As you identify your motivations for changing your habits of eating and exercise in order to lose weight, listing the pros and cons of making the changes can be helpful. This process helps to validate your decision to make those lifestyle changes.

The actual process is simple. Just draw a vertical line down the middle of a sheet of paper. Then at the top of the left column write Pros and on the right, Cons. Take some time to list reasons for making the change on the left and the reasons not to make the change on the right. Most people easily come up with more reasons to change their behavior than reasons not to make the effort.

For weight loss, most people list the health benefits, improvements in appearance and increases in confidence as the main benefits they will obtain if they lose weight. The health benefits alone include decreasing the risk of heart disease, diabetes and certain kinds of cancer. In addition, weight loss decreases the stress on your knees and hips.

The negative aspects of changing one’s eating and exercise habits is that it isn’t easy and requires work. You need to take the effort to substitute your new healthier behaviors for your old unhealthy ones.

After my heart attack, finding motivation wasn’t very difficult. The pros of minimizing my chances of having a second heart attack or dying far outweighed the work necessary to change my habits. Ideally, you won’t have to have a heart attack before you change your lifestyle for the better.

Save your list of pros and cons. When you get discouraged as you work through your behavior changes, pull it out to remind yourself of the benefits you’ll get if you reach your goal.

For Your Health – Dr. Bob

Changing any behavior, especially ones associated with our daily lifestyle habits, will take a lot of energy and work.  Everyone has great intentions when they first start a weight loss program or stop smoking.  As they get into the program and realize the difficulty, they often rethink whether it will be worth it.  This is where they need to draw from the strength of their motivation for starting to make these changes in the first place.

In my opinion, it is best to identify your motivations while you are in the planning stage, before you start making your changes.  You need to clearly identify why you are committing yourself to the work involved in changing your target behaviors.  You should write this and all components of your change plan down in a notebook or keep it on your computer so you can refer to it later.

Motivations come in all shapes and sizes.  They can be related to improving one’s health, looking better, being more attractive to one’s partner or wanting to see one’s daughter get married.  They can be somewhat abstract, such as, “I want to feel better” or much more concrete, such as, “I want to stop smoking so I can avoid hospitalizations for my lung disease.”  Motivations can be relatively trivial or much more serious, such as, “My husband thinks I’m too fat, and the spark is gone from our marriage.”  These are common reasons for people to want to change their behaviors.

Again, as you begin to make your behavior change plan, you should identify and write down your motivations. Over the following months as you make the necessary changes you will be faced with barriers to your success.  The strength of your motivations will help you conquer those barriers.  The more meaningful the motivation is for you, the greater its power.

Goals are often related to motivations.  For smoking, it is to completely stop smoking by a specified date.  For the woman who wants to be able to wear a certain bathing suit when she and her husband go to the Bahamas in July, her goal is to lose a specific number of pounds by a specific date, the date her trip begins.

A lot has been written about the characteristics a goal should have.  The concept of SMART goals identifies the key characteristics.  There are some differing thoughts as to what each of the 5 letters stand for, but here is one that makes sense for what we are discussing:

• Specific – What needs to happen by the goal date for the goal to be met?  For smoking, it is usually complete smoking cessation.  For weight loss, it is losing a certain number of pounds or weighing a certain amount.
• Measurable – It needs to be something that you will clearly know that it has been attained or not.
• Attainable – The goal can be reached taking into account the goal date.  Losing 50 pounds in one month is just not safely attainable.
• Relevant – It is relevant to you and your condition and circumstance.  This often ties in with motivation.
• Timebound – There is a specific target date when the goal is to be attained.

As you prepare your plan be sure to use these characteristics in writing your goal. 

Please add your comments on these topics or share some of the motivations you’ve used to reach your own goals.

For Your Health – Dr. Bob

In addition to defining your goal and goal date, you should understand your motivation for making these changes.  Is it for your health?  Is it to better enjoy life with your family?  Is it to get into that bathing suit this summer?  Whatever it is, you should write it down and look at it frequently as you implement your Behavior Change Plan.

Please share some comments and motivations to change that you found effective in your own life.

Dr. Bob