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Comment by zoba | Hacker News Reader

I've been wondering about this line of thinking lately, and I'm confused if its actually productive.

For example: I need to lose about 15 pounds. If I just accepted myself as me, I'd never really work towards the better picture of myself, 15 pounds lighter. Doesn't this apply when trying to better yourself in other ways?

If I'm not imagining a future where I'm better than I am right now, how will I ever get to it? What easier way to imagine how one could be better than to look at what other people have, and hope to have it myself.

I feel like, eventually, people just end up settling and stop fighting to better themselves. I think the older someone is, the more likely the are to have settled. I hope for myself, that I keep fighting.

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As I've gotten older I've come to discover that there's a really fine line to walk here. You want to be motivated. You want to develop the best version of you that you possibly can.

However, being CRITICAL of yourself is about the most counter-productive thing a person can do. When you are critical of yourself, you do things for the wrong reason. Lamenting about how fat you are leads you to diet, but you never make real lifestyle changes to support it. A personal trainer friend of mine has made the observation that the best way to lose weight and get fit is to first develop the ability to be happy.

There is science to support this mindset. Constant self-teardown comes with real physiological changes in your body. You'll be more anxious, which means you'll spend more time in a sympathetic nervous state. The increase in adrenaline and cortisol leave you feeling sluggish and worn out. Guess what happens when you feel like that? You eat to much, you sleep to much, and you generally do everything you wanted to stop doing in the first place!

There are a whole host of things that go on when you push yourself instead of learning to be yourself. None of those things are very good.

I've been a driven guy. I've been successful in a startup. I've failed terribly. As I reach my mid-30's I've found myself focused on becoming content. Surprisingly, I've found that my productivity and desire haven't really changed much. I still want to do really well, but now I keep everything in perspective and I'm much happier for it.

Thank you so much for that. If I just started doing something I compared myself to professionals, if my work started to look good compared to them I started comparing myself with best people in profession I knew about, and if I could not find anyone better then I would start comparing myself against imaginary ideal. I knew it was bad for my self esteem but I thought that it will make me achieve more. Thanks for showing me a reason why being so critical about myself is not needed.

> If I just accepted myself as me

Mistake #1. You have to visualize yourself as temporarily overweight, then go about exercising/changing your diet (you know, more fiber, less carb's) to reach that new set-point.

Measure your caloric intake, and your weight every day. If your intake is less than your standard metabolic activity, you'll lose weight. It's that simple.

> I feel like, eventually, people just end up settling and stop fighting to better themselves.

Don't do that! Yes the majority of people do that, but that doesn't mean you have to as well. I have too many old healthy people in my family to fall into that trap.

Weighing every day is terrible advice for those trying to lose weight. Weigh yourself at most once a week else the short term fluctuations (hint, drinking a pint of water is half a kilo) will distract you over the long term goal of getting to a healthier base weight.

I find that weighing daily helps me notice changes in the weight trend fairly quickly. I've also calibrated my sense of what the normal fluctuations are by graphing my weight and taking moving averages for a while, though. So I can look at the scale reading four pounds above yesterday morning and say "hmm, maybe I shouldn't have eaten that whole pizza by myself".

Faster feedback loops are better for training. You just have to spend a little time installing a filter sometimes.

The article doesn't say you need to accept yourself as you are. The advice is to be yourself and not compare to others. This is great advice and it's the reason I'm a happy person.

The self is a state that can only be observed instantaneously, so change is an expected phenomenon. The key to losing that weight is to forget about the fact that you want to lose the 15 lbs. Don't focus on the result, but instead on the journey that will get you there. Learn to enjoy a daily workout and healthy diet. Success is a mindset, not a destination.

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