Why should I contemplate?
Contemplate grew out of research by psychologist Dr. Jason Wessel. Jason developed a new way to help people more consistently align their behaviour to their intentions.
His research found spending a minute a day answering specific questions about your goals and progress leads to more regular and steady progress beyond progress tracking alone.
Answering these questions, although fairly quick, requires some deep contemplation, which is where Contemplate Weight Loss gets its name.
Contemplate, founded by Dr. Jason Wessel, is a direct evolution of his research.
Contemplate is different from other apps and programs because it doesn't give you recipes to follow or calorie counting guides. Even though those things are useful. There are no diets or exercise regimens. None that the app will give you, at least.
Instead, Contemplate focuses specifically on your internal motivations and drivers, and is more concerned with you staying focused on and motivated with your goal so you can persevere even when you begin to doubt yourself or get caught up with other plans.
This type of approach to motivation works particularly well in a weight-loss context, because so often we know what we need to do to lose weight, but struggle with staying consistent.
The Contemplate method
The Contemplate method roughly goes:
Every day, check in on your progress (i.e., weigh-in)
Set a short-term, positive intention
Answer one of Contemplate's specially crafted questions
There is a *little* more to it than that. Particularly when it comes to the right kinds of things to reflect on. But if you're new to the concept, those three steps should give you a good enough understanding of the process.
The reason this works should be pretty obvious.
Having a daily connection to your progress, your intention, and reminding yourself about things like why it is important, what you can do about it, and things that get in your way keeps weight loss front of mind.
Contemplating builds a strong awareness of your daily habits and behaviours. And slowly, those behaviours start to self-correct.
You can only lie to yourself for so long.
You can only tell the app (but more importantly, yourself) what you need to do and NOT do it for so long until it becomes almost impossible to deny.
What happens, not on the first day, or the second, or even the third, but within a couple of weeks of doing this every day, is you start to feel uncomfortable when you're not actually doing things you know you should do.
And slowly, your behaviour starts to change.
Not because some app, program, or guru told you to how to change, but because you already know how you need to change. And when the change comes from within yourself... well... that's much more sustainable. It's much more authentically you.
Contemplate was designed by a psychologist as a way to channel the potential within you, much in the same way seeing a psychologist might.
So Contemplate is a bit different from other things out there.
The only way to know if the Contemplate approach can work for you is to try it yourself.
That's why we have made it as easy as possible to try it out for two weeks. No credit cards or tricks.
We only ask that you commit to spending 60 seconds a day contemplating your weight loss for at least a few weeks (yes, at least a few weeks; you need to give this a fair go). Then you can decide for yourself.
What have you got to lose, other than weight?
You can sign up now to test Contemplate for free on the web here, or if you have an Android phone, on the Google Play store here.