What To Do When You’ve Lost Motivation To Lose Weight: Shifting Your Value System

It’s hard when you don’t know what to do when you’ve lost motivation to lose weight, but you CAN turn things around by understanding why you’re not motivated. In this article I’ll show you one of the primary reasons why people lose their motivation, and show you what you can do to make sure this issue no longer causes you to lose your motivation to lose weight from now on.

The Importance Of Values, And How They Run Your Life

What we do every day is determined by our values, or in other words, by the prioirties we place on specific things in our lives. The key to high levels of lasting motivation to lose weight is to make health one of the highest priorities in our lives. By placing a high value of your health, you will naturally feel motivated to lose weight and live a healthy lifestyle because we AUTOMATICALLY move towards things that we place a high value on. Therefore, if you don’t feel motivated to lose weight (or if you’ve lost your motivation) it may well be because your health isn’t a high enough value in your life. If this is the case, you can increase your motivation and prevent yourself from losing it again by increasing the value you place on health and making it a high priority in your life (I’ll show you how to do that in a moment).

The way to know whether you’re placing a high enough value on health is to look at what you do on a daily basis, because our daily activities are a reflection of our value system – we act based on the things we prioritize and place the highest value upon in our lives’.

Weight loss is achieved by placing a high value on the lifestyle behaviours of: weight loss, eating healthy foods, and exercise. If your value rating is high for these lifestyle behaviours, then they should be reflected in your daily life. In other words, if you currently place a high value on weight loss, eating healthy foods, and exercise (the things you need to do to lose weight and live a healthy lifestyle) then this should be reflected in what you do on a daily basis. If these lifestyle behaviours are not reflected in what your daily actions, then it is highly likely that the reason why you don’t have any motivation to lose weight is that health and weight loss isn’t something that you’re currently placing enough value on in your life. If this is the case then what you need to do therefore is learn how to increase the value you place on health and weight loss.

How To Increase The Value Of Weight Loss And Health In Your Life

Increasing the value you place on weight loss and health you will automatically increase your motivation to take the actions (eating healthy foods, exercising) that you need to take in order to lose weight and live a healthy lifestyle on a day to day basis.

The way to do this is to first ask yourself the following questions and exercises:

1.     Where do your weight loss and exercise goals fit into your list of life priorities?

We all have many priorities in our lives – for example, our work, friendships, relationships, family, children, leisure, and so on. The specific things that you place a high value on (or not) however are specific and unique to you. The first step here is to become aware of what your highest priorities are, because we’re often so busy living life that we’re not necessarily consciously aware of our priorities. To do this:

• List out all the priorities in your life that you can think of
• Arrange this list in order of priority – with your highest priority at the top, then next highest priority second, and so on. Look to your daily actions as you do this. Don’t write what you think “should” be your highest priorities, order your list based on what your current priorities actually are – based on what your current daily actions tell you about your priorities.
• When you’re done, see where your weight loss and exercise goals fit into your list of life priorities.

2.     Is the ranking high enough that you act on it?

As you look at your list of priorities, take a few moments and assess whether your health and weight loss goals are high enough on the list to be causing you to consistently act on them on a daily basis.

3.     Are your lifestyle goals overshadowing more important priorities?

Often we allow things that are of less long term importance to us to overshadow the things that are truly important in our lives. As you consider your current situation you may find that there are lifestyle activities (watching too much TV, going out often, etc.) in your life that are taking priority over and overshadowing more important areas of your life, such as your health? Consider your current situation and determine whether or not this is true for you.

4.     Would your priorities change if you began to suffer adverse health consequences?

Many of us make the potentially fatal mistake of neglecting our health because we neglect to see the consequences that our negative actions can and are having on our lives. For some people, it takes a major wakeup call like a cancer scare before they make health a high priority in their lives. Considering how your priorities might change if you were faced with adverse health consequences can act as a self “wake up” call, and help you realize what’s actually most important to you in your life deep down.

5.     What would it take to commit to making health a priority in your life?

The final question to consider is what it would take for you to make health a priority in your life? Are you willing to risk a major – perhaps fatal – health scare in the near, medium or longer future before making health a priority? Or is this something that you’re no longer willing to risk? If so, the decision to commit to making health a priority in your life is all it takes.

Lets now look at how you can shift your value system and make health a priority in your life.

Shifting Your Value System

The above questions and exercises will have revealed the current value system that you have that has been determining your day to day actions. Until now you may not have even been consciously aware of it. The beauty now, however, is that once you are aware of your value system you can consciously change it if you feel that there are aspects of it that are having a negative impact on your life and that aren’t supporting you in having the things that you truly want for yourself. The problem is that most people’s value systems are largely controlled by other people or by the events and circumstances of their lives – as opposed to consciously identifying the things that they value and that are most important to them, and living their lives based on those values and priorities. Most people don’t consciously choose their values, largely because they aren’t aware of or don’t realize how much of a powerful impact their value system is having on their life.

Now that you are aware of your current values and priorities, the beauty is that you can consciously shift your values if you feel that your current value system isn’t serving you. If until now health hasn’t been a high enough value for you, you can re-order the list of priorities that you identified for your life and place health at a higher up position on your list. You can of course do this for other important areas (such as family) if you feel that there are other areas in your life that until now you’d been neglecting.

The key once you’ve clarified the true priorities and re-defined your values is to then ACT based on those new values day to day. If you’ve made health a high priority in your life and placed it towards the tops of your values then you will find that you automatically feel motivated to lose weight, eat healthy foods, and exercise on a day to day basis. Bear in mind however that shifting away from the old patterns of behaviour that were part of your previous value system will take effort to begin with, as it take time to build up new habits of behaviour. The key is to keep acting in a way that is consistent with your new values – doing so will strengthen and reinforce them, and move you away from the old behaviours that no longer serve you. To further motivate and aid yourself as you make this transition you can remind yourself WHY health is now a high priority in your life by making use of visualization techniques and visualise the future consequences you will experience if you continue to neglect your health, as well as visualizing the positive benefits you will experience now and in the future as a result of continuing to take actions that are reflective of the high value that you now place and your health and general physical fitness and well being.

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