Motivation is Irrelevant

Motivation is irrelevant if you enjoy the activity. The goal is to make bodybuilding, weight loss, cooking healthy, or really, any projects or skills enjoyable to do/learn so doesn't feel like a chore. As long as the reward/pleasure is greater than the pain (time/money/energy invested), people will keep doing something towards a goal consistently or for the time doing it.

It's call the act of "play". Like you never need "willpower" or "motivation" to learn how to play the guitar or tennis when you were young, nor do you call it "exercising". You simply love it, so you do it, even on a cold day with sore ankles.

If you keep struggling with falling off diets and training routines, it's probably because you're investing too much of your resources (pain) on the wrong stuff (I call them fluff), therefore, making pain greater than the reward. This is when you need to re-evaluate your approach.

Why do you think you have to run 2hr/day everyday when someone else can do it without? Why do you think your skinny friend can eat pizza and margaritas every weekend and not get fat while you feel every cupcake you ingest seems to go straight to your butt? Why do you think you have to spend 60$ gym memberships and 100$ on supplements every month when others can do it while actually save money on grocery? How do others do it so effectively and painlessly and you can't? and please, your excuses aren't good enough because others have done it in much worse conditions. 

It's sad most people who go to the gym, looking for diets online, and youtube/momblogging/meathead bro trainers will never learn this. Invest your resources on real-world, result-driven, practical instructions so achieving your fitness goals would feel like a spontaneous effort.  When what you need to do to reach your goal is fun/rewarding (or with less pain) every step of the way, than you'll actually enjoy the process.  When you enjoy the process, motivation is not required.

 

The Importance of Writing Things Down

Progress rewards patience and patience make ways for more progress that leads to results. When you keep making and seeing progress, you'll keep doing what needs done even if it's inconvenient sometimes.  Stop focusing on the end result. Pay attention to your progress and forgive yourself when you have setbacks (or be more flexible with your approach so you fall less easily).

How is this done?

Training: focus on performance goals instead of physique goals. If you put in the work and track your sessions/lifts, you will clearly see that your body is adapting to new physical stressors that allow you to see quantifiable progress which will push/reward you to WANT TO train more. If you don't document, you won't get this feedback that makes you feel rewarded for the work/time you put in. This is how most people fall off training programs.

If you focus solely on physique goals that may take months or years to achieve to feel complete or accomplished, you are more likely to fall off sooner than those who actually love training. Those who enjoy the process of hardwork also get back on track sooner than those who hates it when life gets in the way. If your focus is on performance, you will have an easier time waking up early to go to the gym, brace the cold weather and soreness, and prioritize your time better because you love what you do. Feedback from physique goals (pants size, weight scale) are too slow and confusing (water retention) to give you this instant positive feedback to continue doing something you don't like.

Nutrition: focus on caloric intake/output so you can set objective goals that comes with quantifiable variables you actually have control over. Instead of completely swear off cookies and margaritas for a month (not practical and totally unnecessary), look up your favorite foods' caloric content and work that into your budget so you'll never actually "ruin" your diet. You'll have days that you eat at target and days you go over but at least you know to reflect and tweak your meal prep why you go over consistently. Is it because you're bored, stressed, or eating due to social influences? If you can make the process of dieting less restrictive, then you'll more likely have the patience to follow through. Stop focusing on what to eat or not and focus more on how much. At the end of the day, the law of physics is what matters. Not some gurus telling you what foods are "super" and "clean".

Fall in love with a performance focused program so you'll actually follow through for the long haul instead of buying into every new fluff program that requires "willpower", "discipline" and "28 day challenges". If you love it, it'll feel like you're "playing" and not "exercising". Your transformation would be a lot quicker and spontaneous this way. Make your diet as flexible and quantifiable as possible by ignoring most of the myths out there that disregard the importance of caloric budgeting. When you do fall off, you'll actually know why and get back up sooner instead of beating yourself up for weeks and months why you can't give up sugar or alcohol or whatever that's supposedly off-limit for the rest of your life.

How Most Stupid Diets Work.

They'll tell you that it's not your fault. It's the food industry, the government, or the pharmaceutical companies. "Follow the money", "join the rebels", and "take control of your body"! Again, it's not that you're lazy or misinformed, so come to the other side and do something different.

But are you really doing something different?  Something that will make an impact for your fat loss struggles?    

Gurus will argue that going on a "diet" or counting calories don't work. Then they'll persuade you with 3 easy tricks to quick and painless (and permanent) weight loss. Usually done with pseudoscience and marketing terms to sound credible or use a celebrity athlete or M.D. to sponsor their product/services.

They'll use industry buzzwords like "Toxins", "Functional Training", "#1 Fat Blocking Hormones", "Muscle Confusion", "Long Lean Muscle", "Holistic/Alternative Approach", "Clean Eating" or something generic like "Everything in moderation" or "don't diet, it's a lifestyle change" bullshit.

They'll convince you that surplus caloric intake is not the reason why you gained weight and that eating less is not the solution. Instead, they want you to eat by their rules, swallow their pills, use their blenders, buy their books, drink their shakes, and join their 21 days challenge with 3 easy payments.

Basically, they'll have you believe that tracking food intake is too complicated and it only works for bodybuilders and models who are body obsessed. You're a regular Joe that needs practical solutions because your'e too busy to cook, to track, or to train consistently.

Then with whatever trick they propose, whether it be eating 1x/day or 12x/day, wear this patch or chew that gum, eat more 'super foods' or buy all organic 'health' foods, and eat like jesus, these tricks will still somehow trick you into eating less (calories).

