Day One Hundred and Seventy Seven!!!!!

At what point should you start taking your weight personally?


Losing weight is difficult. Losing weight is even more difficult when you don’t have the right motivation.


For the longest time, when I thought about losing weight, it was always to stop people from making fun of me, I never put together that my physical and mental health was at risk, because of my weight. I think there is a difference between losing weight for and because of other people and losing weight for yourself. 


Losing weight for and because of other people can be due to the fact that you don’t look like your friends, or perhaps, you’re following what your spouse tells you to do, or because, you want to prove everyone wrong.


Losing weight for yourself has to be because you want to take control of your life, your health, you want to look good because you know it will help you feel good.


Doing something that takes so much thought, planning and therefore work, can never be motivated by other people, it needs to be motivated by the love you have for yourself. While your support system can help you get there by reminding you of your goals, that is only one component. You need to be able to be determined to help yourself. Your friends and family can help you by by changing their habits as well, and working along side you as you work through your weight loss plan. Your friends and family can also help you by simply leaving the subject of your weight loss alone for you to manage and be in control of. 


Your support system can’t make you lose weight, and you certainly can’t totally depend on them to help you get there. When you start to depend on people in this way there will be a higher chance of failure because you are depending on an external locus of control. An external locus of control is control that is external and outside of you. An external locus of control means that therefore that there is a chance for you to shift the responsibility of your weightless journey on to them, making your failures someone else's fault, and your success debatable. 


So what do I mean by ‘when should you start taking it personally’?


Sometimes it is difficult to differentiate when you want to loose weight for yourself (having an internal locus of control) or for other people. 


I remember I had a really hard go with it with my body image, kids at school would constantly bully me, even when I was in college people would sometimes sneak in a comment here or there. And then when I went to my grandparents house my grandfather would say things like “at the fridge again? You know, being that weight isn’t healthy.”


I have struggled through a lot of criticism to do with my body, and it has taken me a long time to figure out that I can lose weight not to make the comments stop, but because I deserve to be happy, I deserve to look good, and I deserve to feel good. 


Respect should come from within, if you are heavy or if you are skinny. The locus of control I realized needs to be from within, not from external sources. 


Check and see where it is your locus of control is based, is it internal or external?