There is a social norm of setting a New Year’s resolution at the start of each year. I’ve seen statistics that state only about 10% of these resolutions succeed. If the success rate is so abysmal why is this a popular thing?
Beginnings are new opportunities (so are endings and failures by the way) but there is a whole host of reasons why we can’t seem to realize these opportunities. One is that we set the wrong goals for the wrong reasons.
A popular one is “losing weight.” But why do I want to lose weight? Because my body doesn’t fit the American cultural standards of beauty? (Which have been mostly created by male advertising executives to sell products—the colonial capitalist dominant culture at work.) Because it is healthier to weigh less? (The science actually says otherwise, body mass index isn’t very tied to longevity or other health factors.) So why do I want to lose weight? Because I don’t feel comfortable in my body. So my true goal is not some number on a scale, but a sense of being comfortable with myself as I am.
However, it is very hard to set measurable goals about “being comfortable.” What does comfortable mean? “I will lose 20 pounds” is much easier to track, but even if I were progressing toward this goal, “I lost 2 pounds this week!” Does this further my goal of being satisfied with being me? And if I then gain 2 pounds the next week what happens? Now my emotions are going up and down tied to this situation, I certainly don’t feel comfortable now! I’m more likely to give up on losing weight so I can feel comfortable. So why start?
Back to my underlying goal of wanting to be comfortable being me. There are many more aspects to this than my body weight and shape. This is part of where the neurodivergence comes in. Sometimes I don’t feel comfortable because I differ from the norms in other ways. But this is a big complex problem to tackle. So where should I start? I should start very small. Change is self-reinforcing. If I am successful at making change I’m likely to keep doing it. So I need to set up goals that have a high chance of being successful. And only do one or two at a time. This is where I have to start really analyzing my goal.
I want to feel more comfortable in my body.
What does comfortable mean?
Comfortable means being able to do the things I want to do.
One thing I want to be able do is carry a 50lb bag of cat litter from the car into the house.
How can I improve this skill: weight training.
Comfortable means not being in pain.
I want to be able to carry the bag of cat litter without hurting myself.
How can I improve this skill? Also weight training.
Action plan:
I can start with 10 pound bags and carry them for 50 feet one to two times a week. When this is comfortable I increase the weight.
By really looking at my own specific needs instead of what the social norms are telling me to think, I came up with a very different action plan. I might even lose some weight doing this—except muscle tends to weigh more than fat. But I don’t really care about that number if I can carry a heavy bag without pain!
How is this type of goal setting neurodivergent? I moved away from a norm set by social standards and started thinking about why I wanted to achieve this norm. This required that I really thought about myself in my environment. Other people might have very different (heh, divergent) needs from mine. And I would rather spend my time with people who feel great because their needs are being met than a whole bunch of people who now weigh less but are crabby because they have to restrict what they eat.
More information about weight loss science and the Health At Every Size movement here: https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2891-10-9
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