Delayed Gratification -- my phrase for today

Sometimes it helps me to have mental conversations with my inner-self, because I think my problems with food and eating are all in my head and that if I can sort it all out I'll be able to make sense of why I keep messing up and stop getting the same negative results. This is one of these times, so it might not make sense to others. This blog may just be for me.

A local psychotherapist that I follow pointed me to a site called Sixty+Me. sixtyandme.com/start/

I checked out some of the articles and one that caught my attention talked about delayed gratification. This means, putting in the effort now, and not getting rewarded for it until later. This is kind of a no-brainer concept, but very hard to do, at least for me. When you need to lose about 100 pounds it is just so overwhelming and it's so far to go! I get discouraged long before I even make a dent in that number and then eat my way back up to where I was and then some.

I think it is very difficult to think about what I can do TODAY that will make a positive difference in the future. Is eating that cookie in front of me really going to make a difference in the long-run? Maybe not.

But I can see that so much of SparkPeople supports this concept, especially for those of us with a long bumpy ride ahead. For example, breaking big goals down into smaller more reasonable ones that may actually be achievable, say 10 pounds at a time and celebrating each milestone. These efforts accumulate over time and can help us stay the course over the long haul.

The bottom-line, though, is that there has to be commitment, and maybe that is where my problem is. I am not sure I have made that commitment yet; maybe it was just wishful thinking, or maybe I've been in denial about how hard it would actually be. I have come and gone from this site for years, get very motivated and then it gradually fades away. I get very inspired by other people's successes, especially those who have been working at it a long time, but it also makes me feel bad that I haven't yet found the "spark" that others have. Maybe I've been using the "fake it til you make it" approach for too long.

This may sounds pretty negative, but I think it is helpful to get a reality check. It just means I need to keep trying to find out what will work for me.

Anyway, that's the end of my mental exercise.