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 10th, 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.
