“I can’t go to the gym today; I have to pick up the kids hip-hop class.” “Gosh, I worked so hard at the office today; I just don’t have the energy to go to the gym.” “The gym membership is wearing on my wallet; I could use this money to by groceries.” These are the words of a liar.
This is the daily mind-talk of Julie Walker, a mother of three boys and an architect. She didn’t used to talk this way. She only began treating herself like this two weeks after she started her diet.
Julie wants to lose an extra twenty pounds and she wants it to be easy. Easy is impossible now because Julie is attempting to convince herself that she does not have the time or energy to lose weight.
If something is not truly important to you, you will find a reason not to do it. Whether it’s going to your mother-in-law’s home for dinner or filing your taxes three months ahead of time, if you don’t care, excuses are there.
No time. Neurosurgeons have time to train. It’s the busiest people who make the time to train.
Bethany Carter-Howlett, Professional figure competitor and personal trainer
Do yourself a favor. If you find yourself constantly inventing creative ways to justify abstaining from exercising or eating the appropriate meals, re-evaluate why you want to lose weight.
Your reasons for dieting must destroy your clever excuses.
Better yet, before you even start to diet, list all of the excuses you have used in the past to sabotage your diet, from eating because you had to handle a family crisis to skipping the gym for a few drinks at the bar.
No excuse is too large or small. Looking at your old excuses, think of some new ones you might try to use. Now combine your old and new excuses and write down your reason(s) for wanting to lose weight. Why is your reason for dieting stronger than your excuse for giving up?
My reason for losing weight was that I wanted and needed to be as healthy as I could possibly be. Attending an office party, crying because I was dumped, and feeling too tired to exercise are no longer excuses for me to sabotage my dieting efforts. I just ask myself if the excuse is more important than my health and my priorities.
The inherent problem with excuses is that we distort time and exaggerate the truth. Either it takes too long or too short, or it’s too expensive or too boring. The dieting results don’t come fast enough and, contrarily, exercising at the gym or walking on a trail “takes too long.” Time is always the same. The only thing that changes is how we perceive the passing of time.
As Chin-Ning Chu tells us in Do Less, Achieve More, “Move your attitude from suffering to joy.” Excuses make headway in the dieting journey because the process is rushed. When dieting, you should learn about your inner strengths and
weaknesses. This is not about ironclad discipline, but about acknowledging what you need.
Some women avoid exercising and healthy eating because they want to keep everyone else happy except themselves. So a soccer match or dinner at six becomes more important than a thirty-minute walk for herself. To get this dieting thing, make your reason for dieting overpower your excuses for giving up.