Make it highly visible.  Make it a promise and it's even better.

Your AHA moment is a powerful tool in defining and achieving your goals.

My Why

My why became brutally clear when my husband was hospitalized with a "horrendously bleeding diverticulum", the surgeon's words, not mine.  He lost over 1/3 of his blood in less than an hour and earned a stay in ICU.   He was pre-diabetic and had to test his blood sugar daily.  He had high cholesterol.  Real high. My mother lost 13 inches of her colon to colon cancer.  My father had 2 back surgeries.  I was diagnosed with PCOS (Ploycystic Ovary Syndrome).  It got me thinking about other health issues that run in the family: high blood pressure, diabetes, ovarian cancer, bad knees, bad backs...then I thought about all the photos I didn't allow to be taken of me with the kids, or my grandson, the places I didn't go because I hated how I looked, how low my self esteem was.  In comparison the fact that I was lazy and losing weight would be hard paled.  In short, my reasons why not were pooh.  We needed to get serious about eating better or my husband was fast tracked to a heart attack, we decided the reasons not to just didn't measure up.  It was our aha moment, we were racing toward the brick wall.  It was time to test the breaks.

Knowing your WHY is Empowering

By having a definable reason why we want to make this change, it will make it much more likely that you will follow through.   When you stumble, and you will stumble, this WHY is the reason you get back on the horse that threw you.   Knowing exactly why you wish to achieve this goal defines why it is so important that you stick with it when the going gets tough, and it will get tough from time to time.  Knowing where you want to get and why you need to get there will also help you to reverse engineer the process you will have to go through to achieve it.  Knowing your why is empowering.  You have taken the first step toward making that New Year's Resolution your new reality.  

Enjoy the Journey

It's about the process, not perfection.  Enjoy the ride.  It won't be easy, but I promise you that it will be worth it...for you and those who love you.  Put in a little time here and when you define your goal in a context of why, you'll propel yourself toward reaching that goal.  Reverse engineering your way from where you want to be to where you are gives you small, sustainable changes that you can maintain for the long haul.  It's a lifestyle change, not a diet.

Resources:

• Tony Horton, of P90X fame, shares his thoughts about how to stay motivated and how to define where your desire comes from in How Do I Keep Going?  He shared more of his 2 step strategy in this article with Dr. Oz, Tony Horton's 3-step Diet Plan. 
• Join me on facebook at the fitter Fitter for motivation, accountability and to connect.  Having a support system will greatly increase your chances of success.
• Explore tons of tools and home fitness programs that can help you work toward your health and fitness goals with a free membership at teambeachbody.  Pick a program, find nutritionals, connect for motivation and support.