[CHANGES] Argue For Your Limitations

[Sandra Ahten]

Argue For Your Limitation--Sure Enough, They’re Yours

We often hear that “this isn’t a diet, it’s a lifestyle.” What does that 
mean? How can you improve the chances that the habits that you are acquiring 
will be ones that last? That the weight you take off today will not be the 
weight you put back on after reaching your goal? Learn to pay attention to 
the voices in your head. Are yours telling you what you need to hear?

It’s All in the Attitude

Assume that your goal is to be fit and active and in control of your eating. 
Couldn’t you just force yourself to follow a prescribed diet and lose the 
weight? For many people that has been the course. How often I hear comments 
like the one Marion made to me this week: “I know I can do it--I’ve done it 
before. Back in 1986 I fasted and lost over 100 pounds.” Willpower is not 
usually the issue, though for some it seems to be. Sometimes the willpower 
is there through the week but fades for the weekend. Others start with 
willpower, but lose it after a week or maybe two. Perhaps you’ve planned an 
exercise regimen but it lasted for only a few days. Then you spend the next 
week berating yourself for the failure.

So what *is* the answer in getting to our weight goals and having new 
healthy habits ingrained enough to stay? Perhaps it is in our identity. When 
I was a junior in high school, my parents went camping the weekend that I 
was scheduled to take my SAT test. My brother and I, in our well-defined 
“when the cat’s away” tradition, had a keg party. The next morning, I was 
too hung over to take the test. Defending my behavior, I rebelliously told 
my mom that I didn’t want to go to college anyway. The fact was, I had never 
allowed myself the possibility of going to college. I didn’t know how to 
invent or re-invent myself. I clung to the safety of my small-town ways. I 
didn’t know how to consider all the possibilities of life.

During my high school years I read a wonderful book by Richard Bach: 
“Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.” The main character is 
gifted with the burden and the blessing that he, a mechanic from Indiana, 
has the power to change everything about his life and the reality of his 
world. One passage jumped out at me: “Argue for your limitations, and sure 
enough they’re yours.” The seed was planted for me. I continued with my 
self-defeating behavior. I continued to drink and drug, not realizing that 
this was another way of arguing for my limitations. But part of me stopped 
making excuses, finding reasons why I couldn’t succeed. I began to dream a 
bit bigger dreams and tried to think of reasons why they would or could come 
true.

The fruits of thought from Bach’s book gave me the idea that I could 
re-invent myself. When I was twenty and a young mother in an unfortunate 
marriage, I started taking night classes at the local junior college, one 
class per semester. Given my gift of gab and flair for the theatrical, it’s 
no surprise that I made an A in a speech class. What *was* a surprise in the 
end was algebra. I had a solid picture of myself as a math dunce. In Mrs. 
Lee’s third-grade class, I faked vomiting in the bathroom to get out of a 
math test, and I had been dealing with math anxiety ever since. I wasn’t 
surprised, then, that the first college math class I began, Algebra 1, went 
too far too fast. I was quickly in over my head, and I dropped the class. 
The next semester I took a step back and enrolled in Business Math. This one 
I was able to master, and it gave me some confidence. So the next semester I 
moved on to the algebra prep class. Finally, a year and a half after 
starting this grown-up math journey, I was ready to take Algebra 1. And when 
I did, I made a B—I learned algebra!

I became a person with possibilities. I began to have new messages for 
myself: “I am a person who can learn math. I am a person who can persevere. 
I am a person who can finish what I start. I am a person who can do things 
she thought were impossible.” I was reinventing myself.

Give Yourself Credit

Seven years later, though, I was facing some real re-invention. Sitting in 
the office of Chris, my drug and alcohol rehab counselor, I was trying to 
envision who I would be without a cocktail in my hand at a party. I couldn’t 
imagine it. “What will I do if I don’t go to bars?” Lots of people go to 
meetings and then go out to coffee afterwards, Chris suggests. “Like PTA 
meetings?” I respond, incredulous. “I’m really not a meeting kind of 
person,” I inform her with a wry grimace. (This is particularly ironic as I 
look at my meeting-filled schedule these 12 years later.)

Chris gives me a sheet of affirmations to read. I go home and try. They 
sound so hokey. I feel like a bad Saturday Night Live skit before there was 
Stuart Smalley. I couldn’t believe the affirmations. I didn’t like talking 
to myself in the mirror. I quit.

But I realized I had to do something, because I was certainly arguing for my 
limitation. The voices in my head were relentless. “I’m afraid I can’t stop 
drinking; I can’t solve my problems; I will only make a bigger mess of my 
and my son’s life.” So in addition to the counselor who was offering me some 
hope about my future, I had to find a support group to help. They told about 
their own struggles and changes. They believed that if I was ready to let go 
of my old ways of thinking, I could change too. I started to have 
conversations about my fears. I called my sister in the middle of the dark 
nights. She believed in me. She had seen me change. I hung onto her belief 
in me. I remembered the many other changes I had made in my life. I 
remembered the algebra.

