Here’s the thing you’ve gotta understand about motivation.
It comes and goes. It ebbs and flows, like ocean waves on a beach.
People constantly ask me how I stay motivated, and how they can stay motivated.
What they don’t get at first is that if I relied on “motivation” to accomplish my goals, I would not be where I am. You would not be reading this blog post. The Code Red Lifestyle™ would not exist.
Instead of waiting until I’m “motivated” to do stuff, I create routines to follow – routines that include setting up my “success environment.”
Here’s an example of how that can look.
Let’s say we have two Code Red Rebels: Sally and Karen. Both have 80 pounds to lose, and both start out REALLY motivated.
They buy Code Red-approved foods, get the Code Red Cookbook, and join a 10 Pound Takedown.
At the start of their journeys, when that fresh excitement from all the dopamine flooding their brains is firing, they both stick to the plan and drop a lot of weight.
As the weeks continue, and the weight doesn’t come off as fast as it did at first, and the dopamine levels drop because this isn’t “new and exciting” anymore, both Sally and Karen feel their motivation waning.
Here’s where things get interesting.
Sally did not follow my instructions and clean the junk food out of her house.
She did not sit her family down and share her heart about how much this means to her, and how she’d love their support even if they don’t wanna eat the same way she does.
Sally doesn’t prep any of her meals in advance. She just “wings it” with everything.
So when Sally’s motivation hits a low point, she’s in a stressful state, and her emotions are telling her to eat in order to cope with them, she opens the freezer, pulls out a half gallon of chocolate peanut butter ice cream, and eats it ALL.
Afterwards she’s disgusted with herself, goes to bed feeling sick, and wakes up to an unwelcome four-pound gain on the scale.
“What’s wrong with me??” she thinks. “Why can’t I stay motivated??”
This completely preventable cycle repeats until Sally decides there’s no point in even trying, and goes all the way back to her old ways, adding another notch to her mental tally of how many times she’s failed at weight loss.
Now contrast Sally’s experience with Karen’s.
Like Sally, Karen’s motivation eventually started to ebb and flow. Stress and challenges came up in her life, and yeah, she thought about going off the rails.
But unlike Sally, Karen got the junk food out of her house. She asked her family for their support, and suggested ways they could support her. No tempting “cheat foods” were around to take advantage of her low motivation.
Plus, Karen plans and prepares her simple meals a few days in advance. Instead of having to waste more willpower and lean on low levels of motivation to figure out what to eat, she opens her fridge and pulls out one of her simple, delicious prepped meals. She heats it up, eats it, enjoys it, goes to bed a little earlier than usual to keep herself out of the kitchen, and the next day wakes up to a 1.6 drop on the scale.
Do you see what I’m saying with this?
Neither of these women had sky-high levels of motivation the whole time they were losing weight.
But one created a success environment, and the other did not.
That’s why the answer with regard to your motivation is not to fixate on how you can “stay motivated.” It’s to create your success environment so you don’t HAVE to rely on motivation.
So take a look around your house. What can YOU do, starting right now, to set up your success environment?
If you’ve got tempting, unapproved foods in the house, get them out. If you “can’t” for some reason, look at other ways you can make them a non-issue for you.
Plan and prep your simple meals. It’s not hard. Stick to single-ingredient foods, or make more of the foods you’re already making, and it’ll be fast and easy.
Get your water for the day ready the day before, so you don’t have to “get motivated” to start it.
Relying on motivation is not a success strategy. Create your success environment so you don’t NEED motivation.