More than a Feeling...

I wake up weekdays at 5:00 a.m., throw on my workout clothes and head upstairs to get on the treadmill or do a workout DVD. I can’t tell you of a time when I bounced out of bed, jumped into my clothes and sprinted up the stairs. In other words, I don’t feel motivated at O’Dark Hundred in the morning to leave a warm bed and sweat like a mad woman.

Motivation isn’t a feeling … it is a conscious decision to take action regardless of how you feel.

On my way to work the other day, I was listening to the radio and the deejay and a guest were discussing weight loss and motivation (or the lack thereof). The guest explained that she and a group of friends had started the year with the resolution to eat healthy and exercise. Of her group, she was one of the only ones still going at it. However, it was hard for her because she wasn’t always feeling motivated to work out.

The problem is that when you wait on feelings, you will often be waiting. This thought led me to an epiphany when it came to my own weight loss struggles.

The decision to ‘just do it,’ as Nike says, applies to how I work out. In the morning, I’m tired and I’d rather sleep in; but I get up anyway. Yet, I had not been as successful as I could be in my weight loss efforts because I while I had proactively applied the Nike mantra to my exercising, I had not been as effective in applying it to my diet.

Too much of what I ate had been the result of how I was feeling. Stressed? Reach for the chips or the chocolate. Frustrated? Make a bee line to the nearest drive-thru. Of course, never let diet get in the way of a good celebration (which wouldn’t be complete without something fried and some sort of calorie-laden beverage to wash it down with).

I need to decide to take action regarding what I eat regardless of how I feel. I need to just do it. I am writing this in present and not past tense because this is something that I am currently working on and not something that I have mastered.

Today, I got off to a good start. After lunch a co-worker asked me to make a cupcake run with her. I went. She indulged. I passed. Although I felt like having a delicious-looking red velvet cupcake, I decided to pass … and wouldn’t you now it, I felt a little bit of motivation after I did.