Choose To Lose Weight: Thoughts On How To Do That

In her book, “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes,” the singer Judy Collins writes about being an alcoholic by the time she was 20. She notes that “I did not drink because I had problems. I had problems because I drank.”

In writing this, Collins is suggesting that the circumstances of one’s life have little bearing on whether one drinks or not. The circumstances of one’s life are simply a convenient excuse for taking a drink. 

This way of thinking has implications for dieting as well. Some will say that they go off their diet because they had a bad day at work or because of money problems or because their children are being particularly difficult. Food marketers who extol the virtue of “comfort food” to make one feel better support them in this choice.

But suppose the circumstances of one’s life are simply a convenient excuse for eating without regard to nutrition or weight control. In other words, one doesn’t overeat because one has problems. Everyone has problems. One has weight problems because one overeats. The circumstances of one’s life have no bearing on this choice.

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Something that will greatly assist dieters in making the choice to be healthy is to create a team of people who will support one another. As noted in a story in the November 15^th, 2011 issue of the New York Times called “For Weight Loss, A Recipe Of Teamwork And Trust,” “Research has always shown that if you want to adopt and maintain new habits, it helps to not do it alone.”

However, it’s important to choose a group of people who are friendly but not close friends. As the article notes, “People who are too close to each other tend to fall into permission giving.”

When it comes to losing weight, love must be tough.

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Finally, at this point, is there anyone who needs diet and nutrition advice? Is there anyone who needs to be told that sugary cereals and soft drinks are not good for one’s health? Is there anyone who needs to be told that exercise is important?

I was thinking about this while reading an obituary of Dr. Muriel Petioni who died at the age of 97 on December 10^th, 2011. Dr. Petioni started practicing medicine in the early 1950s and, from that time until her death, preached against sugar, junk food and obesity. As she often told her patients, “You’re digging your grave with your fork.”

60 years after Dr. Petioni started practicing, the USA Today newspaper on June 16^th, 2010 ran a story called “Four Steps To Fighting Obesity.”  The steps are based on a panel’s recommendations called “2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.” The steps are:

1.   Cut calorie intake and increase physical activity.

2.   Shift to a more plant based diet.

3.   Significantly reduce the intake of foods containing added sugars and solid fats.

4.   Meet the 2008 “Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans” (at least 2^1/2 hours of moderate-intensity physical activity each week or 1^¼ hours of vigorous-intensity activity).

I’m sure you’re not slapping your forehead in amazement and proclaiming, “What a revelation.”

As Judy Collins writes in her book, “Each day I chose not to drink.” Each day, each hour, each second, we have the option to make healthy choices or not. No matter how much information we may have about nutrition, we have to transform our thinking to transform our bodies. 

Does Your Personality Make You Fat?

Take this test to determine how hard or easy it will be for you to lose weight and keep it off. Rate yourself from 1-5 according to the following scale on each of the items listed:

5 = Frequently

4 = Often

3 = Sometimes

2 = Rarely

1 = Never

·   I am impulsive

·      I am antagonistic

·      I am neurotic

·      I am depressed

·      I am conscientious

·      I am self disciplined

And here are the results as they appeared in an article called “Weighing Personalities” in the December, 2011 issue of Psychology Today:

1.   Impulsive people take on challenges quickly and are, therefore, likely to stay on a diet because they don’t obsess about which diet is the right one for them. They quickly choose a diet and stick to it.

2.   Antagonistic people generally lose weight and keep it off because their antagonism causes them to have an attitude of “I’ll show you” and they generally do “show” others by sticking to their plan.

3.   Neurotic people worry a lot and that worry forces them to focus on their diet obsessively, causing them to lose weight and keep it off.

4.   Conscientious people and self disciplined people are the least likely to keep weight off. These kinds of people tend to “seesaw,” losing weight and putting it back on repeatedly. This happens to conscientious people because they become so tense trying to stick to a diet that they often quit. Self disciplined people beat themselves up if they gain even a pound. The self criticism becomes so painful that they eventually give up their diet.

