Ep #58: Apathy

Hi! How are you today? Are you feeling motivated and are you on track to get to where you want to go? Or are you stuck?

I’ve seen too many people, myself included, do so well for awhile and then just stop.

They say they don’t feel like it, they’re not motivated anymore, they’re lazy.

Or they don’t know why they’re not doing the work, they’re just not.

They lose their belief that their goal is achievable, you stop believing you will be able to stop binge eating, you start thinking it’s not worth the effort, it won’t matter if you eat off your plan or binge this one time, and you keep saying that with each binge.

All this not caring anymore, all this laziness and lack of motivation, it’s all related to apathy.

Apathy gets in the way of you staying on your plan, trying, doing work, and keeping up your momentum.

Apathy put simply, is not caring. It’s lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern. All things you need to have if you want to take care of yourself, make healthy, beneficial eating choices, and reach goals.

You have to care about yourself, have concern for yourself, be interested in what you’re doing, and be enthusiastic about your goal and what you will get from it.

This is what we’ve probably all done with diets we’ve gone on in the past.

We’re in it, we feel good, we’re making progress, and then we let go of it all.

Apathy is always going to leave you where you are, and will probably cause some back tracking.

You don’t feel like managing your thoughts today? Well then guess what, your thoughts are going to manage you.

If you’re not far enough along in your process of stopping binge eating, then that means you’re going to allow yourself to think you want to binge because that’s exactly what your brain is going to tell you. You don’t feel like having a conversation with yourself to try and make the decision to not binge. It’s easier to just let it happen, and when you’re feeling apathetic, you’re not going to stop it.

How many times have you heard yourself say, “I just don’t care right now?”

You’re feeling a strong urge and all you want to do is eat. If you don’t care, then that food will be in your mouth real quick.

What is it you’re not caring about? Your goal? Yourself? Both?

You don’t care about either so you’re just going to let the same thing happen that always does instead of putting in effort to change.

You are not a lazy person, you are just someone who thinks apathetic thoughts. When you think apathetically, and therefore feel apathetic, you’re not going to be willing to use the energy it will take to go against your current programming and habits.

When we don’t try and don’t put in effort, we tend blame our feelings, our motivation, or circumstances. But it’s none of those things. It’s always what you’re thinking and if you’re thinking you don’t care, it doesn’t matter, or you don’t feel like it, then you ain’t gonna do anything different than what you normally do.

Even if you are feeling low energy already, you still have the option of either using what energy you do have to think about what you want to think about and make the choice to just feel feelings and move on, or you can conserve and eat.

There have been many times when I’ve been tired, or just feel down and low and have made the choice to not eat. Would eating be easier? Sure would. But in those moments I didn’t choose the easy way out.

You might think that eating will snap you out of your mood, but spoiler alert, it won’t. It’s not going to help or solve your feelings. You may feel a little up when you’re eating, but as we all know, that feeling isn’t going to last after you stop eating. You’ll be right back to your mood.

When you create apathy, your actions and results will suffer. You’ve seen this happen to you, probably many times. You stop doing the work, and it’s all coming from you not caring.

What’s so interesting though is that any time someone tells me that their binge started by them thinking they didn’t care, and I ask why they didn’t care, usually their first response is, “I do care!”

You do care. You care a lot otherwise you wouldn’t be listening to this podcast right now.

If you truly didn’t care you would just keep on bingeing without any negative thoughts about it.

So stop lying to yourself.

Every time you tell yourself you don’t care or it doesn’t matter or create apathy with whatever thought it is you’re choosing to listen to in the moment, it’s not really what you believe. You’re just letting yourself believe it in the moment. You’re not questioning it you’re just letting it happen.

You’re letting yourself not care.

Choose to care.

And if you don’t feel like it, too bad.

Change happens when you do things you don’t feel like doing. That’s a big difference between successful and unsuccessful people. Successful people do what needs to be done to get where they want to go no matter what.

They stay committed and do the work no matter how they feel.

They don’t lay around because they don’t feel like getting up. They don’t stay up late because they don’t feel like going to bed. They don’t put off their work because they don’t feel like doing it.

They do it anyway.

You can not feel like it but do it anyway because it’s truly what you want to do. You chose this path.

You can choose to care because you do.

You can believe that it will matter because it does.

No one else can care for you. You have to do care and you can’t stop.

I think about people I know who aren’t doing what they say they want to do. I care so much and I want to see them succeed so badly, but I can’t make them be concerned about themselves and care about what they do more than they are. I care greatly but that doesn’t matter.

You have to care for yourself, create enthusiasm, choose to be interested, be concerned about yourself and your results.

Be aware of yourself and what you’re feeling and what your thoughts are and notice when you start going down the path toward laziness and giving up.

Pull yourself out by deciding to care because the truth is, you do.

Have a wonderful week. Bye bye!