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This post is long and wordy because I care about you guys and I want to infuse some warmth and acceptance into any of you who need it.  This is my virtual hug from me to you.  Actually it’s more like a cuddle-on-the-couch thing since it’s so long…..

If you missed the first 3 reasons for difficulty on hCG/what you need to know do this successfully check them out:

6 Reasons for Trouble on the hCG Diet- What You Need to Know

Reason 1:  It’s Harder Than You Think- How to Prep for This

Reason 2: Check Those Expectations

Reason 3:  Why Deeper Reasons Are Needed for Successful Long Term Weight Loss

The Struggle Of It

Weight loss can be is an emotionally trying journey.

There are many reasons to want to lose weight, and most likely you have more than one.  For anyone with a significant amount of weight to lose especially, it’s very likely that you will have to find new reasons to lose weight as your hCG journey continues in order to get to your final goal (which isn’t necessarily a number so much as the desire to be a healthy weight for your height and bone structure etc.)

The reason I’m bringing this up is because of what a special hCG vlogger, HebbyDobbie, said awhile back for how she stays motivated on P2.  She started out having 200lbs to lose, so at first, the reason was, in her words, “diet or die.”  But as she lost her first 1oolbs, and her health improved, she said she has had to find and search for other reasons to continue her weightloss journey.

Why?

Because after losing a certain amount of weight, she wasn’t in danger of dying anymore.  So that reason for losing weight no longer really worked.

Sometimes this realization doesn’t come right away and there might be a period of floundering or backsliding on your journey.  You may lose your motivation to lose weight and return temporarily to old eating habits.

When you get to crossroads like this, you may have to ask yourself some questions- like what do I really want?

Are You Obligated to Become A Fitness Model?

No Way!!

What if you lose 50 lbs or 100 lbs, but you’re still overweight and you don’t feel motivated to lose anymore?  So what? 

Don’t feel like you HAVE to go all the way, and especially all at once.

Guilt is this nasty yucky thing I don’t care for too much.

Guilt is a balloon deflator.  For me it takes away all motivation to do anything.  It makes me feel like, “well, I already totally suck so why bother trying?” And somehow it sneaks it’s way into our lives at every turn.

We are so much more than our weight!  You are so much more than your weight.  I know that’s a cliche and right now I’m proud to be writing it.

Yes, it’s great to be healthy.  But you know what?  It’s also really great to be a kind, loving person, a person who is interested in others, someone whose a good friend in times of need, a hard worker, dedicated to family, a problem-solver, whatever- there ARE more important things than just being fit, and that is the qualities you have as a person inside you.

Sometimes we forget just how valuable we are and what it is that is so great about us.  This is especially easy to do when on the hCG diet because it’s easy to get a little obsessed due to the diet being so stringent.  It kind of requires quite a bit of focus to get through the 3 or 6 weeks, and during that time we could find ourselves becoming overly concerned with the scale and weighing our value as a person too heavily on that heartless contraption.

Here’s an example of how negative thinking can worm it’s way into us and make life not so yummy but more crummy.

Lets say you’re 100lbs overweight.  You’ve lost 50lbs.  You’re a bit stuck at the moment.

You can look at it two ways.  You can feel guilty that you still have 50lbs to lose and feel discouraged because you can’t seem to motivate yourself to do it, which then perpetuates the cycle of not moving forward and most likely even causes major backsliding, since guilt squashes motivation and negative emotions often lead to negative behavior (ie stuffing face with oreos).

But what if we looked at it like this? Wow!  You’ve lost 50lbs- do you have any idea of the health benefits you have just created for yourself by doing that?  I’m going to take a little break from this focus on weightloss and focus on my family for awhile while enjoying my new healthy way of eating, then come back to this weightloss idea in 6 months and see what I think about continuing.

Negative Outlook = Negative Outcome

I really think that we can cause ourselves to lose all that we’ve accomplished so far by having a negative outlook.

I spent so many years being paranoid about gaining weight, being depressed once I had gained weight, and all these negative emotions ever caused me to do was to EAT because that’s what I did when I felt bad about myself.  I would binge because I felt bad that I had binged.  Nice.