In what sometimes seemed like an eternity and other times like a blink, I 
had a year clean and sober. I threw a party for myself. I gave myself 
credit. Yes, it was through the grace of my Higher Power. Yes, it was with 
the help of my support group. But guess what? I showed up. I went to the 
meetings. I said the prayers. I listened for the answers. I stayed out of 
the bars. I did the work. I did the changing. I was no longer arguing for 
the limitations--I was arguing for the possibilities. Oh my god--life could 
be good and easy and fun! My journals began to fill with gratitude and with 
my own affirmations. I began to imagine great things.

Stay the Course

Of course, life has thrown me some curves since then, just as it does to us 
all. Bobbie has been attending one of my groups for almost three years. She 
lost 60 pounds pretty slowly. Then her husband, who had been struggling with 
illness, passed away. About six months after his death the grief really set 
in, and Bobbie started gaining weight. She quickly regained 30 of her 60 
lost pounds. But she kept coming. She kept coming for the encouragement to 
believe that change is possible. For the reminder that she was not expected 
to figure out all the answers, only how to take care of herself one day at a 
time. She came because she wants happiness in her life. She wants a strong, 
agile body able to do the things that will make her happy. Her future, if 
her old habits remained reality, would pin her to her recliner. She has 
dared to see a different vision of herself. This week Bobbie celebrated that 
she is back to the level of her 60-pound loss. More importantly, she shared 
this story of herself:

After going out to eat last week, she still was unsatisfied and decided to 
stop at the store for ice cream. She perused the frosty bins and suddenly 
became aware that a serving of ice cream probably wouldn’t satisfy her, and 
if she bought it she would be battling the remainder of the container all 
night. She asked herself what would satisfy her and decided that a candy bar 
would probably do the trick. As she told this story her eyes were gleaming, 
and she straightened herself up with pride as she described buying the 
candy, going home, settling in her recliner, and thoroughly enjoying every 
bite.

Bobbie was acknowledging that she believed she had the ability to change. 
She could have done the exact same actions but totally discounted them by 
arguing for her limitation: “I still handle my stress with sweets.” “I had 
just one candy bar this time, but that’s not me. I’ll probably go back to my 
old ways soon.” Bobbie decided to argue for her possibilities instead of her 
limitations.

Don’t Stop There

We have to replace our negative self-talk with affirmations-of-the-possible. 
How do you do that without feeling fake? You do it by embracing any positive 
action that you have taken and expounding on it. You allow yourself to be 
convinced--so that you can say the affirmations in your own words and your 
own voice. Sometimes that means arguing with yourself until the positive 
voice wins.

Try this process this week:

1) Identify a negative voice.

2) Give yourself credit for what you’ve done right. Stretch it a little. 
Look for the positive.

3) Argue with the negative voice until you have come up with a positive 
statement that you can believe in.

4) Use the positive action that you’ve given yourself credit for to create a 
new, more general affirmation of your possibilities.

For instance, Bobbie’s internal argument might go like this:

Negative: You’re always giving in to your cravings for sweets.
Positive: On Thursday night I chose not to buy a quart of ice cream.
Negative: You don’t get credit for not bingeing on ice cream when you still 
had a candy bar.
Positive: I took a step in the right direction.
Negative: Well, it couldn’t possibly make up for your overeating the night 
before.
Positive: I am not going to keep focusing on what I’ve done in the past. 
You’re just looking for ways to make me feel bad. Leave me alone--I am proud 
of myself for not buying the ice cream.

If you can’t ever get to the place where you can end on a positive note and 
satisfactorily tell the negative voice to quiet down, then you need a 
support person or group who can help you see the positive. Watch out that 
you don’t take your arguments for your limitations to people who will argue 
for them right along with you. We often tend to bond through misery, but 
this is not helpful to making your long-term changes.

Once you have convinced yourself that you have made some step in the right 
direction, then you need to generalize it. I did this with my algebra 
accomplishment. I told myself that my B was proof that I was a person who 
could learn math. I took it a step further and told myself was a person who 
could change direction in my life and a person who could start what she 
finished.

Bobbie can tell herself that she is a person who can change her mind and 
make better choices at the grocery store--a person who is capable of 
changing life-long habits. She is a person who finds new ways of dealing 
with stress. She is developing habits that will lead to a fit and active 
lifestyle.

Rewrite Your Mental Programs

So back to our initial question: How do you acquire the habits that will get 
you to your goal? How do you ensure that the habits you are acquiring today 
will remain yours for a lifetime? It all has to do with the mental work of 
reprogramming so that you can internalize new beliefs abut the great 
possibilities within yourself. Nearly anyone can force themselves to adopt a 
new behavior for a prescribed period. But unless you reprogram yourself to 
believe that you are a different person, capable of making and sustaining 
all necessary changes in your own life, that forced behavior is still just 
forced behavior.

As with all lessons that we learn, everything is connected. Will you get to 
college? Will you find a way to balance your checkbook? Will you learn to 
handle stress without overeating? Will you find peace and happiness? Taking 
time to program positive messages about yourself in relationship to your 
eating habits and your body will give you the self confidence and experience 
to continue to transform all of your life with greater possibilities. -- I 
am glad to be on the journey toward all good things with you.

Sandra

copyright 2002 by Sandra Ahten
Although I am an employee of Weight Watchers International this message is 
not from Weight Watchers International. I am soleyresponsible for it’s 
content.




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