Do you really want to lose weight? Or do you just think you should?

In The Two Brain Threat we talked about how important motivation is in decision making. The decision not to eat tasty food goes against almost every instinct you have and that’s why most people slip-up. The parts of your brain dealing with short term and long term rewards compete when making decisions.

For your brain to reliably choose the long term reward of staying on a diet over the short term reward of food, you need to create in your mind a really valuable long term reward for staying on a diet. Finding a really strong and valuable long term reward for staying on your diet will help your brain make the decision not to give in and eat the tasty food it so desperately wants.

Don’t worry if you can’t find a reason, the strategies in this book assume from the start that you can’t always stay motivated enough to prevent the slip-ups. But life will be a lot easier if you can find a powerful reason to control your weight.

Let’s see if you can find a reason to control your weight. Imagine for moment you are the main character in a play about your life. What do you think motivates your character to lose weight and stay on a diet?

Spend some time now and think about why you want to lose weight and stay on a diet. Block out some quiet-time for yourself and think about your life. Ask yourself why? Why do you really want to lose weight and stay on a diet?

Here are some potential reasons for staying on a diet:

1.      Health. We’ll see in the Know Your BMI strategy all the nasty health consequences related to obesity. Overweight people have an increased risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, infertility, joint and pain problems, and other illnesses. And you probably won’t just have one problem, you’ll have several.

2.      Well-being. Being lighter generally makes you feel stronger, more energized, and more mobile. You will feel be able to move without pain and take part in fun activities.

3.      Beauty. Maybe you want to look hot. Perhaps you want to fit in your clothes better. Or maybe you feel pressured by society to conform to an unrealistically thin ideal.

4.      Money. Being sick is very expensive. The healthier you are the less you’ll spend on medical costs and the more money you’ll have left over to spend on other things.

5.      Your Children. Even if you aren’t concerned about yourself, you might be very concerned about your child’s health. There is an alarming growth rate of Type II diabetes in children as young as 10 years old. Statistics show that one in three children born today will develop diabetes in their lifetime. Children with obesity-related diabetes face a much higher risk of kidney failure and death by middle age than people who develop diabetes as adults. Plus, with uncontrolled Type II diabetes, your child will look forward to constant pain from neuropathy, going blind, having limbs amputated, and dropping dead of a heart attack. Sorry to be so brutal here, but this is serious business.

6.      Maintaining Independence as You Age. If you want to be fit and play with your grandchildren rather than prematurely enter a nursing home, controlling your weight is a good plan. Being heavy is hard on your knees, hips and ankles. If you maintain a lower weight you may be able to live independently longer as you age. One study found that extremely obese people, those who are 80 or more pounds overweight, are over twice as likely as normal-weight people to stay in hospitals longer or end up in nursing homes after an illness.

7.      Special Events. People can get motivated to lose weight for important events like weddings, vacations, and reunions. But after the event is over, you also lose your motivation. Special events are not a persistent source of motivation.

8.      Help the Economy. A recent study found that each one year increase in life expectancy was worth an average of $1.2 million per person to the economy. It seems the longer you live the more productive you are, which adds to the wealth of the nation.

Can you think of any others? Perhaps there is some deeply personal reason that is meaningful to you?

It appears that the reasons for staying on a diet primarily center around health, yours and your family’s, and how you look.

Are these highly motivating reasons to lose weight and stay on a diet? It depends on who you are and where you are in your life. For a lot of people, the clear answer is no. These aren’t really motivating reasons to control your weight. Otherwise fewer people would be overweight.

The reason why there are few compelling reasons to stay on diet is clear: food has power. Food tastes better than being thin feels. Most pledges of “it will be different this time” melt under the unrelenting reward of food.

That is, until you get a wake up call like a stroke, a heart attack or diabetes. Contemplating your death can motivate a lot of people, but even death is not enough to motivate you every moment of every day for the rest of your life.

You’ve probably seen sad images of people still smoking through the wracking coughs of emphysema. They have every motivation not to smoke, yet they still do. The addiction is that strong. Food can also compel you to go against your own best long term interests.

Fear of a serious medical problem isn’t the only motivation though. Maybe one day you just can’t stand who you see in the mirror anymore. Or maybe you miss playing sports like you used to. Or maybe you think that you need to make an effort to attract a person of the appropriate sex.

Base at least some of your reasons for staying on your diet on joy not fear. Even people facing the threat of open heart surgery don’t make lasting changes in their life. Fear alone won’t work. Why would people be motivated people to live longer when they are miserable?

A lot of people simply aren’t happy enough to want to live longer and they don’t want to give up the few sources of happiness they’ve found. It would be like someone bobbing up and down in the ocean after a wreck giving up their life preserver. You would never give up your life preserver. You would cling to it with every ounce of energy you had left. And that’s what people do with food. They cling to food because it makes them happy and they can’t see anything taking the place of food in their lives.

That’s why you need a vision of your life that includes joy. Being happy is a reason to control your weight. What if staying on your diet would give you pleasure and make you happy? What would be worth living for?

Hopefully you have found some really powerful and meaningful reasons for you to control your weight. But, unfortunately, even that’s not enough.

We’ve seen in The Gumption Threat how your motivation can wear down. We’ve seen in The Distraction Threat how easy it is for you mind to lose focus. We’ve seen in The Power of Slip-ups Threat how few slip-ups it takes to gain weight. And we’ve seen the power of food.

Clearly, you can’t rely on motivation alone. Your Designer Diet helps you to win despite not having perfect motivation. In the times when you are really motivated and more in your logical mind, you will be able to set up the strategies that work, for the times when you lose motivation.