I’ve been on a self-improvement book bender this week! One of the books I’ve been reading talks about the difference between understanding and doing – when people know they should do something, but they don’t take the next step into doing it. For me, this showed up before I started this round of weight loss and getting healthier. I had read all the articles, talked to my doctor, thought it to death in my mind. I knew I needed to get healthier and lose weight – the problem wasn’t that I didn’t understand I needed to do it. The problem was doing – just getting started with getting healthy already!

In case you’re interested, the book I was reading is called What Got You Here Won’t Get You There [affiliate link] by Marshall Goldsmith. It’s geared towards professional development, and as many things professional-development-related, I found a huge relationship to my personal life as well!

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Pounds lost: 56.2

Progress to super goal: 44.6%

Doing the damn thing!

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My Story

It took me a long time to decide that I needed to get started getting healthy. Here’s what my story was like:

I don’t feel good. Looking in the mirror doesn’t make me happy. My cholesterol is getting high. I can’t breathe very well. My husband has to help me tie my shoes. I snore, a LOT. My knees hurt. My back hurts. Everything hurts. Sitting in an airplane seat is so uncomfortable.

I know I could solve a lot of these problems by losing some weight, but I haven’t found an easy solution yet. Plus, I’m so busy. There’s so much going on in my life right now. I really like food. I don’t really like to exercise. What I’ll do is wait until after (the holidays, things slow down, I get less busy, you get the picture), and THEN I will focus on losing weight. THEN I’ll be happy and feel better!

My Problem

The problem with the story I was telling myself is, that things will NEVER slow down. There’s a good chance tomorrow, next week, next month, next year will be just as busy and stressful as today is. By waiting, all I was doing was delaying my chances of feeling better and being healthier.

The other problem was that my life was stressful, in part, because of the very problems I was delaying fixing! I had to go to the doctor more often. Traveling felt like such a chore to get myself through the airport and on to the plane. I stressed about seeing my coworkers because I felt so out of place – and rightly or wrongly – afraid of how they might judge me. It seemed like even minor chores around the house took me longer because it was hard to move and I had very little energy.

Changing The Narrative

Our narrative is the story we tell ourselves about something. I was telling myself that I was so busy and had no time to focus on my health, and so any time I thought about it, everything was filtered through that narrative. I comforted myself with the thought that eating this bag of chips instead of a healthy snack was okay, because I was so busy. Eating a container of ice cream was okay, because I’d had a stressful day.

I had to change my narrative in order to change myself. My narrative had to change from “I’m so busy, I don’t have time” to “I must make time, because this is important”. I had to realize that my “busyness” and “stress”, while real, was an excuse. It was an excuse to avoid doing something I was worried would be hard.

The Reality

The day I decided to start Noom, I didn’t stop to think about how busy I was, or this wasn’t a good time, or that it would be hard. I just did it. There was a moment (well, a few) afterwards where I got nervous and worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with it, but once I got started getting healthy, it felt like the hardest part was out of the way.

And here’s what was interesting: It didn’t take that much time. I still eat food I like. I don’t have to kill myself at the gym. AND it’s easier for me to tie my shoes. I don’t snore as much any more. My clothes are smaller. I don’t have a problem seeing my coworkers – in fact, I feel proud when I do. I’m proud of my progress. All the reasons I had for delaying seem silly to me now. I feel so much better now than I did before that I can’t believe I wasted all that time blaming my “busy schedule” and “stressful life” for not taking action sooner.

I didn’t need to think, I just needed to do.

And I am SO GLAD I did!

If you’re stuck like I was, what do you think is holding you back from getting started with getting healthy? Are there obstacles you are putting in your own way? What’s stopping you from doing?

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