When I feel good about myself, I feel even more motivated to make better and better decisions for myself and my body because I cherish what I am and feel proud of myself.  I guess this falls into the whole psychology category.

In reality, the truth is rarely as bleak as our minds make it out to be when we are thinking so critically of ourselves.

There is a RANGE of Healthy

Some choose to go all the way and completely transform their body because they find it satisfying, or because they have the time or energy to do so.

Maybe you’re not in that boat.  Maybe you don’t care THAT much and just wanted to lose enough weight so that it didn’t interfere with your life so much and put you into a healthier category to lower your chance of disease.

Totally fine.

You are under no obligation, nor should you feel guilty for not feeling the desire to get every last shred of excess fat off.

There is a RANGE of healthy bodyweight– and guess what?  That range goes UP as you age– so if you’re 50 years old, you can be considered healthy at a higher weight and body fat percent than a 20 year old.  Not like that’s a surprise.  Even if you are outside of that range, you can still look at what you’ve accomplished so far and know that you ARE healthier than you were- this is something to be PROUD of.

Check out the charts below for men and women (also, please don’t confuse these numbers with BMI- this is not bmi):

I’ll give you a couple of examples:

Say you are in the 51-55 age bracket.  An average woman in this age bracket will be anywhere between 30-35% bodyfat.  That would mean if you are say 5’5″ and weigh 175lbs, you would be 52.5 lbs of fat at 30% bodyfat, and 61.25 lbs fat at 35% bodyfat.  If you get into the ideal category for this age group you’d be between 26-29.2% bodyfat.  Again, at 5’5″ and 175lbs that would make you 45.5 lbs of fat at 26% bodyfat, and 51 lbs of fat at 29.2% bodyfat.   This isn’t probably the best example because in reality if you were 26% bodyfat you would most likely weigh less than if you were 35% bodyfat. Oh and if you’re wondering how I calculated that stuff out here’s how.

In the ideal category at the same weight, there is an almost 7lb range of FAT that could have in the example above.  If you add in the average range with it, that’s a total of almost 16lbs of FAT difference that you could possibly be, before heading into the “above average” category.  The idea I’m trying to show is that you could be 26% bodyfat and you could technically gain almost 16 lbs of fat without necessarily becoming super unhealthy or seriously overweight.  Sure you’d have to buy larger clothes.  But it wouldn’t mean that you were now in some danger zone.

How I Ended Up HERE

When I initially started the hCG diet, I actually had no intention of being a size 2 again or getting as fit as I’ve gotten.

I would read blogs of women who were overweight and had completely transformed their bodies so that they looked like a fitness trainer and thought to myself ‘they are the exception- I don’t have it in me to do that- it’s too hard and too long a journey for me to complete successfully- I just want to look normal again.’

But now I find myself kind of in this place where I’ve gotten fairly fit again.  But the way I got here is by not thinking too far ahead and not setting up too many strict definitive goals for myself which allowed me to have positive thoughts about myself through much of the past few years.  This was the positive foundation for continued progress.  If you expect too much of yourself it can be a very negative life constantly trying to live up to it.

Initially I just wanted to be a more normal size again- I was happy with my progress my entire hCG journey- when I went from a size 16/18 to a size 12 I was ecstatic, when I went from a 12 to an 8 I was ecstatic.  I took long breaks of several months between my rounds and was pretty proud of my “new” body, even though I was technically still overweight.

Perspective changes everything and can either free your mind and make it a prison.  All these good feelings about the gradual improvements in my body allowed me to think positively about what I was doing and to keep doing it.

Since I have actually always liked to be active and enjoyed being fit when I was in my late teens, it did become something that I found I enjoyed working at again.  So that’s why I have continued to pursue this course.

The reason I go to Crossfit, workout hard, and do body fat testing is because
1). I LOVE it.  I love how it makes me feel inside.  I have always liked activities that are physically challenging.
2). It makes me feel capable  (well, maybe not at first- I STUNK at first- this came later)
3).  The exercise portion REALLY helps my chronic health symptoms- I actually view it as my part of my weekly medical “treatment”.
4). It keeps me motivated to eat healthy and not sabotage myself the other 23 hours of the day.

