The ONE THING That I Learned About Weight Loss from a Kindergartner

One of the things I love to do outside of fitness is to teach my son, AJ.  One day I was doing some school work with him when he became extremely frustrated and started throwing an all-out tantrum.   This was weird because he is extremely bright and LOVES to learn but today he was whining and crying and saying the work was too hard.

He was melting down fast and ready to give up.  So what was the problem this day?  What made today so different?  Had I gotten a little too ambitious with his work?  No!  None of the above.  The work was NOT hard but there was one major roadblock to his success that he was refusing to rectify.

He was doing one of those exercises where you color all of the words that have a certain sound a specific color and you come up with a cool picture at the end.  He knew how to color.  He knew the color he was asked to use.  He had the appropriate color crayon AND…. The words he was reading were all short three-letter words that he KNEW.  So why was he failing, panicking, and melting down?  The problem was that AJ had all of the tools he needed but refused to follow a SYSTEM so that he could succeed.  He wanted to randomly get to work but soon after beginning the complexity of the task made him stumble.

When we started the exercise, I told him that he should read each word in order (left to right, top to bottom) and put an X next to the words that didn’t make the required sound and a straight crayon mark next to the ones that did.  Following the system I had given him would have helped him, easily ensure that he didn’t skip any words, know which ones needed to be colored at a glance and more quickly complete the assignment.

However just like us, women on a mission to lose weight, he smiled, nodded and then went about randomly executing what he knew.  He read some words and skipped some.  He would stop to completely color the words with the required sound and leave the ones that didn’t make the sound blank (ignoring the system).  He was happy with his less structured method until… he was left with half a picture and no idea which words had already been read.  That’s when the melt down started.

He didn’t know which words he had read already AND the picture wasn’t done.  He was working much harder than he needed to work AND he was frustrated and ready to have a finished product.

Can you see where I am going with all of this?  Does it sound familiar?  It should.

THE LESSON IN THIS STORY FOR US GROWN UPS

So often I have wanted to lose weight.  I knew I needed to lift.  I knew I needed to manage my stress.  I knew I needed to optimize my protein, veggie, and water intake.  I knew everything I needed to know. Just like AJ, I had everything I needed to be successful.  Also just like AJ,  I didn’t SYSTEMATICALLY implement what I knew.  I made random, haphazard efforts.  I was working hard but I was getting nowhere because I didn’t use a system.

Using a system makes a complicated task simple, and easy to continue.

A system also makes it easier to tweak your approach when things aren’t working because you know exactly what you have already done and what type of outcome it produced.

In short, from that pretty normal interaction with my son that afternoon, I got a strong reminder of how important it is on any journey to take the time to pick and follow a system no matter how tempted I may be to quickly and randomly get after the task at hand.

Do you have a weight loss system that you follow?  Or are you randomly implementing the bits and pieces you know like AJ and I?

What did you think? Let me know in the comments below! And if you found this helpful or inspirational, be sure to share.