I can resist everything, except temptation! Oscar Wilde

Is this how you look when eating your treats? Me neither!  What motivates us?

I need to talk about motivation.  A lot of people ask me how I stayed motivated, especially on weeks such as this whereby life is not giving you a chance to prepare or plan your meals properly.  Or when it's just easier to eat anything else.

The motivation to say no.  It's really difficult.  When I first started WeightWatchers I told nobody that I was doing it.  Therefore when I went out for a meal or anywhere that food was, saying no was a huge problem and was quite awkward.

If you have friends that never had an actual weight problem and they say no to food, watch, people just accept it, there is no "ah go on, you know you want it" why is that?  Even now, having lost weight, people watch to see what I eat, not at home because they know I love my food and usually only refuse it if I'm really ill but in other situations, people will say "do you really not want it"  no actually I would love to but I have learned that if I eat everything that I want to eat all of the time I will be 19 stone 4 again.

I am not cured of my Weight problem.  I have not been healed by the food god.  My will power is human.  I still have those times whereby I eat without thought and realise that I have eaten my daily allowance while looking in the fridge to see what I will make for dinner.

So where does my motivation come from? Well, in honesty it's hard work.  Planning has been crucial.  Learning where and what I find most difficult.  Was it alcohol, takeaways or definitely for me, letting myself go hungry and then going shopping, especially in Superquinn walking past all of the cakes.

TV ads nearly broke me.  There used to be an ad on tv for Marks & Spencers.  The music was seductive Santana, and in the middle of it there was a scene where the fork broke the crisp chocolate outer layer to expose chocolate lava oozing from the shell in slow motion.  I'm not trying to be rude but it was food porn.

However I kept this in mind. When you see an advert say for a chocolate bar, there is usually a woman, wafer thin, wearing a silk chocolate gown, with the largest bar of chocolate you could ever find, making the girl look like she is in dire need of a bar of chocolate.  Then in slow motion, she breaks off a square, you can feel the snap, she closes her eyes and you can anticipate the chocolate melting on your tongue.

Have they ever showed, say, the beautiful Dawn French doing the same ad in the same fashion?  Yes and it was a joke, to make us laugh.

Why a joke? apparently it would not have the desired effect if it wasn't?  And the woman on the add probably does eat chocolate like she does in the ad because it really would be a treat for her.

Now imagine yourself and a bar of your favorite chocolate, now, how do you eat yours? Is it more of a gobble than melting moment.  A gobble that will not be as significant as the melting moment and probably forgotten 10 minutes later.

In all of these ads, the woman are usually in a peaceful state of mind, on a luxurious sofa or a bath, relaxing, soft music playing and the idea is that eat the chocolate and you will feel like this.  Have you ever eaten a flake in a bath? seriously.  Maybe it's just me but the crumbles in my bath soggy and being edible would not be a pleasant experience for me.  I would have to fish them out for the bin.

In my extensive research of chocolate eating, I don't remember a time where I felt like that after a bar of chocolate, ever.

When you see the ad in the middle of your favourite tv program and you feel the urge to get a piece of chocolate think, will you look like the lady in the ad?  When out and about and you have the dreaded moment where you have the Mrs Doyle food pushing, if you say yes to humor them will you feel like your having that melting moment.

My point is, food is there to be enjoyed and savoured, don't eat for the sake of someone else or for no reason what so ever.  Treats on WeightWatchers is what keeps me at an even keel.  Therefore I want there to be a melting moment rather than the gobble.

Motivation is not a vigilant state of militant tracking.  It's a thought process and understanding of what is your triggers and how to combat them.  However it is also allowing yourself to have the treat, but making it a treat, so that you feel that you have really enjoyed your food.

To stay motivated, think about what you do and apply it to those situations, see what the scales reflect and use it to motivate you to realise that this is not a diet.  This is your lifestyle, a healthy one with a healthy relationship with food even chocolate.

Think of all the situations you have over come in your life, I mean, death. loss, money trouble, children, work.  Are you going to beaten by a piece of food?

So in answer to the question "what keeps me motivated"? I know that WeightWatchers works.  The only obstacle is myself.

I don't know if any of you will find this helpful but it was this that made me think that being slim and healthy is hard work and I just needed to do it. 

Enjoy the Niptuck way, so you don't have to!