So there’s reasons that I actually FEEL inside my body that cause me to keep pursuing this course.

Let’s contrast this with something else…..

I have attempted to learn the guitar at least 4 times in my life.  Genetically I am just not that interested in music.  I don’t have a knack for learning instruments at all and I’m not a very auditory person which is what music is all about.  I’ve tried learning guitar so many times because my husband and family are very musically inclined and I liked the idea of making them happy (oh yeah and when I watch youtube music videos I feel all inspired because they make it look so cool)- I even took secret guitar lessons for awhile when I was first married as a surprise to my husband.  I was going to bust out with some snazzy riffs one day out of the blue and shock him.  While the idea was a fun one, in truth I just could never get very far with it because I just don’t personally care about it that much.  It’s doesn’t fuel my soul.

It’s very hard to do something that’s both difficult and that takes a long time if you’re heart is not in it.

This is not to say it will never happen.  I’ve changed a lot in the past 15 years.  As I continue get older and grow my perspective and my interests will probably continue to change.

The point is, don’t let what you see others accomplishing make you feel like you have to do the same thing.  If it’s truly a strong enough desire inside you to make it happen, great.  But there are LOTS of neat things we see others doing that unless we’re very dedicated to the idea, won’t end up happening for us and it’s no reason to feel we’ve failed.

There’s No Hurry

Don’t feel like you have to charge through your weight loss journey like a race car.  Say your first goals for weight loss get you down 30 pounds, or 50 pounds.  You’re still overweight but kind of already reached your first preliminary goals.  You don’t feel particularly motivated to take it any further at this time.

Fine- give yourself some time!  Be in that happy place of weight maintenance for awhile.

As time goes on, perhaps you will discover other reasons that might make you choose to lose additional weight.  You may have spent 20-30 years being overweight, perhaps even your entire life, so it’s okay if the 180 doesn’t happen instantly.  Oftentimes just time passing will bring on a wave of motivation.  Each time I was ready to do my next round of hCG after several weeks or months it was because the newness of my weightloss wore off and I felt ready for the next chunk.

Then again, maybe you won’t.  In the end, no one can force you to do anything, and no one should.

My husband said he will NEVER be interested in quilting.  So odd though since I LOVE it.  But I think we can all agree this is okay.  :)-

Obviously, with weight, the biggest reason that it becomes more of a something-that-matters topic is because of how it relates to our long term health.  But just the fact that you’ve lost whatever you’ve lost so far is a HUGE improvement in your long term health prospects– so rather than beating yourself up over how you can’t motivate yourself to become a fitness model, congratulate yourself on how that 50lbs you lost cut your diabetes risk or your risk for knee replacement in half.

Looking for Motivation

The desire to wear smaller clothes will not cut it.  This is simply not a deep enough motivation to last you long.

1. Research the benefits to losing further weight.

2. Try out different physical activities– you may hate jogging but maybe you try out, I don’t know, crossfit croquet or something, and love it.  Zumba is pretty fun to just about anyone I meet.

3. Do a trial.  One way that I’ve been able to get myself to try something out that I didn’t really want to do is to tell myself it’s only a trial.  Say 3-4 weeks.  If I don’t like it, at the end of the trial period I can go back to doing whatever I was doing, no guilt.  I used this thinking for removing dairy recently.  I felt better and my weight has been so much easier to maintain without it that I’d decided for the time being to leave it out.  But giving myself an out from the start made it much easier for me to try implementing.

4.  The simple passing of time is sometimes all that is needed.  Take off the pressure that you most likely put on yourself to move forward at a certain pace, or even to move forward at all- there is nothing wrong but stopping for a bit.  If stopping the weightloss journey for a time prevents you from backsliding due to the burden of guilt, then I think the right choice seems obvious.

Watch James’s Full Interview here

Watch Mandy’s Full Interview here

I’d like to finish by showing you this video clip – her response to someone who lashed out at her about her weight is exceptional-

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