One Bite At A Time

Do you have a lot of weight to lose? Or want to reach some other goal that feels big or unattainable?

Do not spend time worrying about whether you can get to your ultimate goal.

Yes, keep it in mind enough to visualize yourself having achieved your goal, so you can start to live your future self's life now (you need the practice so you know what to do when you get there).

But there is something that is often more helpful and practical to think about along the way.

Think instead about the mini-goals and the steps you have to take along the way.

You have to eat the elephant one bite at a time.

Visualizing yourself at your goal weight, what your life will look like, how you will feel and move, what you will be doing, is helpful.

What is also helpful (alert - here comes the aha! moment) is visualizing yourself taking each action you need to take to get there. 

I repeat:

Visualize yourself taking each action,

every step along the way.

What does this mean?

Well, here's an analogy. If you aren't a runner and set a goal to run a marathon in 6 months, you can't just visualize yourself crossing the finish line and expect it to happen.

You have to visualize yourself putting on your running clothes and shoes, tying the laces, walking over to your front door, going outside, and walking or jogging around the block first.

You have to mentally practice or rehearse each step you have to take along the way, so that when the time comes to go out and take that first short jog around the block, your brain sees it as familiar and safe, and once you start to take the first action (putting on your exercise clothes), the rest will follow automatically.

Same thing goes for changing how you are eating in order to get healthy or lose weight. Or any other goal you want to achieve.

See yourself planning healthy meals, making a shopping list, shopping in the produce section, doing the food prep, eating the meals, sitting with the family watching a movie with a bowl of fruit (or better yet, without any food), etc.

If you practice those steps in your head every day, they become familiar and automatic when it's time to do them in the physical world.

And you can practice visualizing a little bit further down the road as you keep moving toward your goal.

If you are practicing for a marathon, you will advance from visualizing putting on your running clothes and shoes, tying the laces, going outside, and walking or jogging around the block to running for 30-60 seconds alternating with a few minutes of walking. And so on.

You'll gradually up the ante until you are able to jog and run, and finally you'll be able to run the whole distance.

And then you will really be able to believe it when you visualize yourself crossing the finish line.

Can you see how seeing yourself planning meals and making a shopping list, shopping, preparing healthy meals, eating them, stopping when you are satisfied (rather than full), and closing the kitchen after dinner could be more useful than just seeing yourself at your goal weight without practicing the steps in between?

Rehearsing the baby steps in your mind before you take the actions creates the neural pathways and helps everything you need to do be more automatic and easy. 

This is true whether your goal is weight loss or anything else you want to accomplish.

Keep the end goal in mind, but mentally rehearse and visualize the steps to get there too.

And for heaven's sake, don't just visualize yourself there or doing things forever!

Take the first step!

Eat that elephant one bite at a time.