Have you ever gone on a diet and decided to lose weight and get in shape? Maybe you went forward with your goal and started eating healthier and working out. Your first couple of days you were feeling good about yourself. You feel proud and maintain your current rhythm. Then, comes weekends where you go out with friends and hangout at places you know you are easily tempted by the choices on the menu. Before you know it, you sabotage. You start asking yourself…why? Why can t I be disciplined? Why did I just eat that junk food?

When you ask yourself those questions your brain will come up with an answer. Usually the answer is you don t have will power. Or you don t have motivation. You then rationalize yourself that you messed up and that you just didn t have the will power to follow through on your goals. Your self-esteem goes down and you re not as motivated to pursue your goals. Eventually, you ll lose all motivation to continue forward and quit. What can we learn and improve on following situation. I ll tell you. What we do know is this when you ask yourself a question your brain will respond by giving you an answer. We also know that asking ourselves why is useless. Asking yourself why is the most useless thing that you can do!!! So don t do it. Instead, ask yourself a more empowering question that is going to really help you and not make you feel worse. One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is how. Asking yourself, “How can I overcome this situation? “How can I stay focused so I don lose motivation?” Ask how.

I am reminded of a situation where I was in a stressful situation where I was with a large group of friends from church and we all went out to eat. We went to a pizza place and all I knew is that I didn t want to feel the guilty feelings by sabotaging my goals. I didn t want to experience the consequences of weight gain by participating with my friends. What did I do? I asked myself how. I said, “How can I overcome this?” So I made an active choice to not eat pizza with them. And also, I didn t judge my friends for doing so. Did I want to eat pizza? Absolutely. Did I eat pizza? Nope. But the stress of wanting to eat pizza was very tempting. To experience the pleasure of eating that cheesy, greasy pizza was very apparent.

In all, I didn t sabotage. After everyone was done eating pizza my sister shared with me that she felt guilty after eating pizza. I was the only one who didn t participate with them eating pizza. How did I feel afterward? Did I feel like I missed out? I felt so good about myself for keeping my goals and I didn t feel like I missed out. Actually, I had gained a notch on my scale of self-esteem. And I felt proud of myself for being able to overcome such a stressful situation. How? By asking how.

“Cap” Josue Cano B.A. C.S.C.S., is a specialized strength and boxing trainer working 1-on-1 with clients who just authored the book: Don t wait get in S.H.A.P.E.: drop body fat fast and get fit quick. He is also an entertaining, funny health and fitness speaker who speaks to college students about college weight gain and has a program called Tackle the Freshman 15. He is available to speak for your organization and can be reached at his website: http://www.dontwaitgetinshape.com or by phone: (877) CAP-3159
E-mail: cap@dontwaitgetinshape.com. If you re in ventura County, call for training at: (805)415-0497

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