There are many personalities on this forum, and some of you are not fans of being “audacious.” But I would submit that, when all is going wonderfully with your 5:2 journey–not moderately okay, not “fine,” but wonderfully–then you can’t help but feel audacious!
I would further submit that, with some serious RESOLVE (more on that in a moment), being Audacious in August is Achievable.
First, a definition. Audacious as I’m using it means daring, spirited, adventurous. If you want to read the details of the word’s history, here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/audacious But let’s discuss what Audacious has to do with August.
I’ve done this journey several times now of gaining weight, losing weight, gaining it back, losing it again…and while I’m getting better and better at learning what particularly motivates me, and what triggers are likely to lead me to abandonning 5:2, I have a distance to go before I’ve lost my extra weight and have learned how to keep it off permanently. So, you could be justified in questioning if I am qualified to lead an “audacious” journey in August…after all, July–just as an example–certainly wasn’t particularly audacious for me!
Here’s where RESOLVE comes in, and the best explanation is to repeat most of what I wrote in August 2021, when my key word was “Aspire”:
What’s going to be different about this month, so that the success we all aspire to actually takes place? We none of us aspire to over-eating, to letting down our guard, to being indifferent to our goals. So why do we sometimes fall so abysmally short of reaching them? Something has to change, but what??
I don’t know–-oh, that I did!!–-but I think it centers around our mindset. I think that we all THINK we resolve to do well each day…but we’re actually stating a wish, not a true resolve. “Resolve, to firmly settle on a course of action.” There’s no “hoping” involved in “resolve,” right? I don’t know about you, but I seldom actually “resolve” to eat correctly on any given day, I “hope to eat correctly”…and when I give in to temptation, I’m seldom anything but resigned. I’m resigned because, in the back of my mind, I know I was merely hoping, I wasn’t truly resolved.
So what does resolve look like for you? Like a firm course of action, or more like a weak hope? Can you resolve something today and truly mean it, not simply “hope”?
That’s what I wrote then. Now in 2023, my challenge to you as you prepare for August is to think through how often you actually RESOLVE and when you’re actually merely hoping. I challenge you to think through how you can change your meager hopes into audacious RESOLVE. And how you can set goals that are actually Achievable. Because, for example, you can RESOLVE all you want to lose 40 pounds in August, but that just ain’t gonna happen, right?
But. If you set a goal of having, say, 9 successful FDs in August and you actually have 9 successful FDs in August that you can call that Audacious! And knowing how we all struggle with NFDs, even more Audacious would be to have NFDs that don’t go over whatever you set as your goal. Never mind whether you lose weight in August, or how much you lose, because you cannot force your body to lose weight. But you can most certainly control whether or not you stick to your FD/NFD goals.
So how about it? Can we
* Absolutely ban the words try/hope/luck from our posts and our mindsets in August?
* Set a goal not for how many pounds we’ll lose, but for how we’ll behave? For example, “I’ll fast twice a week without fail”?
* And since NFDs seem to be the Waterloos for all of us, what achievable goals can we set where they are concerned?
That’s it for now. Thoughts? Are you ready to set Audacious but Achievable goals for August??
2:45 am
28 Jul 23