Take responsibility for yourself. Learn to be self-sufficient. Stop relying on other people to give you all the answers to life’s problems. We live in a world where we have countless resources and tools to our disposal, right at our fingertips. No, not all of those resources are correct or helpful, but you are also a rational human being with a cognitive mind who is able to come to the conclusion what option is better for you, what makes sense and what doesn’t based on what you learn. If you don’t teach yourself anything, then how do you expect to progress? You won’t because you’ll always be relying on ignorance instead of knowledge.
You want something done? You search for a way to make it happen, and you use outside resources if you need help making it happen.
You want to lose weight? Okay, You have three options:
- Make it happen.
- Don’t know how to make it happen? Okay, no big deal. Use all the available resources to make it happen.
- Or, don’t make it happen and you won’t lose weight.
It’s as simple as that. No one is going to hold your hand telling you every move you need to make if you’re trying to lose weight. No one is going to be there whispering in your ear, “eat this”, “don’t eat that”, “go to the gym”, “do this do that”. Those are decisions you need to be telling yourself.
I understand that we all have to start somewhere. Not many people have a strong background in healthy, nutrition, and fitness. It’s okay to ask for help from another person from time to time. Especially when it’s about a tricky situation, or to ask for their advice if you’re on the right track or something. Whatever. But to constantly come to someone for the most basic things just shows that you’re not serious about your weight loss. A person does not function like a wikipedia page. There’s Wikipedia for those reasons. Learn to use your tools correctly. Don’t know what something means? What an acronym or a specif word means? There’s a dictionary for that.
The majority of owners of the weight loss blogs on Tumblr are not certified nutritionists, dietitians, or fitness trainers. A good chunk of the information floating around Tumblr is NOT reliable information, and can even lead to poor health or injury. The weight loss community is just trying to get by with the information they’ve gathered themselves through personal experience and research. With that said, using these people as your ONLY foundation for your weight loss knowledge-base is a terrible idea. I don’t know what’s best for you, much less the next weight loss blog, or the next. My weight loss advice is limited to my personal knowledge-base and understanding. Meaning, I can only draw conclusions from the handful of articles I’ve read online or in magazines, books, etc, and this knowledge-base is severely influenced by the media and propaganda (especially magazine info). Do you really want to put all your trust into the advice another person tells you with doing some research of your own? You wouldn’t use a fact stated on a Wikipedia page without first confirming that fact with a couple other reputable sources, right? Point is, don’t go off of simply what a weight loss blog tells you. Don’t simply go off of what I advise for you because I can be wrong. And with all the false information floating around (eat 1200 calories, ABC diet, starvation diet, fad diets, negative calorie foods, etc), it’s so easy to get sucked into something unhealthy without knowing it. Do you own research.
And don’t simply read one or two articles listed at the top of Google and call it a day. That’s not research. That’s falling for propaganda and being lazy. Use your brain and figure out what’s best for you. The answers to most of your questions can be found by taking advantage of your resources.
You don’t need to message 594038750485 people on Tumblr, wait for them to Google the answer for you, and give you the same exact answer you would have gotten if you just Googled it yourself. You don’t need to message people to ask them “What is BMR?” “Do you know of any exercises for your legs?” “I’m X’X tall, XXXlbs, X years old, how do I lose weight? What do I need to do? Help!” — you can figure it out yourself.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t ask people for advice. If you need help understanding something or getting an opinion, asking is totally okay. And I personally love helping people to the best of my ability. What I’m saying is not to rely on other people to figure things out for you. You need to take that responsibility into your own hands. The health gurus on Tumblr didn’t get to where they are by asking someone else the answers to questions. They spent hours and hours doing their own research, and coming up with their own conclusions based on a variety of information.
So how exactly does this tie into motivation? Well, from my experience I’ve figured out that motivation is directly proportional to your investment in a certain topic.
Have you ever had to do a research project for school? Ever do one on a topic you got to pick yourself? It was great, wasn’t it? You were focused. You dug out as much information as you could. Writing the paper wasn’t too much of a pain in the ass because it was a topic you liked. You were interested. You wanted to know more. Every do one for a topic the teacher picked for you? Like writing a research paper on a boring literature book/story/author? Not as much fun, eh? I’m guessing you didn’t put as much effort into it. You just wanted to do the bare minimum in order to get it done and over with, right? You weren’t really focused. You’d rather do anything BUT the research paper, right? You didn’t really care for it. Maybe you got a good grade on it or maybe you didn’t. But I bet you thought to yourself if you put in a little more effort you would have come out with a better result and you would have been more satisfied. Right? Of course I’m right. Story of my life! Ha.
