Chrissie Webber works as a writer, business coach and motivation/ leadership trainer and is Managing Director of Life-Shapers Ltd, an online weight-loss motivation company. With over 20 years experience in the field of business and people development she has an expertise in the area of motivation for permanent weight loss.
Following a lifetime of weight issues - at her heaviest, over 21 stone and a massive size 30 – she has personal experience of diets and their devastating effect on size and psyche. With a background in nursing, psychology and business coaching, coupled with a lifetime of dieting, she developed and successfully used a series of models and tools that enhance weight loss motivation. Now over 5 dress sizes smaller and having sustained her weight loss for several years, Chrissie continues her passionate drive to change the mindsets of people away from a ‘Scarcity’ dieting mindset – where food is demonised as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – to an ‘Abundance’ mindset where mind, body and spirit work hand in hand with food and nature.
This week I have joined a new gym! It is the 5th time in my life I have joined such an establishment, so I had to seriously consider how I was going to activate my motivation to make it work this time. In light of the fact that over 80% of people who sign up for gym/leisure club membership, stop going within the first 3 months, it was time I seriously considered my ongoing motivation enablers. If truth were known I never even managed to achieve 3 months of regular visits to the other 4 gyms!
So what makes this time any different? Firstly, I decided on a set of criteria - Motivation Enablers - that would inspire me to increase my physical activity regularly...
1. Have fun
2. Meet new people
3. Be part of a group doing the activity
4. Work with people who share my philosophy about exercise and weight loss
5. Find an activity that inspires me to keep going back / doing more
6. Easily accessible
7. Inexpensive
Then I started to think about all the abundance of choices open to me. Quite a number were discounted, as they did not fit my criteria. It was then that I realised that all the other physical activities I had tried in the past, and didn't stick to regularly (including the gym), such as swimming, walking and cycling, I had undertaken alone. No wonder I hadn't stuck at them, they did not match my criteria of being part of a group.
The next stage was for me to be a ‘butterfly’ and flit between different activities, or in some cases just explore them a few times...
* Dance classes
* Rambling Group
* Yoga lessons
* Ladies only gym
Trying out a number of activities was great fun, I met new people and it left the door open for me to put a few activities into my life instead of just one. As it turned out, to my great surprise it was the Ladies only Gym, Curves, with their Abbreviated Resistance Training that I found ticked all my boxes.
Now that all my Motivation Enablers are ticked I find myself seriously looking forward to my fun activity every day. I will keep you posted on how well I do with sustaining the momentum, but I am not really worried as there are two or three other activities in the pipeline for when or if I get bored with this new activity!
Why don't you set your Motivation Enablers for your increased activity and then go out and have fun finding what really suits you.
Happy hunting!
