Have you ever set a goal for yourself and then, when you hit hiccups along the way, just gave up instead of persevering? Yeah, me, too. Then I learned that maintaining FOCUS, Following One Course Until Success, and CONTROL, Correcting Oneself Nicely To Repair Occasional Lapses, requires work both before and after any journey begins.
This morning, my meal replacement bar 5-day weight loss shock plan delivered much smaller results than it did Monday and Tuesday. Sunday morning, I weighed 186. Monday morning, 180.7, which was a 5.3 pound loss. Tuesday, 178.4, which was a 2.3 pound loss. Today, 177.0, which was only a 1.4 pound loss.
Prior to learning how to focus, I would have gotten frustrated after the third day of decreasing losses. But now, I understand what is happening with my program and why and it doesn’t bother me. I prepared in advance for this decreasing weight loss as time runs on by learning how my body would react to decreasing my energy intake while significantly ramping up my physical training. Now that my gains, which are coincidentally actually losses, are decreasing each day, the ever-positive sum total of them is still recognized by me as progressing according to plan.
How did I arrange this? By perceiving my desired objective of practically perfect performance, by perceiving my present performance, and by perceiving what resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people I had to invest in moving from performing how I was to performing how I wanted to.
The most important part of FOCUSing was choosing a proper practically perfect performance goal (10 pounds of sustained weight loss obtained this week and maintained next week) instead of a ridiculous goal (losing 5 pounds a day for 5 days and keeping it off). The second most important part was to understand how the entire trip to success was going to proceed instead of just starting a course and winging it. The third most important part has been using my POWER by Proceeding Only With Every Resource I had available. The fourth most important part was using BALANCE by Building And Leveraging A Nicely Coordinated Ensemble of resources, which includes my wonderful accountability partner.
My partner, however, did not have as good a day as I did yesterday. He didn’t persistently trickle in his food bars yesterday because work got in his way and perceived he had some metabolic issue and then adulterated his food bar regimen by having a big steak last night to compensate somehow. But, to his credit, he exercised great CONTROL and didn’t beat himself up about it, but we talked about it today and he was already back on the food bar plan and continuing on with me despite a small weight gain because of last night’s steak. Even though he’s not being a big a purist about this course as I am, he is sticking with it in the main, correcting himself by agreeing to only having a small piece of salmon tonight, and, hopefully, he will have a better result tomorrow.
Come back tomorrow to see how things proceed.