Motivation

I’ve struggled with this for a long time. The hardest part is to get started. If you were to look at diet/exercise or other lifestyle changes on a graph, the challenge of the first couple days would look like a line going straight up to the sky. It’s like trying to walk up a vertical wall. It is scary and intimidating. But in my experience, after 2 or 3 days, suddenly it evens out, it isn’t such a monstrous wall anymore. It’s unfortunate, because until you get started, it doesn’t matter how easy day 5 or day 500 might be, the first three days are all you can think about, and fear of that initial challenge can make you avoid doing it for years. You can stay miserable for months and years at a time all because of how scary and challenging a few days are going to be.

My point is, you will never FEEL like starting. It’s a vicious circle, the reason you don’t have the energy and the motivation is BECAUSE of the physical condition you are in. Eating healthy and exercising would increase your energy and raise your mood. So it kind of works backwards. We wish we could feel energy and motivation to get started, but that comes later.

That’s the best advice I feel I can give. I am by no means an expert and I am still struggling with my own issues. But you need to stop waiting for the energy, stop waiting to feel good enough, you are never going to feel it. You have to do it without feeling like it. You have to wake up feeling crappy like you have every other day of your life, and just decide that you’re going to start climbing that first impossible wall even though you don’t have the energy or the tools.

I wish I could tell you to do A B and C first and suddenly you will feel motivated. But it doesn’t work that way. You just have to start. And then once you get that first workout and once you have a few healthy meals, you’ll start to feel better and realize that you can do it.