These results are based on work done by a team at the National Institute of Aging.

Are you surprised by the results? You should be since I made them up. But before sharing the “real” results with you, let’s pause for a moment.

Suppose those had been the real results. Would you have immediately stopped being conscientious and self disciplined and tried to be more neurotic and depressed?

Or, if you were already neurotic and depressed, would you have congratulated yourself and stopped trying to be happier?

This is the problem with all personality tests that attempt to correlate personality with behavior. Knowing the results makes little difference. I know depressed people who are as skinny as a rail and I know self disciplined people who work all day at their computers and have gained enormous weight because they consume sugary foods and drinks as they sit and work.

I am reminded of a friend who has a PH.D. in industrial psychology. When he was in school, one of his instructors gave the students a test to determine their personality type and how that type might react to stressful situations. At the next class session, the instructor handed back the results. Most students were amazed by how accurately the test described their personalities. Even those who weren’t entirely in agreement with the results commented that the test was not far off from their self assessment.

After listening to the students marvel about the results, the instructor told them that the test results were a sham. Each student had received the exact same results.  

Stop believing that it’s hard for you to lose weight because you have an “addictive personality.” Or because “I’m the type of person who just can’t stop eating sweets.” Or, “I lack self discipline.”

In case you’re interested, here are the real results as reported in the Psychology Today article:

1.   Impulsive people have trouble planning ahead and resisting temptation.

2.   Antagonistic people have higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol which contributes to weight gain.

3.   Neurotic people are often those whose weight “yoyos.”

4.   Depressed people frequently experience changes in appetite which may lead to that same “yo-yoing” effect.

5.   Conscientious people and self disciplined people have the easiest time losing weight.

You’re not surprised by any of these results, are you? They just make no difference. You still have to choose to lose weight.

10 Beliefs That Will Empower You

Transform Your Thinking To Transform Your Body

What do you believe about how to lose weight and keep it off? Here are ten beliefs that will challenge your thinking. If you find yourself resisting any of these beliefs, consider the possibility that the belief you are resisting is exactly the one you should adopt.

Of course, like all beliefs, they aren’t the truth, but they will empower you in your choice to live a healthy lifestyle.

1.   Losing weight and keeping it off is a matter of integrity, not morality.

You are not a bad person if you go off your diet and you’re not a good person if you stay on it. You are, simply, a person who honors his/her promises or you are not. Confusing integrity and morality will cause you to blame yourself rather than being responsible for your choices.

2.   Blame makes you a victim. Responsibility gives you freedom.

Blame puts control outside yourself. Even if you blame yourself, you’re suggesting that you are unable to control yourself. On the other hand, if you are responsible, then you are fully empowered to choose to lose weight and keep it off.

3.   Blame is self indulgent.

Blaming yourself is what you use as an excuse for not keeping your promise to yourself to stay on your diet. You may say, “If only I were a stronger person.” Or, “If only I had more self control.”  These are excuses you use to gain sympathy if you go off your diet. In reality, you are plenty strong enough and you have all the self control you need.

4.   Your feelings make no difference.

If you go to the gym and exercise your muscles when you feel like it, you will build muscle. If you go to the gym and exercise your muscles when you don’t feel like it, you will build muscle. Don’t use “I don’t feel like it” as an excuse to go off your diet.

5.   Losing weight will make you thinner and healthier. Not happier or wealthier.

Once you lose weight, you may find true love, eternal happiness and lots of money. None of this, however, will have anything to do with the weight loss. However, when you lose weight and keep it off, you may come to believe that you now deserve love, happiness and wealth. That new attitude may attract love, happiness and wealth into your life.

6.   Gaining weight will not make you unhappy unless you choose to be.

The circumstances of your life don’t make you unhappy. You are unhappy because you choose to be.

7.   Those who lose weight and keep it off have a long term perspective.

If you say you’re going to lose weight for your daughter’s wedding, high school reunion or to bring your blood pressure down, that’s what you’ll do. Then you’ll put the weight back on after the wedding, the reunion and when your blood pressure goes down.

