Are you feeling frustrated and discouraged about your weight?
Do you wish you could manage your weight permanently?
It makes little difference where you are on the scales, whether you are overweight, obese, morbidly obese or obsessed with maintaining a certain weight, your preoccupation with your weight begins to impact all areas of your life. You feel stuck and your weight holds you back.
How many people do you know continually try to lose weight using traditional weight loss methods, typically diet and exercise?
It is our most favoured ‘go to’ action when we decide we need to lose weight, but what if there was another approach that led to permanent weight loss?
What evidence do you have that shows traditional weight loss methods work long term? Is it true that you will lose weight and keep it off permanently through diet and exercise alone and has that been your experience so far?
If you are anything like I was, the only way I knew how to change my eating habits was through diet and exercise. I would reluctantly buy a ticket (usually a season pass, sometime around spring!) for the diet and exercise roller-coaster, crossing my fingers that this time it would be different.
This time, I told myself, I would finish feeling on top of the world, exhilarated, excited, happy and proud of finally pushing myself beyond my previous failed attempts! I would join the ride full of promise, excited and positive.
But after the first few steep climbs and scary descents my excitement would inevitably fade, replaced with ‘how long till I get off this thing’! It is little wonder that we fear starting another diet and when we do our mindset has us already failing. Could it be time for a different approach?
Why do we keep repeating the same action but expect different results?
Most traditional weight loss programs provide you with information about nutrition, healthy eating, portion control etc and if you strictly follow the rules you will lose weight. Nothing new here.
It is after all a simple formula – energy in versus energy out. However, there is plenty of evidence to show that it can’t only just be about how we control our weight through food and exercise. If it was that simple we would be seeing a lot more results…..we would be seeing a lot less overweight people!
As our lives and our minds take shape, that simple formula becomes more and more complex as we add layer upon layer of experiences, altering and preventing our desired result. We learn to avoid or simply don’t bother challenging our need to add these layers and complexity in the first place. Eating becomes our preferred way to deal with the burden and discomfort of the layers. Eventually, our weight gain becomes a consequence of that complexity.
No one ever asks how come we are overweight or why we eat for reasons other than physical hunger? Instead, we try and treat the consequences, our weight through the only methods we know, diet and exercise. We treat the symptom rather than the cause. Using food to cope with the events or layers in your life is what stops you from losing weight and keeping it off permanently.