One of the most painful aspects of weight loss is weight regain. Has this scenario happened to you? You’ve struggled and deprived yourself for months, losing weight. And, then, one day you “wake up fat” again.
Watch this video where actor Kevin James explains it perfectly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnC9BzXso90
What were his key words?
“I’m going to give myself a little time to have fun….”
Yep, that’s what started it all!
Another key thing he said? “I’m going to make a turnaround.”
Have you heard yourself saying either of these things?
They are called denial.
Now, my point is not to ridicule Kevin James. In fact, since I have coached clients in the film business and worked in it too, I can tell you the methods used to get in shape for a film are often gruesome, even more restrictive and debilitating than most of us mortals, who aren’t being paid hundreds of thousands (or millions!) of dollars, could endure.
And, if our mortal efforts results in regain 99% of the time, Hollywood weight loss is almost guaranteed to return. You see this over and over, as actors regularly bulk up, then lose weight, invariably winding up in midlife as overweight, metabolisms shot, bodies energetically depleted. It happened to Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor in the old days. It happened to Russell Crowe and Christina Aguilera more recently.
And even though it’s a legitimate point how differently media treat male and female regainers (media and tabloids follow female regainers around ruthlessly – see this recent article where Christina Aguilera talks about how she was “forced” to be toothpick thin early in her career, with producers telling her an entire tour would fail if she was anything but tiny), they didn’t seem to talk too much about Kevin James’ regain.
He wasn’t ridiculed or plastered on the cover of People magazine.
He didn’t find a “plus sized” label in front of his name, like comedienne Aidy Bryant, a new regular cast member of Saturday Night Live, discovered in front of her name in the articles about her new job. (See this article calling her “morbidly obese” and suggesting thin women run for the ho-hos.)
No, the point is Kevin’s regain. Despite his sense of humor (haven’t we all developed good senses of humor about our weight?), you can see behind his apology.
As I recently told a client who got to goal weight and began to slip: there is only one way to eat.
Period.
No “I’ll just give myself a break…”
No “I’ll get back on the wagon….” Remember Oprah’s wagon? There is no wagon.
There is only now. And how we feed and treat ourselves right now will show up tomorrow. There is only one way to eat. And that is in the healthiest way possible, especially given the crap that’s hawked in our faces every day, screaming from every billboard, sign and screen.
Let’s eat in a way that makes us proud of ourselves today, and makes tomorrow great.
We all know how to do this, if we stop and pay attention. We know how to treat ourselves with dignity.
Coaching and training thousands of people towards permanent weight loss has taught me valuable lessons. After several years, I began to notice distinct differences in the way my male and female clients approached weight loss and found success.
I realized my male clients often followed a less complicated, linear pattern towards weight loss.
My female clients got stuck in circles of complicated emotions and layers of confusing responsibilities.
My male clients understood diets and controlling food. They thrived on structure and command. Food rarely has emotional connection or implication for most men.
My female clients yearned for true nourishment and were fulfilled by the experience of caring deeply for themselves.
My male clients wanted to earn something.
My female clients needed to grow into a new attitude before they could lose weight and keep it off.
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Permanent weight loss is what we want, even if we’re heavily invested in temporary weight loss via diets. We all think a diet will get us there – despite study after study indicating 99 percent of dieters regain their weight and every diet adds a few extra pounds too.
Why do we live in such DENIAL (read: Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying)? Because, if we believe the diet will fix the weight, we don’t have to take responsibility and fix US (or the underlying behaviors).
In my last two posts, we explored twenty things to STOP in order to achieve permanent weight loss. Now, here are 10 more very important steps to further your progress towards permanent weight loss. These are challenges that commonly show up for my weight loss clients and I hope revealing these challenges will make your weight loss easier and more direct. It’s a virtual blueprint to permanent weight loss!
This is Part 3 of a 5-Part Series – So, check back for subsequent posts! Or subscribe! You can now sign up at the right of this post to receive new posts via email notification too!
