What is your why? (and find out mine!)

I am an emotional eater, and the last three years have given my body plenty of reasons and excuses for turning to food the last few years to cope.

Dealing with covid and lockdowns, doing my degree, navigating the new world of the teenage years, hospital appointments and operations, a cost of living crisis – it hasn’t been an easy three years for anyone!

And whilst I have my eating more under control now, and it is something I will always continue to work on, I have inevitably gained some weight and I am aware that my body is not in it’s happy place for my weight. – we all have a set point range of weight where our body works at it’s best and I can feel that mine is not there right now.

**Side note – While I am anti-diet culture, I am not anti-weight loss.**

So right now, my body doesn’t feel at it’s healthiest. My body feels sluggish, I keep getting breakouts and bloated, which I know is because my body has a low dairy tolerance, so while I don’t completely cut it out of my diet I do try to stay mindful of it – but when I am emotionally eating, the foods I crave that will bring me comfort are typically the full of dairy kind.

One of my goals the last few years has been to get healthy. Eating well, moving my body, getting enough sleep, hydrating – just the usual things that allow us to take care of ourselves and be healthy. As well as getting a handle on my emotional eating so that I can get back to my healthy range of weight.

And my why for that? So that I am around for a very long time to take care of Anest and so that I am strong enough to carry her, to lift her, to move her around for physio etc. So I can carry her or at least help support her to get up the stairs in families houses where there isn’t a lift etc. So that our world doesn’t suddenly become very small in the places we are able to go.

Healthy weight loss can be a side-effect of taking care of our health, so while I want to lose weight, I’m not specifically dieting or following a plan or restricting to try and do so. I’m focusing on the healthy habits and any weight that my body needs to let go of will happen as a side effect.

But somewhere along the way, my goal has shifted from getting strong and healthy as the main goal, and losing weight has become the main goal. I’m not sure when it happened, it wasn’t an intentional thing, but somehow I’ve been finding myself weighing myself almost daily, the workouts I am doing are being influenced by whether they will help me lose the weight faster or not, I’m getting lost in scroll holes stalking instagram influencers to see how they lost the weight and what they eat in a day and I KNOW that none of that is helpful.

What has actually been happening is that I’m putting so much focus on weight loss that I’ve lost sight of the goal and my why – and the focus on weight loss has made me feel more out of control around food and disheartened every time I go on instagram and see those women on there with their tiny waists and my scale keeps staying the same or going up and down.

So when I last weighed myself and got frustrated and felt like crap because yet again the scale has stayed exactly the same even though I felt like I had lost weight, I didn’t feel as bloated and I felt really good (non-scale victories are much more important!) it made me wonder why I can’t seem to get the motivation and discipline to put more effort in to lose the weight.

It also left me feeling like crap for the rest of the day – the scale just isn’t helpful.

So I asked myself what my why is.

Which is to get strong so that I can care for Anest for as long as I possibly can.

And the reality of it is, is that weight loss isn’t going to help me do that.

If I woke up tomorrow and I had lost ten pounds I wouldn’t be any stronger than I am now.

If I woke up tomorrow and I was in a smaller dress size – the only thing that would have changed would be the size of my body.

Not my strength. Not my health. Just how much the scale is showing or what my body looks like in the mirror.

And while, yes, I do want to lose a bit of weight – If I look at it from the perspective of my ‘why’ – it’s actually very low down on the priority list of things that will get me to where I am trying to be – aka stronger.

The beauty of getting healthy and building in all the different healthy habits into my life, once I am doing them consistently then any weight that needs to come off will just naturally do so as a side effect.

Something that we need to realise is that wanting to lose weight for weight loss’s sake is not your why.

My goal could be that I want to get healthy so that I lose weight so that I feel more confident in clothes.

But as a why it’s not strong enough. For anyone who has tried losing weight in the past, they can tell you that it’s motivation to get you started with your health journey but it’s not enough to keep you going. On the days you doing really feel like showing up and being healthy and you just want to do nothing and eat junk food all day – it’s not going to be enough of a reason to stop you, it’s just going to make you feel guilty and like crap for doing it.

I’m only a couple of weeks in with realising I’m heading the wrong direction with my goals, and I can already feel such a difference. I’m not thinking about what I should and shouldn’t eat all the time. I’m eating the foods that make me feel good. I’m not constantly weighing myself or body checking.

Your mindset and your motivation to reach your goals will sky rocket when what you are doing is aligned with your goals.

Things will actually start feeling easy once you are working on the right things.

So what is your why?

Your why is the reason behind why you want your goal to happen.

It doesn’t have to be health related.

It can be for any area of your life that you have a goal for.

Whether that’s moving to your dream home, or starting a blog or a business, get out of debt, save for another baby or whatever else that may be.

What is your why for wanting that goal?

Your why is the thing that is going to help you feel motivated on those days that you don’t feel like showing up.

On those days where you are not sure what to do, your why will help you make that decision.

Is this thing going to help me get stronger?

Is this thing going to help me move towards my goal?

How do I know if my Why is ‘enough’?

When you work out your goal and you know what it is you want, ask yourself why. And the trick is to go 5 levels deep.

This gets tricky the ‘deeper’ in you go, but it does get to the real reason behind why you want something.

The first step is to ask yourself Why do you want this goal?

Once you have your answer, you ask why again.

Why was that your answer?

Then you repeat until you have done this 5 times in total.

So if we look at this example, so while on the surface it may feel like this person wants to lose weight, with some digging to find her ‘why’ we have discovered that she doesn’t feel like herself at the moment, she’s tired, and she feels ‘crap’, she feels like she doesn’t recognise herself and from this digging we can see that what she actually needs is to make time for herself so that she can start feeling like herself again. Maybe that is time for going to exercise, or making herself a priority and going to bed early.

Whatever it is that makes her feel like her is her goal, not weight loss.

If she woke up tomorrow a stone lighter, that is the only thing that would have changed – she would still feel like she had lost herself but in a smaller body.

But if she consistently took action to make herself feel like herself again, maybe she used to love exercising, or maybe she used to love experimenting with cooking and cooking healthy meals, and maybe she starts prioritising sleep and feels happier and all of this could lead into her ultimately losing weight, but that bit will just be a side effect, the important part is that she has found herself again.

I hope this makes sense and if you have any questions let me know!

What goal are you working on right now? What is your why?

Beth