Motivation

It’s Wednesday so we’re talking about weightloss again.

Did any of you try out that recipe from last week yet? I’m telling you, it is so darn good. This week, I’ve got 5 more recipes picked out to try – 1 smoothie, 2 main dishes and 2 desserts. I’ll let you know next week what I thought of them.

Good news for me this week. I lost over 4 pounds last week, making a four week total of 12 pounds down. I also measured myself again. I lost a total of 3.75 inches. I’m sure the loss of pounds will slow down soon and that’s fine. It’s nice to have this much of a loss right away, though. Helps keep motivation up.

That leads me into my discussion today. Motivation. For me, that’s hands down, the hardest part of developing a healthy lifestyle. Let’s face it, changing out bad habits for good ones is difficult. When it takes a while to see the benefits physically, what makes you keep going?

I’ve mentioned SparkPeople here before. It’s the method I’ve chosen to institute these changes in my life and I think I chose a winner this time. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I was talking with an acquaintance I’ve known for a while now and just learned that she’s been doing SparkPeople and lost 75 pounds with this program.

My excitement prompted me to buy the book, The Spark, written by Chris Downie. This is the man that spent 5 million dollars of his own money to provide the free website that millions of people are using to lose weight and become healthier.

I’m about halfway through it and already I know it’s a keeper for the bookshelf. Even if you aren’t trying to lose weight, maybe you’re trying to make other changes in your life. While the book is focused on losing weight and choosing a healthy lifestyle, what he has to say can be applied, and should be, to other situations.

He talks about starting out small so that it’s easier to be consistent. There are four cornerstones that he discusses and that they are interconnected so building on one will help build the others. It’s common sense advice written in a conversational tone that makes the reading easier to digest.

If you think you might be interested, head over to Amazon. You can “look inside” the book to see if it’s something you’d like to pick up. I recommend it.

What motivates you? What do you do to keep your motivation high? What life changes are you trying to make right now?