What to Do When You Have No Motivation To Lose Weight

Many people experience being in a situation where they want to lose weight, but at the same time don’t have any motivation to do it. This can be a frustrating, especially when you don’t know why you’re not motivated – or what to do about it.

Problems with motivation are usually caused by the part of you that wants to stay the same being stronger then the part of you that would like to change. Here’s why this can happen, and what you can do about it.

Lack of Autonomy

In order to feel motivated, you must have reasons for losing weight that you are genuinely your own. This is especially so for people who put a high value on their independence and personal autonomy. Being told by your doctor, partner, friends or anyone else that you should lose weight can often be a major de-motivator. You must have your OWN reasons for losing weight – not what you’re being told by other people.

If you’re being or have been pressured or told to lose weight by others, then this may be a major reason for having no motivation to lose weight. That part of you that wants to stay the same is usually strengthened by being told by others to change – because many of us strongly object to be told what to do by other people. Being told what to do by others violate’s our independence and autonomy, and our response is usually to defiantly do the exact opposite of what others are trying to get us to do.

The decision to lose weight must be your own, and it must be for your own reasons. If you decide that you do want to lose weight – because YOU want to, and not because anyone else thinks you should, you can build and strengthen your motivation by thinking about why you want to do it. What are YOUR reasons for changing? For example, you may decide – regardless of what your doctor has told you, that you want to lose weight because you value your health, because you want lower your risk of disease, and because you want to feel better and have more energy. These reasons – if you identified them by and for yourself, would then motivate you because they’d be reasons that are genuinely and independently meaningful to you.

If having others pressure you to change has been a cause of lack of motivation for you, you can motivate yourself by taking some time to think whether or not losing weight really is important to you and – if you decide it is – identifying the specific reasons why you want to do it.

Past Failure And Low Self-Confidence

A second major cause of having no motivation to lose weight is the effect that past failures can have both on your confidence and on your belief in your ability to succeed. If you’ve tried to lose weight and failed repeatedly in the past, it can be very hard to motivate yourself to try again.

As a result of past experiences we can develop beliefs like “I can’t lose weight” or “I’ll never be able to lose weight”, which kill our motivation and stop us from trying again. If this is the case for you then the key to overcoming this problem is to realize that these beliefs and completely FALSE and invalid.

The way to do that is to realize that there are thousands – probably millions or people who have been in exactly the same position as you, who have successfully lost weight and keep it off. In fact, the likeliness is that there have been many people that were in a worse situation than you. So the fact that there are people who were in the same situation as you that have successfully lost weight and keep it off means that you can do it too.

An effective way of strengthening your confidence in your ability to succeed is to adopt and reinforce two core beliefs: “The Past Does Not Equal The Future” and “There’s Always A Way If I’m Committed”. You can also find or read about people were in the same situation as you and successfully lose weight, and use them as role models.

Looking Ahead

A useful motivational technique that you can use in addition to the suggestions above is the “looking ahead” technique. First, ask yourself, “What would it be like if I didn’t lose weight?” What would be happening in your life? What would be likely to happen next? How would you feel? Close your eyes and use visualization to do this. Next, project into the future again, this time envisioning what your life would be like if you obtained your weight loss goals. Imagine your feelings about yourself and the potential reactions of others.

Techniques like the one above only require a minute of two and can be very useful in motivating you towards action in times when you have feel like you have no motivation to lose weight. While lack of motivation can be caused by deeper underlying reasons, as I’ve discussed, it can also often be caused by a lack of focus. Visualizing future consequences of not losing weight, and the future benefits of losing weight is an effective way of focusing yourself in a way that creates motivation – and this can be a valuable technique to use at times when you feel like you don’t have any motivation to lose weight.

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