And so it is with our health, weight and fitness challenges. Purpose evolves from the gap between where you are and where you want to be - i.e. the as yet ‘undone’. This gap is uncomfortable, and filled with longing and frustration, yet it is the source of your motivation, your reason to focus and to move ahead with your efforts. Nurture this motivation, by constantly reminding yourself of your purpose, and by imagining what it will feel like once you are closer. All the adverts that sell you quick and easy results are robbing you of this motivation. They offer a supposedly perfect and easy solution, but don’t buy it - at best these things work for a short while, but seldom over the longer term. Real change is indeed possible (see two entries ago) but it takes patience and a willingness to put up with discomfort. The discomfort might be physical, e.g. going to gym (rather than collapsing in front of the TV), or it might be emotional, e.g. acknowledging the stress (rather than ‘burying’ it under food). If there is no discomfort, then you might well be stuck in a comfort zone, with gradually diminishing purpose. Are you ‘gatvol’ enough of how things currently are, to put up with the discomfort of change?  And to keep doing so while you do whatever it takes to close the gap between where you are and where you would ultimately like to be?  That’s what it takes to make real change. There are no short-cuts.