On Motivation and Discipline

I have been noodling over the question of motivation for some time now.  I first began working out (most recently) more than two and a half years ago, and when I started I was, to put it mildly, extremely motivated to lose weight.  Breaking a chair in front of your closest friends and their partners will do that.

A little more than a year ago, however, my motivation started to flag and my eating habits began to revert to their prior state.  My unhappiness with my job led me to rationalize all sorts of destructive emotional eating, and although I was still working out 6 days a week, those workouts became less intense over time, and more pro forma.  We all know that you can't outrun your fork, yes?  And I was carrying a BIG fork.

Time passed and I got a wonderful new job and I finally stopped giving myself excuses for slacking.  Somewhere in the spring of this year I stopped being merely motivated, and I started returning to being disciplined.  It wasn't enough to simply check the boxes, I needed to actually push myself one way or another, every day.  I had to push the workouts or push the eating habits to be healthier, or both, preferably daily, or at least much more often than not.

Discipline means getting up in the dark and the rain to go for a training walk because it's on the schedule.  Discipline means getting up early to get in a full workout before a family dinner rather than sleeping in.  Discipline means doing things you don't want to do because they're the right thing to do. 

Here's the thing that blows my mind - - if you are disciplined, it doesn't matter if you're motivated or not - - you will still see the results.  And the nice thing about being disciplined is that if you do happen to be motivated, it feels easier to be disciplined.  But if you're disciplined it won't matter if the motivation is there or not, because you will kick your ass to the gym and watch what you eat regardless.

I am not perfect, god knows.  I still struggle with emotional eating habits that I have built up over decades, so I know they're not going to break overnight or even over a year or two.  I will have to fight to stay disciplined every day for the rest of my life, which is a somewhat depressing thought.  And yet...that's not so depressing.  I know that I can be disciplined a day at a time, which is all that it takes.  Motivation was always a more slippery concept for me - - sometimes it was there, and sometimes it wasn't.  In contrast, discipline is more of a habit that can be nurtured and strengthened over time.  I know that for all my failings I am much more disciplined now than I was when I first started workout out, and some of those healthy habits - - working out 6 days a week, eating more vegetables - - are easier to do now that they are more ingrained.

Several of my MyFitnessPal friends have been struggling with motivation lately (as I was before I started my new job) and I have been giving a lot of thought to the distinction between motivation and discipline.  I know there will be those who disagree with me, but I really do think that it's easier to be disciplined than it is to stay motivated, because you can take it one day at a time.  For me, I really don't care how I get there if I see results as long as the way is healthy and sustainable.  If being disciplined is the way I am going to hit my goals, then being disciplined is the way things will have to be. 

This is all boldly stated by the woman who will be faced with 2 birthday cakes and a pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving dinner today, so we'll see how disciplined I really am!

Why do the metabolism gods punish me when I lose weight?

I have noticed that the fitness gods are mocking me now.  This month I have hit several nice milestones and lost both inches and pounds, but it's coming back to bite me in the butt.  Now, when I work out on the elliptical, the machine tells me that the calories burned are lower.  Noticeably lower.  Even though I took my step count up as an experiment, my calories burned are lower than they used to be. 

In a similar fashion, the number of calories that I need to lose weight are now 1,640 per day - - it used to be 1,900+.  In other words, I can eat less, and I get less credit for my workouts.  Pooh on that.  That is no fun at all. 

I understand exactly why this is happening, and it is all for good reasons.  It only stands to reason that a lighter body requires less fuel every day than a heavier body - - there's less to cart around, after all.  The same principle applies for the calories expended during exercise - - a heavier person burns more calories than a lighter one because a heavier person is carrying more mass and must overcome more resistance than a lighter person. 

But that doesn't make it fun.  I feel like I am working harder than ever, and getting less credit for it.  Boo! I feel ripped off!

On the good side, as I lose weight I am noticing that I get full faster.  Perhaps after 13 months my body is finally adjusting to my new and improved lifestyle.  I don't need as much food now (relatively speaking), and I cannot comfortably eat as much as I used to, so I don't feel as deprived as I would otherwise. 

Tomorrow's big weigh in will be interesting, where I see if I have maintained (or even improved) on my big milestone loss, or whether I have let the weight creep back.  Plus, it's measurement time, being the end of the month and all.  Fingers crossed!

