Proof that my motivation system is working

Everyone who starts a new diet wonders whether they'll reach goal. I am sure that there have been people who have lost 50kg, been 1kg away from goal, then put it all on and more. How do I know that my new idea is going to work? I don't. But I can make a reasonable conclusion. Since starting the weight loss, today I have lost the greatest amount of weight continuously in the last 9 years. Today I have lost 7kg continuously (my definition: I gain 1kg or more, and reach a recent maximum. I start to lose weight, with occasional increases here and there. I reach a recent minimum, and put on 1kg or more. The continuous loss is the difference between the recent maximum and minimum), my previous best was just under 7kg, in the first half of 2005. Before that, in 2000 I lost 11.7kg continuously, so I'll break that in about 2 months.

Yesterday I posted about how I was going to use running as a motivation, and how I was going to use it. I could not have been more wrong about that idea. I considered deleting it, but decided to leave it in because I want people to see my motivation mistakes and how I figure out how to correct them.

First, I was going to use 30 days as a length of time: if I am further away from the horizontal axis of the last graph in the posting 30 days later, I start running. This goes against my statement in the first posting of the blog: Most people can lose weight for something 4 days into the future. So why am I using 30 days? It's far too long. Second, running is not a good disincentive to lose weight, simply because it's too easy to ignore. Things that are easy to ignore should be used as incentives, rather than disincentives. I can choose to ignore buying coffee at the supermarket, or ignore going to see a film. These are much better disincentives because they are passive.

A much better solution is to use the normal three motivations stated at the start of the blog (coffee, films, swimming) with the graph. Am I further away from the horizontal axis than the last time I (bought coffee, saw a film, went swimming)? If yes, I can't do any of them.

I guess I am caught between two issues - I want to not take years to finish the weight loss. If the longest I can go without a haircut is probably 4 months, then the haircuts at specific weights (90, 85, 80, 75, 70, 66 kilograms) which means that losing weight could take 24 months. That's far too long for me. On the other hand, I know from experience that telling myself that I have to lose at a specific rate will result in me 'rebelling' and giving up. I don't really know if 100g a day loss is achievable long term, if I find myself struggling I can drop it back to 90 or 80 grams pretty easily.