This is week six of the “maintenance phase” on my Weight Watchers journey. Tomorrow I am supposed to weigh in no more than 2lbs over my goal weight. Sadly that isn’t going to happen. After you hit goal you’re supposed to add additional points to your daily target and see if you can maintain your weight instead of continuing to lose. For various reasons I screwed things up on the first day, gained several pounds on our DC trip, and haven’t seen that goal weight since. These past two (hundred?!?) weeks have been super busy and I’m struggling to find time for me. Time to prepare healthy food, time to exercise, time to breath. So tomorrow I will weigh-in and my maintenance phase will continue until I can get it together and get that goal back in sight.

Seems like there should be plenty of motivation, right? Right?!?

Quote from Pinterest

I say there wasn’t enough time for me these past few weeks, but really that’s just an excuse. I make the schedule. I agree to the playdates. I … hell, I can’t even remember all else we’ve been doing. I make the excuses. Why? I seem to be unable to hold on to motivation for any period of time. Every now and again I’m able to grasp it and make good progress, but then it slips away and I make cookies (I have a counter full of cinnamon oatmeal craisin cookies right now!) Where does that motivation go? Why can’t I keep it?

I took a magazine quiz today. It’s been awhile since I’ve done that. It wasn’t a sexy Cosmo quiz, but flipping through the pages of O magazine I saw one called “Tap Your Motivation” which was intended to help me identify my motivation style. Awesome! That’s exactly what I need!! So I grabbed a pen and some scrap paper and thought hard about each of the ten questions. Then I tallied up the scores and eagerly flipped to the outcome. According to Martha Beck there are five motivational styles: Connection, Security, Influence, Accomplishment, and Enlightenment. Guess how I scored? Moderate on all but Enlightenment. Apparently Enlightenment is not for me. That’s good to know, I suppose, but I scored EQUALLY on all the rest. What’s that all about?!? What am I supposed to do with that. I was hoping for some clear THIS MOTIVATES YOU outcome that I could latch on to and rock this thing! (“this thing” being life in general!) Instead I get a lot of moderate. Not really surprising, I am a very moderate person in all aspects of life.

Anyway, I guess the moral of this story is “don’t get to excited about magazine quizzes,” a lesson I learned in my youth but apparently forgot. Lesson two: don’t eat a dozen cookies the afternoon before a weigh-in. Sigh.