21. Stop making excuses – Excuses link us to victim status and there are a million and one excuses for everything. But the old saying “You can’t have reasons and results” is absolutely true. It doesn’t matter if grandma Mabel made your favorite cookies or your BFF (“friend” – really?) decided to surprise you with a mojito and shots happy hour, the moment we start excusing destructive behavior with well-thought-out and perfectly reasonable reasons, we lose the power of owning every choice. Weight is lost permanently when we step up and truly own every choice.
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Excess weight is created by over-reliance on food – we often use food as caretaker, parent, therapist, mood-elevator, motivator, punisher, etc. Losing weight permanently requires changing our negative behaviors with food as well as our relationship with food.
Since 2001, I’ve worked with thousands of amazing folks to help them achieve permanent weight loss, and I’ve noticed many similarities in the challenges they confronted in order to make change. It’s no surprise, these challenges parallel the changes I made as I lost over 90 pounds permanently.
I believe revealing these challenges will make your weight loss easier and more direct. It’s a virtual blueprint to permanent weight loss!
This is Part 1 of a 5-Part Series – So, check back for subsequent posts! Or subscribe! You can now sign up at the right of this post to receive new posts via email notification too!
- Stop dieting – Dieting is a false imposition of a food plan; it’s deprivation on every level. It is long proven that 99% of dieters regain and, when they regain, they regain 107% of the weight that was lost. Clearly, there are better ways to get the change you want.
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One of my fabulous clients described her journey towards permanent weight loss this way: “It’s like I was on a rollercoaster when I was dieting, now I’m in the driver’s seat, driving change.”
I thought this was a great metaphor for dieting v. lifestyle change.
Let’s think about this.
When you are on the diet rollercoaster:
1. You feel out of control.
2. It’s scary.
3. Emotions rage with good days and bad days. Emotions always lead to emotional eating and comfort food.
4. The number on the scale can send you on a binge.
5. Disappointment, sadness, anxiety and other daily occurrences set off eating sprees, followed by food restriction and new promises to diet all over again tomorrow, next Monday, or next month.
6. You follow someone else’s plan – might be a diet, a book, a program. These plans never address your personal body’s needs, but are generalized approaches.
7. You “wake up” with an empty plate, a candy wrapper, a cookie box, or other container in front of you and no idea how it got there or where the food went.
8. You try to control the crazy momentum by counting something (calories, aerobic output, anything at all).
9. You think poor choices say something about your personal character.
10. You struggle. Struggle diminishes your effort, your success and, ultimately, your dreams.
9. You constantly fluctuate between weights, yo-yo-ing up and down the scale. Ultimately, you wind up back at the beginning, where you started, at the “loading zone” of the rollercoaster ride.
You know you are making a lifestyle change, and you are driving change, when:
1. You are the authority on what food is the best fuel for YOUR body and you know exactly what makes great energy for your unique physiology.
2. You consistently fuel your body for optimal energy.
3. You make decisions easily, without mental combat occurring.
4. You address any emotion, obstacle or event DIRECTLY, without buffering it with food.
5. You never make excuses, but OWN every decision and action.
6. You feel empowered. You are driving. You are choosing the route you take.
7. You treat yourself with respect and love in all circumstances, no matter what you ate that day.
8. The ride leads to new places, new discoveries, and wide-open vistas because you aren’t on a “track”, you’re in ever-changing life.
Getting off the diet rollercoaster isn’t just about losing weight. It’s about quality of life. It’s about living a fully empowered life, instead of giving power away to a plan, a diet, or anything that’s not organic to your amazing physical body.
Non-diet weight loss is the kind that lasts too. Isn’t that what we ultimately want when we think of lowering the number on the scale, anyway?
For someone who battled fat and won, long-term, I learned there are many misconceptions about how excess weight is lost. Unfortunately, what we don’t know can cause great harm, with long-term effects.
