I’ve written numerous articles about motivation here at Fearless Fat Loss, such as finding a strong motivator to lose weight, 9 suggestions for motivators to lose weight, and how to gain motivation by releasing your regrets.

Instead of writing about positive motivators for weight loss, this post is about those reasons not to start a weight loss program.

Could there really be reasons for not losing weight? Yes! Here are three that I came up with:

1. To get your ex back. If you set out to lose weight to regain someone else’s interest, you very well may lose weight, but what happens if things don’t work out the way that you want them to? If you do not get back together with your ex, will you return to overeating?

First and foremost, you must be committed to losing weight for yourself. If you have a side motivation of “getting your ex back” then that could definitely motivate you to shape up, however without the solid desire to lose weight for yourself, it’s likely that your motivation will wane, whether or not you get your ex back.

2. Because you just feel like you should. You really don’t want to lose weight. You know that you would be healthier and would look better, but you aren’t that interested. However, you feel like you should lose weight and get fit.

To be successful in weight loss, you need to have a strong commitment to yourself and your goals. If your entire motivation is because you feel like “you should” lose weight, then that thought will likely be overrun by your first craving for the old, unhealthy habits that got your overweight in the first place!

3. You found a miracle diet that will solve all of your problems. There honestly isn’t any diet that will help you have long-term results unless the “diet” is actually a change in your lifestyle, which isn’t a diet. 😉

Dieting just doesn’t work in the long run. It can be very tempting to go on another diet because you think that you will lose weight quicker than you would if you just made some lifestyle changes, but what will happen when the diet is over? How will you eat then? Will you go back to your old ways of eating, or did you learn how to change your lifestyle on your diet?

I suggest the path of choosing lifestyle changes that will last. Why work so hard to lose weight, only to end up putting it back on later? If you change your lifestyle instead of going on a diet, those changes will still be with you after you lose the weight, which will help you maintain your loss.

There are many reasons that you can come up with to motivate yourself to lose weight. You could have more than one reason to lose weight, but as long as the main reason motivating you is to increase the quality of life and health for yourself, then you should have a much easier time of staying motivated and maintaining your loss once you achieve it.