Lose Weight – Overcome All-or-Nothing Thinking: Part 3

This is the third in our series called ‘Lose Weight – Overcome All-or-Nothing Thinking’. Many of us begin our new fitness plans with enthusiasm. Ready for a change, we sometimes feel that we can’t wait a moment longer to see our bodies begin to transform themselves and for the weight to start coming off.

So we make our plans and we include guidelines as strict as we think we can manage because we feel a sense of urgency pressing us to get from where we are, to where we want to be. We troubleshoot our anticipated obstacles and charge ahead admirably. Of course, it is impossible to foresee every obstacle and, sooner or later, something pushes us off track.

Where we go next from this inevitable point will have a great deal of influence over when (and whether) we reach our fitness goals.

The first time we “slip” after beginning a new fitness regimen can feel like a total defeat. Have you been there before? I have. I’ve set my New Year’s resolutions in stone and counted down the last seconds of the year with the intention to follow every tenet of my new strategy for all 365 days of the coming year (or at least until I had reached that perfect level of fitness).

I don’t think I ever made it through the first week in January without feeling like I had “fallen off the wagon” where my fitness plans were concerned. I had either hit the snooze button and skipped my workout, had a desert or snack that definitely wasn’t in my nutritional plan, or had otherwise strayed from the path I had decided I was on. Then black-and-white thinking would come in and set up camp.

I had failed. If I couldn’t get through one short week, how would I possibly get through all the days standing between me and my goal; or through the whole year? Never mind that I had just worked out 5 days in the first week as opposed to my usual zero. It didn’t matter that I had reduced my intake of junk food and really upped the amount of vegetables and whole grains I was now eating. All that mattered was that I had a plan, and I had failed at it. Sure I could “start again” next week, but this week was blown. And really, why bother anyway? I would probably just end up blowing that week too.

This “succeed/fail trap,” like the “on/off trap,” leaves you feeling like any efforts that have been put in or that you could continue to put in have gone to or will go to waste since they haven’t measured up to your expectations. But your body doesn’t gain back the pounds that you have lost or discard the muscle that you have built simply because you do one thing that isn’t in your plan.

Don't Let Your Success-or-Failure Attitude Sabotage Your Efforts to Lose Weight & Get Fit

Don't Let Your Success-or-Failure Attitude Sabotage Your Efforts to Lose Weight & Get Fit

If you want to banish this success or failure mentality, you need to focus on improving, not succeeding. Standing on the success tightrope, you are surrounded by nothing but failure. One small slip and you and your goals come crashing down. At the end of each week, month, day (whatever is most comfortable for you), instead of evaluating whether you have succeeded or failed, ask yourself what you could change about your plan to improve it.

For example, I had planned to work out every afternoon before dinner. Before long, my day began to regularly encroach on my workout time and I was no longer able to keep working on my plan. The first few times this happened, I gave myself a stern wag of the finger and felt disappointed in my lack of willpower and commitment.

Were my time management skills so bad that I couldn’t guard this small block of time? But when my thinking started to change and I started to focus on improving instead of “succeeding,” I asked myself what I could do to enhance my workout attendance.

Within minutes, I realized that I could not realistically continue planning to workout in the evenings because my day was too unpredictable and, as a slow starter, I was usually in busy-mode in the afternoon and unable to take a break. I switched to a morning workout routine and it was immediately obvious to me that this was the right time for my workouts.

A plan is a wonderful thing and the drive to reach your goal is what helps you push that plan forward, but black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking makes your plan less resilient. If you see things in terms of success of failure and rigidly stick to it rather than evaluating and adapting, you miss out on all the opportunities to fine tune and maintain your plan so that it fits your lifestyle and your personality perfectly.

And the more flexible, adaptable, and tailored to your tendencies your plan is, the greater your chances of true success.