Weight loss is kind of like that. The more you are invested into the topic, the more successful and motivated you will be. Actively gathering more information will educate you on the basics, how to get started, etc. Once you learn something, you’ll ask more questions. Then you’ll find yourself asking how to do something better, healthier, and more efficiently. Is weight training or cardio better for burning body fat? Is full fat milk or reduced fat milk healthier for me? Should I do an intense 20-min workout, or a 60min moderate workout? Is a low carb diet healthier for me? When something doesn’t work for you, you’ll go back and try to figure out another way to make it work for you through gaining more knowledge and discarding the false information. You’ll be motivated to keep looking and keep searching and keep trying. You won’t just give up if something doesn’t work for you because you’ll know how weight loss truly works and that there is a way.
If you simply stay ignorant and figure that you only need 1200 calories to lose weight. Once you hit a plateau, you’re going to get frustrated, discouraged, and you’ll lose your motivation because you don’t know what to do. It’s because your knowledge is so limited that the only way you know how to lose weight is to restrict your calories. You’ll never know WHY you hit a plateau. You’ll never know ways to get out of your plateau. You’ll just settle that you’re a failure and you’ll be more likely to give up.
Without that kind of self-serving investment in yourself, in your health, and in your weight loss, your success rate decreases drastically.
A great example of this can usually be seen in new dieters who have no idea what they’re doing. They’re just cutting calories and exercising like crazy.
Day 1: Omg I lost 1lb, yes!!
Day 2: I did so good today, lost 2.5lbs. This diet is awesome, I only ate 400 calories today and did some exercise.
Day 3: OMGGGGG I gained 1/2 lb, how is that possible? I’m not going over my calorie intake and I’m exercising A LOT!! :(
Day 4: I’m the same weight. That’s it I can’t do this. I’m clearly not cut out to lose weight. I’m obviously a failure. I knew I shouldn’t have had those 3 baby carrots last night before bed.
Day 5: Up 1/2 lb. I’ve been exercising every single day since I started. WHy am I not losing any weight?!! Criez. I’m going on a fast tomorrow and going to the gym for 4 hours.
Day 6: OMG I LOST 5LBS IN ONE DAY. I’M SOOO HAPPY!!!! I’m going to have a small cup of chicken noodle soup.
Day 7: I gained 2lbs. WTF?? I only ate a small cup of chicken noodle soup! How could I have gained 2lbs in a single day??!! I’m a failure. *binges on ice cream, cookies, and pizza*
People like this don’t understand how weight loss works. Because of this ignorance, they are more likely to lose motivation and fall off the weight loss wagon. Not to mention, are more likely to develop dangerous unhealthy habits.
Taking control of your life helps you feel more satisfied with yourself. And gaining knowledge helps you stay in control. Feeling in control of the situation helps you stay motivated no matter what obstacles come your way.
That not only refers to weight loss, but it’s a life lesson that I hope each of you take to heart because it will help you be a more successful individual in everything you do.
This semi-rant was influenced by a lot of things I’ve been noticing in the weight loss community for a couple months now (and brought out by a bad mood LOL). Some of them really get to me because I don’t understand how someone can claim to want to lose weight sooooo badly, yet refuses to put any kind of effort into it. It boggles my mind, and it irritates me because there are people who work SOOO hard and put in SOOO much effort into the results they achieve (not just physical, but mental and emotional as well). In contrast to the people who complain they’re not seeing results fast enough, or none at all, when they won’t even put in a fraction of that effort. I know it’s kind of wrong to say this, but it makes me want to just be like, “you get what you deserve” or “you reap what you sow”. If you’re not going to put effort into something, then how can you expect good results? How can you expect to stay motivated if you don’t strive towards doing everything you can to figure out the best way to do that? To strive towards figuring out ways to get around the road blocks in your way?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to help anyone and everyone who comes my way. But relying on me, or on anyone, won’t enable you to grow. It’s the growth—the process—the evolution—the journey—which is more important than anything else. Believe me, all my past attempts at weight loss failed because I was simply not invested in it as much as I am now. I just tried to wing it going off “popular” propaganda about weight loss I read in magazines. Never worked because I never learned anything and therefore I never knew how to move forward when I came across a road block in my progress. I would lose motivation, and give up.
And that’s something I don’t want any of you to do. I want to prevent you from losing that motivation; I want to prevent you from giving up—because it sucks. And the only way to prevent that is to become invested in every way possible.
What are you waiting for?
