Motivation: Making Those New Year's Resolutions Come True

Recently a client asked me to comment on motivation. Make that ‘Motivation’—what we all need around New Year’s every year (and plenty of other times too), but New Year’s is when even trim, fit people start thinking about getting healthier. Anyone can get started, it seems, but how do you keep at it? After the initial few days or weeks of feeling virtuous and seeing the scales take a quick dip, how do you maintain the effort? The challenge is the same whether you’re trying to lose weight or just get healthier. At Home Cuisine, we try to make it easier for our clients to stay motivated by providing good meals, but we can’t do everything. In fact, we can’t really help at all if you don’t have the desire.

Before I begin, let me just say that I’m definitely not lecturing here. I’m in the boat with everyone else who is starting the new year with a renewed awareness that they need to lose weight. I have several pounds to lose—more than I want to publically put a number on! So these are just my opinions, and what I’ve learned from years in the food industry, the last few working with people trying to control their weight and improve their health. It can be a long process, trying to create a system of eating which will allow us to be at our best now and for the rest of our lives.

The first and most important thing, to me, is that motivation must come from within. If you don’t feel like you are worth the trouble it takes to shape up and/or improve your health, you’re not going to stick to a routine. I know, some of us might skirt around the “worth” angle by saying, “But I don’t really need to be thinner to be at my best. Looks aren’t that important!” No, looks aren’t what is important here. But good health is. Even if you don’t care that you aren’t a Halle Berry or George Clooney look-alike, you deserve to live to your fullest, and if you’re carrying around more weight than your body really needs, you’re not doing that. The same goes if you are battling diabetes or some other disease which is diet-sensitive.

I’m not saying that anyone should aspire to look like runway models or actors; that’s not a smart goal (most doctors agree). But you need to remain within a certain range of weight for your height, because it is healthier for you. Anyone who doubts that can try carrying a 20-pound bag of dog food up a flight of stairs, and then walk up the stairs without it. You’ll feel the difference. If you are 20 pounds overweight, that’s what your body is going through every day, and it is unnecessary.

So in the coming days, I’m going to take a look at motivation. I’m convinced that it is based on our own personal value, on our real view of ourselves. But a lot of other factors play in—like the American relationship with food, for instance. Talk about a society programmed to fight its weight! I’ll also offer some tips and techniques (silly and serious), and talk about the habits we need to form to put food in its rightful place in our life. I’m inviting you to check in here as we go along, and offer your thoughts about what I say.