Day 10 – The Beck Diet Solution

  
Day 10 is about setting a goal.

It's that time of year too, isn't it? Blogland is full of talk about setting goals and not setting goals for the holiday season and New Year.

I am in a weird position with goals. In every aspect of my life, except weight loss/fitness, I set goals, I make plans and I follow through and I am successful. I meet, and quite frequently, exceed my goals.  I have achieved a lot in my life and I'm proud of so many things. Yet, when I set goals for weight loss or fitness - it's like I freeze, or my  mind works against me - or planets are out of alignment or something! I seem to do worse when I have a goal. I put plans in place and then don't follow through consistently. I don't meet the goal and then I'm disappointed and angry with myself - which is so counterproductive to this whole process.

Beck talks about this happening when people set goals that are too long term or unachievable. Is that what I'm doing?

I don't think so - what I am doing isn't working though - so clearly - in the goals department I am doing something wrong!

There was an interesting comment in response to the Day 9 post and I'm copying it here, because when I read it this morning, it seemed to come at just the right time.

Dayne Gingrich said...

Great great post... and a challenge that MANY deal with every single day.It's all about this day, this moment. Take action every day, no matter how small. As you said, "just move more every day..." That's all that's needed to succeed in the long term. Your action doesn't have to make the Earth stop spinning... it doesn't have to be life changing now, but by taking a tiny bit every day, it definitely WILL be in the future.We all get wrapped up in having to do it all right now, which puts excess pressure on us, eventually leading to fear, and unfortunately quitting. Try this: Write what your motivation is for wanting to lose the weight. Put it somewhere you'll read every day... and just let the action take care of itself. Fill you mind and soul full of your MOTIVATION, rather than goals, and watch the improvement. "Goals" make us feel fear ~ fear of failure, mostly. Motivations make us feel positive about what we want.The word, alone, isn't threatening at all... unlike goals. What's your motivation? Focus on it, see yourself reaching that motivation, and feel the emotions that come from reaching them. Let the day to day stuff just... be.Good luck. Have fun. Remember, creating a "new you" should be fun, yeah?Dayne

December 10, 2009 11:40 PM

Back to Beck for a moment, she suggests setting goals of 5 lbs at a time and when that is done, set another 5 lb goal and going against the whole theory of SMART goals, she does not recommend setting a time limit.  She says not to focus on the end goal weight but just these 5 lbs at a time.  She does recommend small rewards at each 5 lb goal.

What has worked for me in the past, is not to focus so much on the weight loss and the scale, but to focus on eating properly, keeping my blood sugar level and moving every day - if I do those things - the side effect will be weight loss. This is how I started this journey and it worked - when I lose sight of that is when I struggle. When I start to put focus on the scale and whether I lost 1 lbs or 2 lbs this week - then my behaviours and my head start to sabotage me.

It seems an odd position to be in, but I think recognizing it is half the battle. Even though I don't have the answers to fix it - I think I'm stronger because I can recognize when I'm "losing it" and turn it around almost immediately now, rather than go days and days of sabotaging behaviour and undoing all the good work I'd done.