WEIGHT LOSS IS BORING.
I want to talk about the power of embracing boredom today, but first I have to backtrack a little…
One of the things that we don’t talk about a lot is how boring weight loss can be. We share our victories on social media and sometimes our failures too. We talk about the power of consistency and pushing yourself. We talk about the challenges of picking ourselves up after we fall. You know, the old “Fall nine times, get up ten!” motivational speech! Basically we note the peaks and valleys because they feel more relevant when it comes to sharing our experiences. I want to open the door to talking about the days in-between the highs and the lows, because they are greater in number.
The days that you get up, start your day off right, hit your goals and head to bed. Then you repeat the same again… and again. And while our perspective should be that each of those days is as much of a win as a milestone on the scale or in the gym, I think more often than not we just see them as a checkmark in a completion box and because of this we grow used to them and as human beings that can breed boredom.
So what happens when you’re bored? In my experience working with clients this can be when things aren’t as “exciting” and it manifests in three ways:
Food Boredom
Meals feel repetitive. Nothing is appealing. You miss meals feeling like events. “If I have one more egg, I am going to go mad!”
Disrupted Gym Routine
Workouts feel the same. Jumping from program to program to find variety. “Am I going to keep doing this for ever?” “Maybe I have earned a day off, that would be different!”
Stagnant Goals
You start setting goals that are easily achieved but not at all challenging. The “wins” feel hollow and almost unearned. “Why should I worry about new goals if I am just doing the same thing every day anyway?”
Getting refocused and energized around each of these topics can help battle boredom, but there will be times where this gets frustrating in and of itself. So I have some out of the box advice, stop fighting boredom. Acknowledge that it happens, and there’s nothing wrong with you or your program if you feel it. Now accepting boredom as inevitable doesn’t mean you accept the negative reactions we have to it. As I detailed above, boredom left unaddressed can lead to actions that are counterproductive in terms of progress and big picture goals. What I want to encourage you to do is find a new perspective on boredom through the lens of your “why.”
That’s right it all comes back to that personal reason your progress and all of the work involved has purpose, your WHY! When boredom starts to creep in, take some time to revisit your why, you should have it written down somewhere by now. If you haven’t yet, start there. Take a blank page, write WHY in big bold letters at the top and starting listing the reasons why it is important for you to take the actions you are to improve your health. Refine and revisit it regularly to make sure those reasons resonate with where you are in your journey. And definitely pull it out when boredom sets in. But don’t just read it, read it with this in mind,
“Being bored right now is ok because…”
Boredom is not pain. Boredom is not illness. Boredom is more about repetition and under stimulation, things that occur naturally on a weight loss journey. By all means find ways to distract yourself when it feels overwhelming but challenge yourself now and then to sit with it, and understand that you are more powerful than it is. Prove that you can be bored and survive. Why? Because if you can live with boredom, you might just be able to live with other powerful feelings that threaten to affect your positive actions.
In the end, being bored but still successful is a major win. Is this something you struggle with personally? If you want to talk about how we can help you work through it all, check out our programs here.