8.   There is no such thing as “procrastination.”

There is only that which you are doing now, that which you are planning to do later and that which you have no intention of doing at all. If you say, “I’ll start my diet tomorrow,” you’re not procrastinating. You are simply choosing to not diet today. Labeling yourself a “procrastinator” is just another excuse to not do what you said you would.

9.       If you’re not losing as much weight as you had hoped, you’re not doing enough to lose the weight.

The story “Americans Are Fat and Expected To Get Fatter” appeared on the November 17^th, 2011 National Public Radio blog (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/11/16/142414818/americans-are-fat-and-expected-to-get-much-fatter). According to the story, doctors often avoid talking with patients about their weight because patients will quit going to the doctor if they feel they're going to be told they're not doing enough to lose weight.

Think about that for a moment. People go to a doctor to get healthier. The doctor honestly tells them that they need to exercise more and eat less. The patient’s response: Find a doctor more likely to lie to them.

If you think you’re doing “enough,” keep a log of the food you eat and the exercise you do for two weeks. After two weeks, ask yourself, “Am I really doing enough?”

10. If you say you want to lose weight and keep it off and you don’t, you’re not committed to losing weight no matter what you say.

Examine your motivations. You may actually not want to lose weight. Do not judge yourself for this (remember: It’s not a moral issue). You will have greater integrity and feel better about yourself if you admit that you’re not interested in dieting than if you pretend to be.

Choose To Lose Weight: Permanent Weight Loss Is Brain Science Not Rocket Science

You have to transform your thinking to transform your body. This isn’t rocket science but it is brain science. Let me explain.

A woman I was having lunch with was telling me about the spiritual retreat she had just returned from. At the retreat, she had learned a spiritual practice that she had been committed to doing every day.

When she returned from the retreat, she did the practice every day the first week. Then she did it four times the second week. The third week found her practicing only twice and, in the last two weeks, she hadn’t practiced at all. She was asking me why I thought she was failing to do something she had so clearly been committed to do.

Does this sound familiar to you in your struggles with weight loss? Have you ever found yourself wondering why you are failing to keep your commitments even as you are eating that dessert?

I encourage you to stop looking for the psychological reason why you are failing to keep your commitments. For example, I know people who, after years of therapy, now know that they over eat to get back at their parents who were critical of them when they were growing up. But knowing this makes no difference (in fact, in many cases, their parents had long since passed away). They still over eat.

Even after you have a complete explanation for your failure to keep your weight off, you still have to keep your weight off. Knowing makes no difference. Only action will produce results.

Consider that whatever we do, we do because we’ve trained ourselves to do it. You know that you have to train your muscles to get stronger. Well, you have to train your brain to change your habits. And the only way to train your brain to change habits is to change habits and do so repeatedly until the new behavior becomes an old habit.

Change is uncomfortable not because there is something inherently uncomfortable about the change but rather because our old habits pull us back into old ways of behaving. We literally miss the old way.

For example, I haven’t eaten bread for two years. But when I was in France and they put those delicious smelling rolls on the table, you’d better believe I was tempted. But my new habit was stronger than the old one.

Here’s where the brain science enters the picture.

With repetition, certain neural connections in our brain become “hard wired.” In some cases, it took years to create those connections and it may take years to make new connections. I’ve loved bread, for example, ever since I was a child. I remember, in fact, eating a full meal and then eating bread as though it were a dessert.

Those who lose weight and keep it off have simply spent sufficient time creating new connections and, therefore, new habits that are stronger than the old habits. I’ve simply been avoiding bread long enough that I now have a new habit.

It’s why we say that “time heals all wounds” (or time wounds all heels). Permanent weight loss is permanent because people have been willing to tolerate the discomfort of making those new neural connections permanent.

Permanent weight loss occurs, by definition, over time. Whatever you choose to do to keep your weight off permanently, do it repeatedly until it is permanently a new habit.

