Yesterday I looked at the psychology of maintaining a diet or healthy lifestyle and found that there are a number of different factors that can hinder sticking to a something you have decided to do. During that, I began to wonder about motivation. I know that my motivation is always high when I first start to do something but that it always (not simply sometimes) wanes. Today I may be the most highly motivated person on earth, the next I am finding all manner of plausible excuses why I shouldn't exercise, why I should eat that pizza that's in the freezer etc.
So to that end I began to look at articles and advice about how to maintain motivation in the face of adversity, and to also try to find out what motivation actually is too.
The first website I visited was looking at motivation itself, what it actually is, not simply in terms of weight loss, but more generally. It takes a closer look at motivation, the components of motivation, such as activation (the decision to initiate the behaviour you want), persistence (the continued effort towards your goal) and intensity (the concentration and vigor that goes into pursuing a goal), and how they work to help or hinder motivation. It then looks at the theories of motivation, giving a brief explanation of three - instincts (behaviours are motivated by instincts, which are fixed and inborn patterns of behavior), drives and needs (people have basic biological drives such as eating, drinking, and sleeping which are motivated by biology) and arousal levels (people are motivated to engage in behaviors that help them maintain their optimal level of arousal). Lastly it looks at extrinsic and intrinsic factors that affect motivation (external and internal). It's a really interesting article if you want to understand what motivation is before you go on to look at how to stay motivated. You can access the article here
Having a broader knowledge of what motivation is, I then decided to look for articles that can give hints and tips for me to maintain my motivation. The first one that I looked at was 21 ways to keep your motivation. There are the usual ones, like making sure that you surround yourself with enthusiastic people, make sure that your goals are you own etc, but there are a few that were new to me, like the 'yes but' method, whereby you look at the reason you can't achieve your goal and then explore it using 'yes, but'. For example,
Reason I can’t achieve my goal: I’m too old to go back to school.
Response: Yes, I am older, but my life experience is an advantage that younger people don’t have, and which will help me to do well in my studies.
I like this one and will probably try this myself if I start having doubts about why I shouldn't quit. There are also other things on the list, such as making the journey more enjoyable and creating checklists. There is a lot of good material for helping stay motivated and each one is a little summary for each tip. You can read the article here.
Another article that I found helpful was 16 ways to motivate yourself to lose weight. The good thing about this was that, apart from the fact that there are 16 tips to help aid motivation, if you only have a small amount of time then you can simply read the summaries at the end of each tip, instead of reading the whole thing. Again, this has the staple things that you would find in articles like this, such as determining why you want to lose weight, having realistic expectation and picking a plan that suits your lifestyle, thinking positively etc. There's nothing here that is stand-out different, but it is a thoroughly good and interesting read and the summaries are a great way to read it on the go. You can read the full article here.
The next articles I read were ok in so far as they go. Same stuff resonating across a number of sites, each with similar, and some different, ways of staying motivated. They can be accessed here, here, and here.
There were another couple of additional articles that I really enjoyed. The one here is another more generic article about motivation and what it is, how to maintain it, why people lose motivation - that sort of information. It is a really good read and I enjoyed the honesty of it, insomuch as it doesn't try to be anything that it isn't and generally seems to be talking directly to me. At least, that's what I thought.
The last article I read today was allegedly 20 science backed ways to motivate yourself to lose weight. You can read the article here. Essentially this article is another bunch of tips about how to maintain motivation when you are trying to lose weight. I don't know how they are 'science backed' because they are basically the same ones, mostly, as the other articles I had read, However, as with the others, it is a good read (if you don't mind rereading things) and there are a few tips that I really liked, such as writing your goals down somewhere visible - just to keep you reminded of what they are, not following a controlled diet and eating slower. There is nothing massively different in this article, but I still enjoyed it.
Obviously there are a vast number of articles covering motivation and how to maintain motivation no matter what your goal is, and YouTube is packed with videos doing the same. Whichever way you decide to keep motivated, I think you always have to be aware that motivation isn't constant, that you will have days of greater and lesser motivation and it's how you handle them that will ultimately determine whether you can stay the course or not. Even taking a few days off can sometimes push your motivation back again on the day you return.
Whichever way works for you, or me, keep going and stay strong.
And finally, today I am grateful for books because I don't think I would be surviving this lockdown anywhere near as well without them; I am grateful for my wife for not divorcing me yet, despite having to spend 24/7 with me in the same house; lastly I am grateful for the BBC good food email that has given me some very good recipes over the last few weeks. I may add some to my blog at some point this week.
Until tomorrow, stay strong and stay safe.
Thanks for reading.
Sean.
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