Rejecting Weight Loss “Advice”

It’s the time of year when everyone is talking about going on a diet, starting exercise routines, and losing weight. Everyone’s got an opinion and plenty of advice. Are you listening to any of it? There might be a lot of approaches people could take if they have put on some weight due to lifestyle changes, like a job that’s made them largely sedentary or a busy schedule that’s got them eating more processed convenience foods. But if it’s been a lifelong struggle for you and your goal would be to lose 100 lbs or more, the typical “advice” really does not apply to you.

Right away we know “going on a diet” is not the answer. Managing your weight is going to take a complete lifestyle makeover that you follow, well, pretty much the rest of your life. So yeah, diets and “diet tricks” are out. Similarly, trying to start some exercise program that can’t be integrated into your daily routine won’t last long either.

But there’s something much more that makes us different. For everyone else, losing weight is about following some new set of instructions, finding some new “program,” learning some new secret sure-fire method. And a lot of people might be able to follow those instructions just fine for awhile. Not us.

We aren’t fat because we’ve never known how to lose weight. We didn’t get to be 100 lbs or more overweight because we’re clueless how this whole “eat less, move more” thing is supposed to work. We’re not unaware of how other people have dropped the pounds. And we’re certainly not oblivious to the many health issues that obesity can introduce into our lives. The truth is, we know all this too well. It’s actually on our minds all the time! We’re always thinking about food and weight and worrying about what the future might hold for our health.

We have Food Brains.

Food is a pretty low priority for some people. We all know the type. And good for them! We’re not like that. We’re the opposite end of the Bell Curve. Our brains LOVE to think about food and connect food to everything in our lives. We fight every day to be in control of the role food plays in our lives because of the way it rules our thoughts.

The only answer for us is to face our adversary on our own terms—To look hard at our own day to day lives and address the patterns and behaviors that are preventing us from putting food in its place. What works for someone else won’t work for us because they’re not living our lives.

So the next time someone tells you about the great new weight loss trick they’re using or the easy diet their co-worker used to drop the pounds, just let it roll on past! You have your own destination and it’s a place they’ll never go.

The roadmap to where you will go does not exist until you draw it.