I Need Better Motivation

I opened a new calendar today. I used to get “August-to-August” calendars all the time, but stopped a few years back. Recently I decided to start using them again. They recall to me the school year, and its implied sense of a time period in which to get things done. I make plans for what to do during the colder months (although I don’t often follow through with them), and I try to end up better in the spring and summer.

Last fall I started losing weight, and I did very well for a while there. I lost a lot of weight. But the weight has been creeping back up, largely due to the fact I haven’t been sticking to the diet. There were several factors for this, but the main one simply is this: I lost my motivation. I had several motives for losing weight, but the strongest (albeit largely unacknowledged) motivation was that losing weight would help me look good so I could attract a mate.

When that didn’t pan out the way I had wanted, I lost the motivation to keep on track. I had not realized how much of my drive to lose weight had been motivated by the desire to find a partner. Not knowing my real motivation—and more importantly, not knowing the inherent insubstantiality of the real motivation—led me to go off track, and to start putting weight back on.

So I need to have real motivation to lose weight. Something that comes from within me, is not dependent on others for the expression of results, and carries an emotional component (in order to involve my whole self in it, and not just my intellect).

Fortunately, I’ve caught myself before I put all the weight back on, and I’m still significantly smaller than I was a year ago.