Can't lose weight? It's all about stubbornness

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Thousands of people are struggling to lose weight, and the reason they fail over and over is not heredity, lack of time, or love of high-calorie foods. It's about stubbornness.

If you are trying to lose weight, there are many factors that work against you: work schedule, lack of willpower, even family members. But all of these factors are fairly easy to overcome. But stubbornness is not.

This is the very trait that negates all your efforts to get in shape, even if you have already made progress.

Imagine someone is expressing an opinion that contradicts your beliefs in any area, be it religion, politics, or sports. How do you react to this?

Of course, you will immediately want to object to this person. You will be agitated, your heart rate will rise, you may even clench your fists.

You may be completely confident in your beliefs about every aspect of life, but most likely you are not. And your reaction to the opposite opinion is a kind of defense of your ego against the very possibility that you can be wrong. This is stubbornness: mindlessly following your default beliefs.

It’s unpleasant to admit that what you thought was right and led to success in what you did was actually wrong. So you decide to leave it as it is. You just close in your shell even before you listen to someone else's point of view in order to reliably protect yourself from the slightest hesitation about your innocence.

But what unites stubbornness - the inability to challenge your established beliefs - and the inability to tidy up your body?

Stubbornness makes it difficult to understand what's best for you

There is no single standard in a healthy lifestyle and sports. For example, some people get in shape faster if they eat a nutritious breakfast, while others are better off skipping their morning meal. But, if you close yourself in front of any opinion that breaks the existing picture of the world, you will never know what is best for you: to have breakfast or not.

Instead, you blindly follow what you already know and prefer to blame "genes" or "laziness." Of course, both of these factors matter, but a huge number of people who blame their laziness and genetic aversion to sports, in fact, cannot lose weight just because of their stubbornness.

They think of sports and fitness as a talent they don't have, rather than a useful skill that can be developed.

Stubbornness makes you stop

Let's say you love going to the gym in the morning because you like to start your day right. You get up an hour early to work out before work. On the way to the gym, you find yourself in a traffic jam and after thirty minutes spent in it, you realize that you will not have time to work out.

You get very upset and angry. You think of the idiots who get into accidents because of their own carelessness and haste, and just bathe in this anger.

If you act like most people, your irritation will turn into a series of predictable actions and reactions. Your plans for a healthy start to the day are dashed, you are angry and upset, and your bad mood intensifies all the troubles that happen to you during the day. You end up having a nightmare Monday.

Stopping is detrimental to fitness progress. You focus on mistakes, things that you cannot influence, instead of thinking about what you can change in the future. Thus, you have a negative attitude associated with fitness.

The flip side of this destructive attitude is compassion. Perhaps the driver who caused the traffic jam was not a jerk. Perhaps it was a young mother who was trying to make the child more comfortable, because of which she was distracted from the road and created an emergency.

Or perhaps you just won't mentally destroy yourself and others for skipping your morning workout because the events were out of your control. Shit happens. Forget about it and go on with the day as if nothing had happened.

Stubbornness prevents you from being flexible

Here's an excerpt from a popular article where Michael Rowe, host of the TV show Dirty Jobs, tells the story of his friend Claire, who asked him for relationship advice:

“Look at me,” she says. - I take care of myself. I came here. Why is it so hard?

- How about that guy at the bar? He looks at you.

- Not my type.

- Truth? How do you know?

- I just know.

- Have you tried dating sites? I ask.

- Are you kidding? I will never date a person I met online.

- Good. How about a change of location? Your company has offices throughout the country. Maybe you will try to move to another city?

- What? Leave San Francisco? No way!

In fact, Claire doesn't need a man. She wants the "right man", a kindred spirit. Moreover, a soul mate with the same zip code as hers. She created an image of this guy in her head many years ago and, damn it, she was already so tired of waiting for him! I didn't tell her this because Claire has a penchant for sudden violence. But it's true. She regrets her loneliness, while the rules she has set for herself more or less ensure that loneliness will continue. She built a wall between herself and her target. A wall of conditions and expectations. Maybe you also have such a wall?

Many people who want to get in good physical shape have similar attitudes about a healthy lifestyle. It should include no alcohol and no smoking, daily jogging, and other rules that are not easy to follow from the outset. And for such people, anything that goes beyond their imaginary "healthy lifestyle" is defeat. Maximalists.

Viewed this way, stubbornness takes away your flexibility. As strange as it may sound, flexibility is the key to adhering to the rules, and adhering to the rules, in turn, is the most important thing for any diet.

By following a diet and choosing the right foods at least 80% of the time, you will achieve much more in the long run than by carefully following ALL the rules of a healthy lifestyle for several weeks.

How to overcome stubbornness

How to get rid of stubbornness? Remember that stubbornness is a defensive reaction that is designed to preserve the status quo and your self-image. Subconscious fear of changing established habits, fear that these changes can lead to a lack of comfort and self-esteem in the future.

Agree that you get stubborn from time to time. The next time you behave in a well-established mental pattern that is far from rationality and logic, catch yourself doing it. You will experience a sea of emotions that fuel your self-righteousness. Remember these feelings and be on your guard the next time they recur.

Another time you notice this, ask yourself, "Why do I continue to support these beliefs and why are they so important to me?" For example, many people literally jump when you tell them that breakfast is not the most important part of their daily diet. And when you ask why they are so sure that breakfast is healthy and necessary, they answer something like “Well, I heard about it somehow” or “Because I always pay a lot of attention to breakfast”.

Is it really worse to be upset that you are wrong than to keep doing the wrong thing? I do not think.

If you were wrong, admit it. Understand that you should feel gratitude, not shame, as you change your mistaken beliefs and attitudes to the right ones. This means that you are growing and already a little better than most people who buy non-GMO foods, because "GMOs seem to be very harmful" and "everyone does it."

Instead, you will find something that is right for you, something that helps you move on on your chosen path and create the right habits that fit with your lifestyle.

At first, it is quite difficult to break your attitudes, not paying attention to the groans of the oppressed ego. But practice decides everything, and over time you will learn to deal with your stubbornness.

Keeping yourself in good physical shape will become easier. The obstacles of the strict taboos set by the mysterious omniscient overlords from the health magazines will be gone.

More importantly, you will find that success in this endeavor does not depend on an ideal lifestyle in which you never do wrong. It depends on how you correct your mistakes and use them for personal growth.