Choose To Lose Weight: Accept The Responsibility, Not The Blame

Why haven’t you lost weight and kept it off? I’ll bet that’s a question that has haunted your waking hours and, perhaps, your sleeping ones as well.

You’ve read the diet books. You’ve explored the psychological and physical explanations for weight gain. You know what foods to eat and which to avoid. You are more expert on the subject of dieting than any expert in the field.

An article in The Daily Beast from November 10^th, 2011 attempts to explain why you’re having so much trouble. The article entitled, “Will I Get Fat? 15 Signs You’ll Gain Weight” discusses the “myths and the realities” of why people put on weight. Specifically, the article suggests that getting married, quitting smoking, the winter holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) and job loss cause weight gain.

On hearing this, I bet you nodded your head in assent. Perhaps you’re anticipating the upcoming holidays (or remembering past ones) and imagining the difficulty you’re going to have foregoing the cakes, cookies and pies. You may even have given yourself permission to go off your diet for the holidays, intending to make a New Year’s resolution to start again.

During these tough economic times, you may have been out of work and found yourself putting on weight. Who wouldn’t? The stress of a job loss and the empty hours with nothing to do but eat would make anyone gain weight.

Or maybe you just got married (congratulations). You know that your married friends have gained weight. It is inevitable that you will as well.

And quitting smoking is, of course, a key explanation for why people put on weight. After all, they have to have something to put in their mouths to substitute for sticking a cigarette in there. Perhaps you quit smoking and this happened to you. You know it’s perfectly understandable. Happens to everyone. You had intended to go back on a diet once you got over the cravings, but that just never happened.

All of these explanations are interesting but I beg to differ. There’s only one reason why any of us gain weight: We consume more calories than we expend. Period. Believing anything else is a fallacy that keeps us stuck on the yoyo of weight gain and loss.

In fact, I suggest that all the explanations for weight gain merely allow us to not take responsibility for our weight gain. We blame our circumstances for gaining weight rather than taking responsibility for the actions we take in the face of those circumstances. And once we put responsibility outside ourselves, we lose our power to act effectively.

Some people blame themselves for their weight gain. But this is missing the point. Blame does nothing but create negative feelings that can be used to justify more eating. Responsibility, on the other hand, indicates awareness that we are more powerful than our circumstances.

Cookie, cakes and pies don’t cause weight gain. McDonald’s Happy Meals don’t cause weight gain. Liquor doesn’t contribute one iota to weight gain.

Eating cookies, cakes and pies may cause weight gain. Drinking liquor may cause weight gain…but only if you consume more calories than you expend.

We are infinitely powerful. We are certainly more powerful than our appetites. Once we accept responsibility for our actions, we are in control of those actions. Blaming circumstances outside of ourselves robs us of our power.

Choose To Lose Weight: Weigh Yourself Every Day

I was sitting across the restaurant table from a friend of mine who has been engaged in a life long battle to lose weight and keep it off. I was coaching him on what he might do and I suggested that he weigh himself every day.

I suggested he do so until his new way of eating and exercising was a habit he didn’t have to think about anymore. I told him that the surest way to succeed was to be aware daily of the number on that scale.

He resisted that suggestion. “I’m not going to do that,” he said. “All that does is cause me to beat myself up if I haven’t lost any weight.”

I know that weighing oneself every day is contrary to the advice given by many diet gurus. But that’s only because those gurus have been raised under the same system as the rest of us in which the pressure to produce numbers is intense. It’s no wonder people avoid getting on a scale daily. No one wants to feel that pressure again.

From the very youngest age, we were graded in school and those grades were used to compare us to other students. Based on grades, we were put in different “tracks.” And, while they tried to hide the meaning of the tracks by naming them “bluebird,” “robin” and “sparrow,” everyone knew if the track to which they had been assigned was the top or the bottom and there was shame in being at the bottom.

A low score on one, year-end test can prevent a student from graduating.

College entrance exam tests can make the difference between a first class education and a mediocre one.

