Remembering Your Why
Developed by Dr. Jessica Yu, Clinical Psychologist
Introduction to Remembering Your Why
The conversation around long-term weight loss tends to focus around healthy eating, activity, medication, and lifestyle. What often gets overlooked is our ability to engage in these behaviors—our motivation.
It’s something a lot of us struggle with: 67% of people on a weight loss program had difficulty meeting goals due to motivation1.
Motivational dips are a natural part of the weight loss process. Yet motivation is one of the biggest factors for long-term success. So, where can we turn to when it’s in short supply?
Answer: Remember why you started.
Remembering Your Why
Change doesn’t happen overnight—it happens over time. Remembering Your Why means remembering you’ve got this.
Remembering Your Why uses techniques from Motivational Interviewing (MI) to strengthen motivation along the weight loss journey. Using simple questions, we can re-engage with our goals from the inside, and then out. Keeping change moving in the right direction.
Motivational Interviewing
Motivational Interviewing can help us get to the root of our desire for change, and strengthen our commitment to it.
What it looks like:
Open questioning: Asking ourselves how changes may be meaningful.
Affirmation: Acknowledging our strengths, efforts, and past successes to build our confidence in the ability to change.
Reflection: Reinforce the key points made during open questioning and affirmation.
Tips to Remember Your Why
Whether it’s five days in or five months, MI can be used at any point of the weight loss journey. It’s particularly useful in moments of fatigue, or feeling doubt around the ability to maintain last-lasting weight loss.
Before you begin, consider turning this into a journaling exercise and recording your answers for deeper reflection
Step 1: Open Questioning
If we’re feeling stuck or demoralized in our weight loss journey, we can ask questions to remind ourselves why it’s important.
When we began our weight loss journey, why was it important to us?
What makes us want to do something about our weight?
What are the most important things to us? What impact does our weight have on that?
How would we like our weight to be different? How would we like our health to be different?
If we were to continue on our weight loss journey, how would things be different for us?
For example, someone might see these questions and think:
“I have three young kids. They're the most important people and things in my life. It's honestly really hard to keep up with them. I don't have the energy, the stamina, or the speed to run around with them at the park or bike around the neighborhood or do some of the really physical stuff they love to do. It makes me feel bad. If I continued on this weight loss journey, I'd be more active, more energetic, more limber. I could see myself climbing on the play structures with them, playing tag, taking them out to ride their bikes and scooters. I'd also model health and an appreciation for the outdoors, which is important to me.”
Step 2: Affirmations
Affirmations give us an opportunity to reflect on our wins at a time when we feel stuck. Here, we can acknowledge our strengths, efforts, and successes to date.
When it comes to our weight loss journey, how have we excelled? What do we know we’ve done well?
What have we done to get to where we are in our weight loss journey?
What have we achieved in our weight loss journey? Think of all accomplishments, big and small.
Step 3: Reflections
In the last stage of MI, reflections and summaries can help us internalize our reasons for change, our strengths, and our success.
After reflecting on why we began our weight loss journey, we can think about how we’d like our weight and health to be different, and what would be different if we continued on our journey? Why does weight loss matter to us right now?
After reflecting on our strengths and successes, how would we like to build on what we’ve already done so far to lose weight/improve health?
Share reflections with someone we trust. Let them know how they can help us succeed in our weight loss journey—and use them as a means of accountability and support.
Next Steps
Remembering Your Why can give us the motivation to go the distance—and build confidence in our long-term success.
No matter where we are in our current weight loss journey, we can stop to remember our why and recommit even stronger to our goals.