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I planted a few antique roses a decade ago. All but one flourished.
For the first year or two, it only bloomed once and only produced five or six flowers. Beautiful though they were, I knew something wasn’t right.
So I moved it about two feet further away from a fence to reduce the shade time. The next year, it did better, but I knew it had more potential, so I moved it further out again so that now it stands in the middle of the bed amongst the perennials.
That season, it bloomed and flourished.
Then, in February, we had a snowstorm and an unusually long period of freezing weather – so not normal for Texas – I lost a number of plants and perennials in that bed.
The rose lives, and it has been bursting with blooms for nearly a month now.
It took some trial and (my) error.
It struggled through years of not doing so well, but now that it gets what it needs, it is flourishing.
For years, I wondered why I could not succeed with weight loss. I created the right environment (mostly – which was part of the problem). I purchased the right foods, I exercised, I bought all the products, potions, and powders that were supposed to make it work. However, that didn’t ensure consistently good choices.
I still wasn’t in quite the right spot – close, but not quite.
To make it work, I needed accountability to a person. I’m the type who will move heaven and earth to do something if you’ve asked me to help you, but to do it for myself? Not so much.
Sound familiar?
We are not alone; in fact, the majority of us need external accountability to meet a goal we set for ourselves. It is the very basis of coaching. We can all research and study the information, methodologies, tricks, tips, and hacks. We know the basis of every nutrition plan. We know what to do – it’s the doing of it that we struggle with.
What prevents, what sabotages most people in their weight loss efforts is when and how we abandon what we said we would do. We get stressed, anxious, or frustrated. We’ve had a really long day, week, month, or year. We want SOMETHING to be soothing, and food is easy and has been our go-to for years. Ah, but wait – I said I wouldn’t. But – and we abandon our goal for the moment.
It’s just how we’re wired.
How do we address that?
Create external accountability. The gold standard of this is to hire a coach, but gathering a group of friends can work if you respect their expectations of you. That’s the key: your awareness of their expectation will hold you to account while you build good habits.