Oh, how quickly routines become a scramble...!

Photo courtesy of J. Ludwick, licensed CC-BY-NC

It's days like this that really test my ability to follow a plan.

People who have been reading my blog might have noticed that I am something of a creature of habit (I am aware of the understatement in that sentence, thank you very much).  I get up between 5 am and 6 am and test my blood pressure and blood sugar, then I work out on the elliptical machine, weigh myself, and get ready for work.  I will eat breakfast either at home or at the office, but I will usually have fruit and yogurt, and then I will eat lunch and dinner at the office.   Lunch and dinner are usually comprised of delicious leftovers courtesy of the Nerd, who pre-packages individual meal sized servings of everything on the weekend, ready for the taking during the following week.  I will get home sometime between 9pm and midnight, and I will fall immediately in to bed, where I will read for a bit on my iPad.  If I am very lucky, I will not fall asleep whilst holding the iPad over my head, as that's a quick route to a shiner (don't ask me how I know this). 

I may be an unpredictable glamourpuss in my mind, but the reality is that I am actually pretty predictable.  And that predictability is comforting as I continue on this journey, because it means that I have a routine I can trust to keep me a) exercising 6x/week; b) eating 3 meals per day; and c) eating a manageable number of calories in the range of 1800-2000 per day. 

Predictability goes out the window when I pull an all-nighter.

Last night I was working on discovery answers and a licensing agreement until 2:30 am, and I didn't get into bed until 3 am.  When my alarm went off at 5:30 am I actually got up and tested my blood sugar, but I did not test my blood pressure, or weigh myself, or get on the elliptical - - I was too tired, and I needed to be in the office for 8:00 am for a practice group meeting this morning.  I made an executive decision to try and get at least 4 hours sleep, and left my house with 35 minutes to spare before the meeting.  I did not work out this morning, because working and getting 4 hours of sleep do not go together when you are recovering from an all-nighter.

Trying to squeeze in extra sleep meant that my morning routine was incredibly rushed and I had no time to waste.  When I am cutting things fine like that, I depend on the provisions set up for the routine, because - - trust me - - I don't have time to prepare from scratch.  It was a relatively quick and easy matter to get my yogurt and berries for breakfast (I ate them in the meeting, which was fine because it was a breakfast meeting).  But the only way I had anything close to a decent lunch and dinner is because the Nerd had prepacked so much stuff on Monday night.  If I did not have a fridge full of leftovers, already organized into perfect servings, I would not have had any time to prepare lunch and dinner, and my eating plan for the day would have been put into jeopardy. 

As it was I am a little low in calories and I am having to fill some of the gap with a skinny cow brand ice cream sandwich tonight.  (It's a tough life, I know...!)

I will need the calories when I get home because I still have to do my elliptical workout this evening (!).  I have not missed a workout in 15 weeks, and I will be damned if I am going to let one little all-nighter cause me to miss one now, no matter how tired I am.  Plus, if I skip today, I will just have to work out Saturday morning to make up the time, and I would prefer to sleep in on the weekend.  

So my schedule went from boring and predictable to wild and chaotic all in the space of one day, simply because of the all-nighter. 

If this had occurred three or four months ago, I would have simply skipped breakfast and ignored the food in my house because I would not have had time to prepare anything.  There certainly would not have been a fridge full of fruit and yogurt and vegetables and other healthy choices, let alone pre-packed meals.  I would have ordered some dinner to be delivered in the evening, but that would have likely put me well below 1200 calories for the day, and probably all the wrong kinds of calories, to boot.

It is easier to succeed once you get on a program of regular exercise and healthy eating.  Just having the good stuff in the house takes a lion's share of the problems out of the equation.  The routine gives structure and predictability, making it easier to plan and execute the plan.  On a day like today, when I had to make snap decisions about food and I had to reschedule exercise, it was my familiarity with the plan that made it possible.  I didn't have to spend 10 minutes staring into the abyss of the fridge, because I knew ahead of time what I was going to eat.

I am not good enough at this whole lifestyle thing, or disciplined enough (yet) to go free range and stop tracking my food.  But this minor all-nighter induced blip in the program has convinced me more than ever that I am on the right track.  If a little sleep deprived.