When the scale isn’t reflecting the numbers you’d hoped for, it is easy to feel deflated and lose hope. We spoke with Steffany Hanlen, a Personal Performance Coach who has worked with NHL players, Olympic and World level figure skaters about staying motivated.

“It is really easy to get disheartened when you put weight on, especially as it is the body’s natural cycle to lose some weight and then put it back on, especially with women, so it can be a little like three steps forward, two steps back,” says Hanlen,  “It’s the relationship with the long term vision for your life is what can really help you move forward.”

Identifying Your Goals

The first thing that Hanlen does with her clients is to help them identify clear goals. “I make sure that their goals are linked to their personal values. It is very difficult to achieve a goal if it doesn’t resonate with who you are from the inside out,” explains Hanlen, adding that you have to get deep to get to a real meaningful goal instead of just identifying the one that is easily reached on the surface.

“I do an exercise with my clients called, “How big is your why?”, which helps people come up with their 3 biggest whys. There’s the “Big Why”, the “Bigger Why” and the “Biggest Why”. The Big Why is usually the one that sits on the surface, like I want to feel good or I want to look good in my clothes, the most obvious one for that individual, the Bigger Why is the one that sits just underneath the surface, it's usually more personal, and the Biggest Why is usually the one that is hardest to get to” says Hanlen.

Hanlen quotes an example of a client who wanted to lose weight because she had diabetes, and was told by her doctor that unless she lost weight she would die. “The fear of death wasn’t her Biggest Why, it was the fear of leaving her children without a mother, and once we’d identified that, she could keep going back to that reason as a motivator,” says Hanlen, “She was able to say “They are more important to me than that piece of chocolate cake,” and keep bringing her reasoning back to them.”

Once you’ve deeply identified your goals, Hanlen advises going back to them often and really taking the time to think through your reasons as a way of keeping on track.

Identifying Your Wins

Hanlen says that something we don’t do often enough, which can be very motivating, is to identify our wins. “Start to identify what your wins are, it might be that you walked by the mirror and didn’t know it was you, or you put on a pair of jeans and they felt good, or you chose a salad instead of fries,” she says.

“We have to start to identify what the wins are, because wins are so elusive for us. We are trained to not identify our wins or brag or be proud of ourselves, we are conditioned to be hard on ourselves,” says Hanlen. She admits that this can be hard to do, as we are taught that it isn’t nice to brag, and to do so certainly isn’t very Canadian, but it is important to voice our little victories and cherish them – they can help carry us through when we are feeling demotivated.

Nix the Negative Self-talk

Another thing that Hanlen says we need to do is to change the way we talk to ourselves. “Even some of the most successful women I work with have negative self-talk and a crisis of confidence can affect anyone, even the most successful athletes,” she says.

“We really are all driven to live our best lives but sometimes we get overwhelmed or frustrated by the day to day, and sometimes, especially where we are living other peoples values where we compare ourselves to the outside, is where we get ourselves in trouble. Even the best athletes in the world do that, they’ll tear themselves apart comparing themselves to the other best in the world,” says Hanlen.

Hanlen says that we need to be much gentler with ourselves and stop comparing ourselves to how society dictates that we should be or look. “When a woman looks in a mirror and can say “Hey girlfriend, how you doing today?” or “How do you feel today” instead of “Hey, you big fat cow,” that is important because really the only relationship that you are dealing with is the one in your head lots of times,” she says, “If we have being thin connected with being loved then it is very hard to look in the mirror and say, “I love you girlfriend, you’re hot, you look great”. We aren’t conditioned socially to be able to compliment ourselves.”

“And that’s what I do with my clients, I eliminate all the chatter and the marketing and the advertising that they see on television and in magazines and I say what matters to you and how do we get you on your list?” says Hanlen, “We all have these to do lists, but very rarely do they say, take care of and nurture ourselves.”

Hanlen says that nurturing ourselves is vital – “In our society, the notion that is supported is that you need to be a supermom and put everyone else first then you are a good person, but that is a bunch of garbage. It’s no different than when they say on the airplane, put your own mask on first before helping others.”

Be Realistic and Forget Quick Fixes

When you are feeling disheartened, Hanlen says that you need to keep referring yourself back to your Biggest Why, and stop expecting a quick fix.

“It may have taken you twenty years to put that weight on. To think that you are going to take that weight off in 6 weeks is just setting yourself up for failure. We are as a society focused on quick fixes and instant gratification. You need six months to a year to work on any major goal like that – you need time to turn the ship around, so to speak,” she says.

For more information on Steffany Hanlen, visit her website.