Why do I want to lose weight?

NOTE: This is pretty long, but it is a deep look into the chaos that goes on in my head. If do manage to read it all, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Last night Mandy asked me something like: "Do you think it's possible that you think about your body too much?" My initial response was something like: "Yeah, probably." Since that short exchange, I've been thinking about why I am concerned about my weight/body fat.

Last night, I announced that I had lost 15 pounds and accomplished my goal of trying to get down to 210 pounds. Some people responded with congratulatory remarks, others asked what my secret was, and someone even asked what motivated me to try to lose weight. To the motivation question, I responded by explaining that part of my personality is that I like to compare my results to others. The StrengthsFinder test calls this competition. Then, I told them about the Ragamuffin Top Challenge.

It was about half an hour after my announcement that Mandy asked me the aforementioned question. I think that her asking could possibly be at least in part because she is tired of hearing about it. If that's true, I don't hold it against her. Even my wife gets tired of hearing about it at times. And beyond that, I even get tired of it sometimes.

Most people might get down if the people around them are not supporting them when they are trying to lose weight, but when I hear my wife say something like, "You don't even need to lose weight," I half-way agree with her. So, I don't get mad/hurt/disappointed or any of those things.

See, most of the time when you are trying to lose weight, people don't question you, but in my case, I started my weight loss challenge in better shape than most people. I was close to being heavier than I had ever been, but even at 225, I was probably only carrying ~12% body fat. So, when someone would say, "You don't need to lose weight," my response would be, "Yeah, you're probably right. I don't NEED to, but I WANT to."

So, all of that was to get to the main point of this post. I am trying to figure out WHY I want to lose weight/body fat.

There's always the easy answer... health. I think this plays a role in why I want to lose weight, but I don't think that health alone is enough of a motivating factor. If it were, I probably would do more to improve my health overall and not just lose weight.

Then, there is that competition thing I mentioned before. I think this is the biggest factor, but not in the way it is described in the StrengthsFinder theme of competition. I thought at first that I was motivated by comparing myself to others, and I would be lying if I said that it was a non-factor. There is a component of comparing myself to others, but I don't think it is the driving force.

When I tried to think of who I would be comparing myself with, I couldn't come up with a good answer. I thought about my friends, co-workers and other people around me, but I don't think I am really competing with them. Not many of them are trying to lose weight, and the ones that I know of that are trying to shed some pounds do not have my same body type. So, comparing myself to them would be like comparing apples to oranges.

Then, I thought that I could be comparing myself to other athletes, e.g. Michael Phelps and Yang Wei, per my last RMTC video. However, I don't think that I'm motivated by comparing myself to them. Long term, if I keep up my weight loss and working out, I do think that I could end up with a physique similar to an Olympic swimmer, but that is not really a stated goal. Also, to claim to be competing with Olympic athletes would be a bit silly given that they exercise for a living.

You may ask, if I'm not competing with my peers and I'm not competing with other athletes, how is competition the biggest factor in my motivation to lose weight loss? It may come across as complicated, but in my head, the explanation is simple. I am competing with myself. More aptly, there is an internal competition and the number on the scale is the scoreboard. I'll try to explain.

You know in the cartoons where you see the character and he is trying to make a decision and on one shoulder he has the devil and on the other shoulder he has the angel. My struggle is similar to this.

There are at least two competing voices in my head. One voice is reminding me how much I like to drink sweet tea and how much I like to eat stuff like hot wings and ice cream. My mouth is watering now just thinking about those things. Another voice in my head is the proponent of good health.

When it comes to a decision about what to eat or whether or not to exercise, voice number one usually says, "Com'on. Just eat it. You know it tastes good, and you don't need to lose weight anyway" or "Do you really feel like going to the gym? You don't need to exercise." Then, there is voice number two that plays to my competitive nature saying, "Really, are you going listen to him? Are you going to let him win? What good will it do you to drink that? Or. eat that?"

Sometimes voice number one wins, but recently voice number two has been winning out. Thus, I have been losing weight.

I don't think that this internal struggle is an uncommon one. Probably everyone who is trying to lose weight goes through this. I just think that the competitive part of my personality plays in heavily here. So much so, that now that I have met my goal, I don't want to quit.

I know this may make me out to be borderline schizophrenic, but I just thought I would let you in on what I've been thinking since last night.