What's Your Motivation?

Probably the most important thing to do before trying to implement any significant lifestyle change is to get clear on why you're doing it. Ask yourself sincerely:

"Why do I want this?"

And then answer the question bravely and honestly (sometimes bravery is a pre-condition of total honesty, I've learned slowly and often, the hard way.) You may even consider writing your motivations down. And here's a tip: If you're too lazy (or scared) to even write them down, you may not be ready to make any changes right now. So don't.

"What?" "Did he say 'don't'"? "Isn't that fitness sacrilege?"

Maybe, but here's why I'm saying it: People who think they want to make fundamental improvements in their health but aren't really ready for what the effort will require in terms of time, commitment and personal discipline, usually drop out of the process early and label themselves "failure." That's too bad. We don't call people who are halfway through law school and not yet ready to take the bar exam a failure. We don't label the 14-month old who teeters and falls in her first attempts to walk a failure. They're just not ready - yet. And maybe you're not either.

But I hope you are.

So, if, after looking at your reasons for doing this listed on that piece of paper, my first instruction is to cross out every negative one ("I'm too fat", "I don't want to slowly break down and die prematurely", etc.) They won't sustain you. But you know what will? A positive goal. Every long-term healthy lifestyle practitioner will tell you that no matter how they started, at a certain point they fell in love with the quality of life benefits that exercise and healthful eating provide. And that's what made them converts for life.

It's not so hard to come up with one or more positive motivations. You can even start with one of the negative motivations you already wrote down and abandoned. Just restate it in positive terms:

"I want to be strong and lean."

"I want to live a long time, have energy and stamina and I want to be able to do things my parents couldn't at the same age."

Now get going on that list.