How To Lose Weight. Motivation

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

It is assumed that the person is overweight and wants to lose weight. "And if I am overweight, but everything suits me, and I don't consider it a problem?" Well, that's right, live as you like, eat whatever you want, no objection. Do you eat everything in huge quantities, and at the same time everything is ok? Well done, keep up the good work. Meanwhile, according to modern standards of external attractiveness, they do not like fat people, fat people are considered ugly, these requirements are tougher for women, softer for men, but the standards exist regardless of our desire / unwillingness. And then it makes no sense to argue on the topic "but before the donuts were loved", or there "ah the shitty gloss imposed on society false ideas about natural beauty" - these are all conversations in favor of the poor. Standards exist - you either ignore or comply, your choice. Ignore - please, live as you see fit, but then mind not swearing. If you want to comply, it is also an option, but then you should probably do something for this. At the age of 20, all the beauties and beauties, and at 30, the guarantee on the body expires, and you have to do minor household repairs with your own hands (well, or hire specialists, whoever is allowed as means). Both solutions are neither bad nor good, they are equal and have every right to exist. But you have to make a choice, you won't be able to sit on 2 chairs. So. Suppose, no matter why, the person wants to lose weight.

What do people usually say to themselves? What are the stated motives? “I want to lose weight in order to feel good” is a bullshit motive. You and the fat one are doing well. With my 180 cm by 95 kg, I felt great, with a pronounced belly, this is not even considered obesity. A girl weighing 100kg by 170cm also feels normal, despite the fact that this is already obvious obesity. “Feel good” is a derivative of “take care of health”. “I care about my health” is a derivative of “I'm afraid of getting sick”. "I'm afraid of getting sick" is a derivative of "I don't want to die." A person does not worry about his death until he starts dying. Somewhere before the II stage of obesity (and this is much over a hundred) in general, almost no one and never has any unpleasant sensations. Well, shortness of breath during physical activity, so what? If I don’t dig trenches and don’t unload trucks, what are the problems? With sedentary work, there is still no physical activity, and those that are, they can be avoided without problems. With a BMI over 25, a person already has quite distinct body fat, although this is still the border of the norm, it is not even potentially dangerous to health. This is all a cosmetic defect, and rests on the standards of beauty that change from century to century, although people remain as they were. M. Monroe was a goddess, and when B. Spears and C. Aguilera acquired her forms, they were ridiculed and kicked out of business. An obese person does not stop, even when he really gets sick, because diabetes, hypertension, hypoventilation and heart failure creep up for a long time and slowly, and really subjectively frightening forms take on when the finish line goes, what can we say about some abstract and remote health risks. People do not really perceive things that do not loom right in front of their noses. A person is afraid for his health when he begins to think that he is about to die. Fat people are rarely found among hypochondriacs, for this very reason. Panic attacks are absolutely safe for health, but they are accompanied by the fear of death, so a person will give any money to get rid of them. Obesity is very dangerous for health, but people will not even move, because this is not accompanied by any frightening changes in well-being. You can endlessly say to yourself - "I will go on a diet for the sake of a healthy lifestyle", but you still will not believe it. the motivation will not click and the reinforcement cycle will not start.

Here is a lyrical digression. What a person says to himself at the same time is completely irrelevant. In the verbal internal monologue that we conduct, and which we usually take for our thinking, the functional load is still near-zero. Therefore, what you say to yourself inside is not only not interesting to anyone else, it is not even interesting to you. Your psyche is a complex, insanely elegant and absolutely rationally and functionally arranged structure, without precise balance and calibration, it instantly loses its stability and efficiency. If the contents of the verbal flow mattered, we would simply not be able to think all sorts of crap, our thoughts would go smoothly and precisely with a cold rustle, gleaming with chrome edges. As all mental processes do. And the cognitive realm, by the way, does it too. When it comes to fulfilling her direct official duties, that is, ensuring social needs, it is a bayonet-knife, this is embodied perfect rationality, the cognitive function fully fulfills the evolutionarily assigned tasks. And the fact that you are picking your teeth with a bayonet-knife at a halt is your own business. And the fact that the tool turned out to be so effective that now we spend most of the time at a halt, and in picking our teeth with a knife we have reached unprecedented skill, and now we think that our whole life is a halt, and the bayonet-knife is issued as a toothpick - these are also our personal problems. It has nothing to do with reality. The end of the lyrical digression.

