Drop the Weight with EJ: Reboot Your Motivation with Selective Focus

The struggle to find motivation to lose even a few pounds is very real. There’s the:

• stress of work and life in general,
• confusion of what to focus on first, diet or exercise,
• and then the real struggle to balance what you choose on top of the stresses of your daily life.

It’s hard to overcome this struggle at first, but you can, if you apply the concept of selective focus.

Let me explain what that means:

Selective focus simply means that you choose one thing and focus on doing it consistently for as long as that’s all you can do… while ignoring all the things that you “should” be doing in the meantime.

Here’s how to apply selective focus to reboot your motivation to stay the course on your weight loss journey and get the results you crave:

Start with what you can do and not what you should do.

One of the reasons motivation goes up in smoke is because there’s just too much going on in your life for you to stay “ready to go” all the time.

When you have work, family, outside pressures on top of all the things you committed to do because you should be doing them, you’re going to get overwhelmed. Being overwhelmed is the easiest way to lose your motivation, especially when you’re not seeing results.

The thing is that lasting weight loss doesn’t happen overnight, so it’s so much easier for you to lose motivation. This is why I’m suggesting that you start by focusing on the few things you can do.

Why it helps you reboot your motivation
Selective focus helps because it allows you to shift for focus from getting down on yourself for all the things you can’t do right now, to the things you can do extremely well.

It works over time, because what really gets you the weight loss results you crave is consistency.

Consistency is what helped a community member lose 3kg in 3 weeks without feeling like she was putting in as much effort as when she was using diets and skipping meals.

When you’re focused on the things you can’t do, you’re less likely to be consistent with the things you can. But a lot of us don’t use this mental tool, because there’s this idea in the weight loss space that if you’re not going hard, you might as well go home.

I’m sure you’ve heard this idea in one way or another:

• Give it your all or don’t even bother
• No pain no gain
• Go big or go home
• No excuses

All these “rah rah” motivational phrases sound good in theory, but when you have a stressful job and can’t do all the things they end up leaving you feeling like a failure even before you’ve stuck to a habit long enough to get traction.

Today, I invite you to be kind to yourself. Sit down and make a list of all the things that you think you should be doing to get the weight loss results that you want. Then, compare that to the time you have amidst your schedule of balancing work and family.

Ask yourself: what can I realistically do right now? Not what will get me results? or what should I do? But what CAN I do?

Look at your schedule to find time to do it, and commit to doing that consistently for as long as that’s all you can do. And when you start to see that you are indeed capable of being motivated to do even this one thing, you’ll start looking for more.

One more thing: A free resource to get you started…
I’m of the opinion that when you’re considering the one thing to start with, healthy eating should be at the top of your list of options. The way I see it, you have to eat so you might as well make it healthy to get the most out of your effort.

When you do choose to dive into healthy eating, I want you to have a free resource that has helped women in my community put healthy eating on autopilot.

The resource I’m sharing with you is a cheat sheet to help you make healthy eating easier. It is called “The Healthy Eating Made Easy Cheat Sheet.”

Specially designed to help you know exactly what to eat every single day so you can get the results you want. This means that you’ll:

• Know the exact healthy foods to choose from your options when you’re hungry so you don’t waste time “hemming and hawing” over what you should eat at each meal.
• Quickly identify healthy options on a menu when you’re not cooking your meals yourself.
• Have more energy, more fun, and “more looking amazing” in every outfit you own.
• You definitely want this cheat sheet in your corner as you make the most out of the little time you have to spend on your healthy lifestyle.

You can get the cheat sheet here.

Photo Credit: Diego Vito Cervo | Dreamstime