The problem with this is not only that you're dumber than before and already wasted a massive amount of resources (money, time, and energy) but the result is not sustainable because you're always having to give up something (or buy more of something). When you fall, and you will, (everybody fall off diets, it's only a matter of time) you'll blame yourself for lack of discipline/willpower even though the diet is set up to fail YOU.

This is not the case for those who budget their food intakes (at least initially to learn about food content for a couple weeks). In the process of preparing their food to meet their goal, they'll learn better methods of eyeballing food portions, actually COOK for themselves (instead of packaged meals), and make choices like a adult, what foods are worth the pleasure to consume for the calories it contain and at what quantity or frequency to consume at.

The only "diet" that works is the one you can follow long term.  This means it has to be enjoyable, flexible, and actually meet the goal.  A diet that is quantifiable in energy input and output so you can actually reflect against your progress and downfalls and learn from it instead of believing XYZ foods are off limit and feel defeated when you eat them.

If you're fat, understand that you'll have to go through a phase of caloric restriction and sometimes that involves feeling hungry, saying no to happy hours, or just generally not able to eat at the quantity/frequency of the caloric dense foods you wish to have all the time.

However, once you reach your ideal weight, you can slowly transition to eating at or near maintenance. By that time you'll know how it feels to be eating less, you'll have learned the skills/mindset on how to consistently not over indulge and exactly what needs to be done when you do feel chunky again. You know how to MAINTAIN which no commercial diets ever address.

A diet that works long term is a diet that doesn't make you feel like a failure when you fall every time.  Remove the negative emotional attachment to foods that make you feel guilty after consuming them. This can only be achieved if you see food as fuel and make adjustments as you go. That's the way to have good relationship with your diet while still meet the goal of 'eating less'.

By seeing food as fuels and knowing exactly why you are doing the things you're doing, then it wouldn't take another new year resolution or bikini season to get you back on the wagon again when you did end up overeating.

If you can start to see foods from a scientists point of view that they are quantifiable things, like calories (energy from your belly fat), and levels of satiation you feel from eating them, then you'd be able to more objectively make plans to eat for fullness, eat while not feel guilty, and eat to lose fat for the last time.

I've Ruined My Diet!

Find a diet that won't make you say "I've ruined my diet, again!" and you've got something sustainable. Unfortunately you'll never find that sorts of diet in commercials, health magazines, your yoga instructor, or from your doctor.

The only possible failure you CAN be getting from a diet (assuming fat loss is the main goal) is when you consistently go over your caloric intake/targets.  When you make calorie counting your "diet", dieting is no longer all-or-nothing but a learning process that you get better and better at each day.  It's like learning to ride the bike for the first time or picking up the guitar. Since it involves budgeting your energy input/output, it becomes something you can reflect and quickly make adjustment to as you go.  Like using new recipes that consist of more satiating ingredients when cooking or saying no to your 3rd pina coladas at happy hours.  It's a skill that you don't win or lose but learn from trial and error and eventually with patience and openmindedness, you succeed.

Here are some examples of balls to the wall approach that may work for some people while they're invested but do not sustain because it's not practical.  

6 weeks sugar detox, clean eating, no meat diet, grapefruit diet, blood type diet, 28day meal plan from xyz company diet, basically any new diet from amazon that disregard calorie counting or says "don't diet, just try blah blah blah"....  All these examples are just ways to do trick you into eating less calories temporarily (but not always) but usually restrictive and miserable than it needs be.  

Some so impractical that nobody can ever sustain it long enough to make it a lifestyle. This is why people go for quick fix approaches that doesn't require much learning and practice initially.  The "don't eat this, eat that" sort of schemes and yoyo throughout the year without ever considering the fact that removing body fat actually involves creating an imbalance of energy stores in the body consistently.

You like donuts?  Look it up and fit it in your caloric allowance.  You like pizza? Look it up and fit it in.  You like to have 2 glass of wine before bed?  Look it up!  If you know your energy balance while trying to lose fat, all you have to do is eat less than that balance and you'll succeed.   Once you're more mindful of your eating habits and better at eyeballing food portions, you'll never have to count calories again and it only takes a couple days to couple weeks to familiarize with all your favorite foods.  
How much of a deficit depends on your dieting experience, food preference, fitness level, current body fat mass, how dedicated you are or how hungry you're willing to be.  It's too bad most people would rather follow "3 Golden Rules of Clean Eating For Summer Abs" or "21 Days Detox and Bodyweight Squat Challenge For Firm Booty" instead of actually set time aside to learn about body physiology/metabolism, hunger hormones, and basic training philosophy.

At the end of the day, there's truly no "off limits" and you simply can't fail if you're a tracker. You'll make mistakes of going over your target on some days but at least you see your eating habits more objectively since calories are quantifiable things that you can tweak quickly instead of feeling the emotional wreck most dieters go through when they fall from pseudoscience-based eating 'systems'.  

When you don't feel like a loser all the time questioning why you don't have willpower to consistently say no to carbs or not eating after 6pm, this whole 'moving more' and 'eating less' business will get a whole lot easier for you. 

I hope the last time you ruined your diet is the last time.  Stop looking for new diets, quick fixes, and secrets and start finding a reliable and easy calorie counter you can use to learn to get better at budgeting how you eat to reach your goal.  If you need help, let me know.

http://lifehacker.com/fitness-is-a-skill-not-a-talent-heres-how-to-develop-1651281013