"I want to lose weight in order to love myself / to like myself." Bullshit motive. You already like yourself. Any mentally normal person treats himself well. If it’s bad, then he has a depressive disorder, and then he doesn’t care how much he weighs, then he has more serious problems, and he will grab any opportunity to somehow get at least some, the smallest reinforcement, if only there was reinforcement … This is how "neurotic seizure" is formed. That is, either you already love yourself, and then you will not believe in this motive, or you do not love yourself, and then taking away from yourself the little hedonistic joys of gorging, you will only get worse. Here it is necessary to divide the motivation of "good attitude to oneself" and self-esteem. Self-esteem can be anything. May be downgraded. It can be downgraded for objective reasons, or maybe for biased ones. Moreover, a fat man who wants to lose weight is likely to have low self-esteem (otherwise he would not be worried about his weight). Here one more lyrical digression asks, but I will try without further ado, with a dotted line. I don't believe in an inferiority complex. I don't believe in the subconscious. There is no unconscious, as understood by the psychodynamic tradition. Since the term has long and firmly entered everyday speech, it is used in a wide variety of explanations with or without reason, and a false sense of understanding is created. If there is absolutely nowhere to go, I will talk about unconscious motives. Or about the levels of reflection. And the "self-esteem" of a person is a complex multicomponent representation. This is a very general word, it requires additional clarifications. In terms of content and objectivity, the statement "On a diet for the sake of increasing self-esteem" is not far from "I want to lose weight so as not to be fat."

"To rejuvenate and become stronger." Bullshit motive. You definitely know that you will not get younger from this, you will simply lose weight. There will be some relief in physical activity, because a person will get rid of several tens of kilograms of adipose tissue, but this does not mean that he has become stronger, he just does not carry a bag of fat on himself. Besides, “getting stronger” is not an independent motive. A person does not want to “get stronger” just like that. And a person does not need to become stronger if he is not engaged in physical labor, but in this case (for example, he is a professional athlete), due to objective circumstances he will not gain too much. And in general, physically strong people - hefty moose, both men and women.

For the sake of the children / for the sake of the spouse. A senseless motive in one case and doubtful in another. Children love you anyway, no matter how you look, and if children don't love you, diet won't help you. And you, too, perfectly understand, no matter what you say to yourself. For the sake of a spouse - this is according to the circumstances. It may work, it may not. This can only work if there is a fear of losing your regular sex partner. These fears can be justified, they can be unfounded, it does not matter at all, it is important that they are (ideally, of course, there are fears, there are no grounds for them). Why do you think rich people have such well-groomed wives? Because they have money for their beauty? Nothing like this. Everyone has money, and they still have a motive, because losing their sexual partner with all the accompanying bonuses can be elementary, there will always be a consumer for daddies with wallets (meaning the social component, while in the actual sexual behavior, - of course, the external attractiveness of a spouse does not significantly affect third-party sexual contacts, there are other mechanisms). Except for cosmetic surgery, and, partially (very partially), decorative cosmetics, all measures to maintain the appearance are free or almost free. The most expensive machine doesn't do anything that wouldn't be possible with a pair of dumbbells at home. If you look not at the advertising crap on the label, but at the active composition, then a 10-dollar skin cream is identical in effectiveness to a 300-dollar one (another thing is that for 10 dollars a manufacturer with a pure heart can sell absolutely placebo, but for 300 it is ashamed all the same, if he is not quite an obvious fraud; so it is necessary to watch and understand). This is not my opinion, these studies say that in order to express some intelligible judgments on cosmetology on my own, you have to sit for a long time to deal with brands, technologies, active agents and mechanisms of action - I have neither time nor motivation for this. Spending 6-8 hours a day on your physical appearance, and spending 2 hours a day on the same, - the difference will be noticeable only with a very long and very close examination, in general, at a third glance, these differences can be neglected. Listen, have you seen porn? Have you seen porn models? With the exception of a couple of superstars, these are all not very wealthy young ladies, otherwise they would not have starred in such films.

