Choose To Lose Weight: The Commitment Prescription

According to the October 20^th, 2010 Men’s Fitness magazine, there are 35,000 medical studies published each year on weight loss.

There are 184 million potential Google searches on the words “weight loss,” 120 million potential searches on “places to go to lose weight” and 433 million potential searches on the word “diet.”

Play this game yourself. Put in whatever terms you want and you will discover no shortage of information about how to lose weight and keep it off.

Let’s face facts: None of this makes any difference. If it did, you wouldn’t be reading this, still searching for the “magic bullet” that will ensure permanent weight loss.

If “the truth shall set you free,” here’s the truth: You’re not committed to permanent weight loss. You’re committed to whatever you are doing. Actions, as we all know, speak louder than words.

If you put weight on and take it off repeatedly, that’s what you’re committed to.

If you say you will start dieting tomorrow and you don’t, you are committed to starting your diet tomorrow, not to actually dieting.

If you say you’re going to eat more fruits and vegetables and you keep eating breads and sweets, you’re committed to eating breads and sweets.

Please don’t hear this as a criticism. You’ve done that enough to yourself. Stop beating yourself up and accept what you are committed to. The fact is that if you were really committed to losing weight and keeping it off, you would have done so. You can always tell what people are committed to by what they do, not what they say.

The answer is so obvious and you know what it is: “I want everyone to know that diet, exercise, accountability and a good support system are all that’s needed to lose weight, get fit and stay healthy.” That’s a quote from Lori Yates who was interviewed in a recent issue of Anytime Fitness magazine talking about how she lost 100 pounds.

As I said, you already know this. You are in a fruitless search for the magic pill, the magic diet, the magic prescription.

So here’s the “commitment prescription:”

1.   Set a goal

2.   Share your goal with the people in your life.

3.   Ask them to ask you at least once a week how the diet is going.

4.   Don’t get angry when they ask. Give them permission to keep asking even

     if you have gone off your diet.

5.   Have them keep asking even after you’ve achieved your goal weight.

6.   Repeat steps 1-5 for the rest of your life or until the new behavior is so ingrained that you call what you do a “habit” and not “dieting.”

Your current habit is to diet and then go off your diet. Follow the “commitment prescription” to create a new, healthier, habit.