Maintenance can feel boring
When you successfully get to your weight, it feels good – it’s an achievement. But what is the outlook after that? Change nothing? Just keep things the same? That sounds boring and leaves people confused, lost or even discouraged. You will have to go deeper to find a new source of motivation to keep the weight off.
Find your deep reason
Your new source of motivation should come from a deeper reason for why you want to maintain cycling weight. A good way to identify that reason is to try the “5 whys” exercise. First, you ask yourself why you want to keep your current weight. And after that, you ask why again. You repeat this five times and that will get you very close to the heart of what is actually behind your goal. These are examples of what an answer to the final “why” might sound like.
To be able to enjoy cycling my whole life even when I’m old.
To stay healthy so I can ride a bike with my kids and grandkids one day.
To be fit enough to go on cycling adventures with my friends whenever the opportunity arises.
Your meaning becomes your big goal
The great thing is that the meaning behind your goal that you just identified can become the big shiny goal just like weight loss. Now you have something you can connect to when you need to do something hard in order to stay on the path. You can always ask yourself: “Is what I’m doing right now helping me reach my new big goal, my meaning?
You can trust yourself
The ability to be flexible with your diet, having supporting activities, and deep motivation will all help you with one thing, building self-trust. This is the key overarching skill that will help you navigate weight maintenance over the rest of your life. The future is always uncertain and life will throw all kinds of obstacles and problems at you that will make your weight wellness seem secondary. Only when you can trust yourself that you will be able to correct the course no matter what, can you be sure that the cycling weight will stay off.