And if you have to tell this, what, how, how, - a personal trainer and the latest exercise bike give a much more visible result, and no cheap cream tightens as much as the luxury line with the coenzyme Grand Imperial Cellular, and all of you You know this from my own experience - then I immediately want to answer that you are a fine fellow and clever, and it is very great that you have the means and opportunities for this, continue in the same spirit, I do not mind at all.

That is, it is not a question of funds at all. This is, to a very small extent, a matter of time. Basically, it's a matter of motivation.

I know of only 2 motivations that are effective in the fight against excess weight. It's sex and domination. People want to change their appearance in order to increase their sex appeal, people want to change their appearance in order to feel superior to others. Both motives are social; they are not biology. Both of them significantly, but not completely, overlap. Obviously, fat folds do not affect the actual quality of sex, people would have noticed this long ago. But it affects the external sexual attraction. In the formal social hierarchy, body weight is not associated with social weight - any number of chins is forgiven for an important and influential person. But it does affect informal status. All other things being equal, fat and pot-bellied are in the hierarchy below the titular and athletic, and this is well known to all participants. For women to a greater extent, for men to a lesser extent - but it works regardless of gender, so "fat" is a fatal insult for a girl, but also insulting for a man. That is, the psyche accepts this motive without talking, another question is in what digestible form to present it to oneself. “I want to lose weight in order to look sexually attractive, and for other males to show me a sexual interest, and some of them even show a willingness to compete for this with my long-term sexual partner, and so that the long-term sexual partner realizes that he has access to a highly demanded resource … In addition, I want to dominate the informal social hierarchy, so that me and those around me can see an increase in status, and this makes other women envy and desire to imitate my behavior. " Of course, in order to declare something like that in plain text, you need to have a piece of ice instead of brains. People who are able to say such things without hesitation usually do not suffer from obesity, they may have problems with life, but completely different, not about diets. Therefore, it is worth telling yourself essentially the same thing, but softly, allegorically, in streamlined formulations. Well, there, in terms of "to please people", "to make a good impression", "so that the husband / wife loved (s) more", etc. And only if the psyche doesn’t understand the hints, then it’s straightforward to tell us what the hell is required of it. I suppose it works. Moreover, people do not record states well. People are good at capturing changes. A woman who has always been attractive, it is easy to think about her “by nature, just lucky”. Models and athletes are not hung on various forums and advertising lure, because well, beautiful people, so what? Photoseries of the “Before and After” class cause much more excitement - this is a motivator. In the same way, no one is interested in stories that a person was born in a rich family and remained so rich. Everyone is interested in how a shoe shiner became a millionaire, how a peasant became an emperor, how a shoemaker's son became an absolute dictator - status itself is still so, acquiring status is what people have a keen and genuine interest in.

And the last thing. Stenicity. She is "willpower". You can often hear such objections, - "everything is clear with the motives, but still I can’t help myself, there’s just no willpower." It is not true. When a person does not have willpower, it is called apato-abulic syndrome. A person in this state lies in a layer and looks at one point. Often, patients even shit for themselves, because there is no mental strength to get up to the toilet to reach, let alone go to a kilogram of pizza. Eating dozens of pounds of excess fat requires consistent and consistent behavior. Long-term, many months, often many years, from day to day, steadily carried out with an iron hand. All supergood people have willpower. The fact that it works on simple hedonistic stimuli and does not work on complex social stimuli is a different story. A striking and extreme example is the behavior of drug addicts. Here, they say, there is no willpower to break the painful cycle. Excuse me, but to get drugs, where does willpower come from? An opium addict, when he muddles himself with another dose, is a perfect and super-efficient machine - incredible manipulative abilities, instant reaction, tough purposefulness, clear and unmistakable goal-setting - this energy, yes for peaceful purposes, would be enough for ten oligarchs. And to quit - there is no willpower. It is not a lack of volitional effort. This is a perversion of volitional effort. Overweight is the same story. But since abnormal eating behavior is not such a tough and ferocious thing, it will throw the volitional orientation onto other rails, and make sthenism work for the needs and tasks of the human mind, it is a completely realizable goal.