It astounds me how, one day, I can feel like, "DAMN! I am smoking hot, on fire for fitness, and READY to win that DietBet!", and the next day, feel like, "Uh-oh, I got in over my head with this one...my weight is at a standstill...am I gonna hit goal in time? Is all this exercise making a difference? Am I successful?"
The lesson I have learned many times, but keep forgetting, is to STAY THE COURSE despite the highs and lows in motivation. I am learning that lesson again here on DietBet. Some weeks it comes easy: the first week of my DietBet, I lost almost HALF of my weight goal, and felt like, "I've got this one in the BAG!".
But now that I have gone a few days with the scale kind of *camping out* at around the same weight, no drastic losses, the doubts are creeping in. I remind myself: it is EASY to feel like a million bucks when I lose 5 pounds over one weekend...but my body won't *always* have those bursts, and weight loss isn't linear. You lose a BUNCH, then camp out for a while, then lose a bunch, then maybe gain back a few tenths of a pound.
This time around, I am COMMITTED to myself and my goals, and I am learning to recoginze the ebbs and flows in my own motivation; it is a little different each day, just like my mood or energy levels might be different.
I am loving DietBet because it makes it less likely that my behavior will be based on something as temporal and inconsistent as my motivation: whether I "feel like" following my food plan or exercising today, I KNOW that weigh-ins are coming, my cash is on the line, and that I can only WIN if I am CONSISTENT with my efforts.
Without something external like DietBet, it would be too easy to say, "I don't feel like tracking my food today; I will just blow tonight, and get back 'on' tomorrow"...but as all of us know too well, tomorrow never comes.
So today, do what you KNOW you gotta do. Maybe you FEEL like doing it (yay!), or maybe you just WISH you could feel like doing it (I hear ya). It doesn't matter: just do it anyway!
To the victors go the spoils, and WE WANT THAT PRIZE MONEY!