At work, there is pressure to “make quota.” The only “reward” for making quota this year is to have the quota raised for next year.

We have learned to fear numbers because rarely are they used to make us feel better about ourselves. No matter how well we do, we’re told, overtly or subtly, that we can do better. How many of us were told we’re “not living up to your potential?” What the heck does that mean?

Is it any wonder that no one wants to get on a scale daily? Numbers have rarely been a source of satisfaction. They are almost always used as a way of affirming, “You’re not good enough.”

But we are no longer in school. And while we may be in jobs in which “making quota” is expected, there is no boss looking over our shoulders when we get on that scale. A number is just information to be used to make decisions about what we will eat or not. A number has no meaning except the one we assign to it. We are the ones beating ourselves up and we don’t have to.

But we do have to be constantly vigilant about our weight, especially at the start of a diet when we are changing our habits and trying to ingrain new ones.

If we avoid the number on that scale, we do so at our peril and we are actually making it more difficult for us to lose weight and keep it off.

Choose To Lose Weight: The 40 Billion Dollar Piece of Advice

It’s estimated that Americans spend 40 billion dollars per year on weight loss programs and products. Here’s the advice you get for that 40 billion dollars:

If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you must consume fewer calories than you expend. You do this in two ways:

1. Find a healthy diet and stick to it for the rest of your life.

2. Exercise moderately 6 days per week for one hour per day.

This advice was confirmed, for perhaps the millionth time, in a recent story on National Public Radio in which, after a discussion of hormones and their effect on the dieter’s body, the researcher being interviewed ended by noting that you have to consume fewer calories than you expend.

Why is it so hard to follow this advice? One reason, of course, is that people want to lose weight but they don’t actually want to keep it off. They want to lose weight for a daughter’s wedding or because they think they “should” or because they get angry at themselves, toss out the potato chips in the evening and buy another bag in the morning after they have cooled off.

Or there are may be psychological reasons such as: “Secretly, I don’t believe I deserve to be thin.” “If I’m thin, I’ll start attracting members of the opposite sex and I don’t know how I’ll handle that.” “My father berated me for being fat and if I get thin, he wins” (even though he has been dead for 20 years).

A provocative explanation I hadn’t heard before came from a book by Michael Lewis. Lewis is the author of “The Blind Side” and “Moneyball,” both of which have been made into movies. His newest book, called “Boomerang,” is about the financial crisis in Europe.

During his research, Lewis talked to British neuroscientist Dr. Peter Whybrow who thinks obesity is a product of our success.

Our brains, Whybrow reminds us, evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in an environment of scarcity. They were not designed for the environment of extreme abundance in which we now live. Therefore, Whybrow notes, “We are set up to acquire as much as we can of things we perceive as scarce, particularly sex, safety, and food.” So when we do encounter abundance, we have trouble suppressing our desires.

Whybrow suggests that we have lost our ability to “self regulate” whether it’s the 5 million dollars paid to a Goldman Sachs trader or the offered piece of chocolate cake.

Most provocatively, Whybrow found that if you laid a map of American’s personal indebtedness on top of the Center for Disease Control’s map of the rates of obesity in the United States, the two maps would overlap.

In other words, “Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for short-term rewards.”

So there you have it. As someone trying to lose weight and keep it off, you can take your pick of why you don’t lose weight permanently. You can have the “I’m only dieting until my daughter’s wedding” explanation. You can have your psychological explanation. And you can explain your failure by using Dr. Whybrow’s hypothesis.

But whatever explanation you choose, at the end of the day, if you want to lose weight and keep it off, you will have to choose to consume fewer calories than you expend and you will have to do so through a combination of moderate exercise and healthy eating for the rest of your life.

And just in case you have a reaction to that “for the rest of your life” comment, remember: Everyone is on some kind of diet for the rest of his/her life. Everyone makes daily choices as to what that diet will be. You aren’t special. Thinking you are may keep you feeling deprived and unhappy.

All you have to do, really, is choose to lose your weight and keep it off.