Crash! And with a jolt, there I was… back in the long grass off the side of the go-kart course. And the frustrating thing? I literally just had people help me get out of the grass on the other side of the course. I’m sure if you had a GPS map from back then, it would have shown wild zigs and zags straight across the go-kart track.
My young self, new to go-kart driving, was so frustrated I promptly burst into tears and didn’t want to keep driving. What made it worse was that my older brother was sailing around the track with no issues at all.
Why am I telling you about this memory from a childhood summer vacation? Because it is a great example of how not to handle your weight loss journey.
In the go-kart, I was so worried about hitting the edge I had already been stuck on, that I turned and swung too far the other way, promptly ending up in the weeds on the opposite side.
There are a lot of similarities here with weight loss.
When it seems like things aren’t going well, it is so tempting to make wild swings with our actions and plans. It feels like everything needs to change at once but all that does is get us stuck somewhere else.
The reality is that everything does not need to change at once. Likely it is just one or two small tweaks that need to be made to start moving yourself down the track towards your goals.
Small shifts are more powerful in the long run. You don’t always see the change or the benefit immediately, but they add up to be quite significant over the long term.
Learning to make small course corrections in the way we drive a vehicle (rather than how I used to drive a go-kart) will build consistency. And big results are built on small things done consistently.
So next time your brain is suggesting that you should chuck everything you are doing out the window and start fresh, picture my go-kart careening from one side of the track to the other and instead choose a small course correction.
This week’s podcast is all about how to actually do this in your own weight loss journey. Listen to the full episode below.
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