Naturally, we want quick results and, with no shortage of diets in the world, it’s very tempting to grab onto a diet for weight loss. Unfortunately, that leads to the condition we now see in our culture: DIETING FATTER every year.
But the human body is resourceful and intelligent, and it perceives a diet as an assault. Let me explain why.
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If you read my blog often, you know that I have lost substantial weight and kept it off since the year 2000. In my seminars and workshops, where I teach the principles of permanent weight loss, I often talk about the two most important factors to lifestyle change that result in permanent weight loss:
Consistency
That’s how you build lifestyle change. It doesn’t come with a diet, or we’d all be thin. Consistency is how you show up in your life, every day. It’s about the quality of the effort.
Consistency is not about “cheat days” or accepting a binge because it’s been a rough week or we got rejected by someone or something. Consistency is about integrity and owning our choices, for good. It’s about busting up excess weight with good behavior with food and exercise executed on a daily basis.
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A friend of mine recently congratulated me on my Master Certified Coach credential. He’s a coach and knows the ICF (International Coach Federation) credential represents a high bar in the coaching profession. Less than 700 coaches have achieved the credential worldwide.
I responded by telling him “it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life” and he challenged me to write about the Ten Hardest Things I’ve Done in Life.
I love challenge. So, in no particular order, here they are:
1. I Gave Birth – Not much explanation needed here, if you are a woman. My experience giving birth to my son was traumatic, to say the least. If you are a man, compare this to war. Complications, emergency surgery with you awake, scapels, your life’s blood spewing out, rapidly, like a geyser. Then you begin a series of seizures, black out and see your husband’s face fade, thinking you are dead.
2. I Lost Weight Permanently – In order to do this , I had to say NO to our entire culture that promotes, supports and reinforces diet/regain to make money. I had to go against the grain, to say the least – I had to say “no” to my doctors, family, friends, the medical profession, therapists, and the diet industry.
3. I Buried My Little Sister – I have buried my parents, even my best friend. But my little sister was always in my life. I was the only person alive who knew her every day of her life. Sisterhood is a different sort of bond than any other. She was 37, the only thin person in our family. How was she thin in a family of addicted eaters? She drank diet coke and smoked cigarettes all day, avoiding eating. This ripped me apart, worse than those scapels in childbirth.
4. I Sent a Husband to War – Activated into the air force on 9.11, my husband was part of the Enduring Freedom campaign. Suddenly, any illusion of control in life was rendered. No one knows what will happen, and you’ve got every single task at home to handle, plus a small child who’s terrified.
5. I’ve Said Goodbye to Friends Who Didn’t Support Me – When I lived in a diminished place in life, I accumulated friends who liked me diminished. When I grew beyond that, they became judgmental and negative about my accomplishments. It was truly surprising to me, but they were not going where I was going in life. It was time to part ways. I thought I would have regrets; I have not. My friends today are a thousand times more supportive and these relationships are based on real connection.
6. I Left “Safety” for My True Work – I’ve had a lot of safe jobs in my life, but none of them fed me. When I decided to start my own business and help others lose weight permanently and fulfill their potential, it took a huge leap of faith and trust. It was scary, exhilarating, and ultimately very fulfilling to chart my own destiny. But, I’m a cowgirl from Texas and nobody’s the boss of me.
7. I Raised Myself to Adulthood – I could also call this “I raised myself out of addiction.” I didn’t have parents who were mature enough to raise me. One of them was an alcoholic, the other an addictive eater. I finally realized I had to raise myself to maturity; there was no one else to do it. Now, I think, who better for that task?
8. I Achieved my Master Certified Coach Credential – The ICF credential is coveted, because it is very hard to achieve. The bar is high, the testing process grueling. The passing rate is miniscule. Other coaches told me “It’s impassable. Don’t bother.” But I had amazing experiences with other Master Certified Coaches in my life and I knew the power of their excellence. I wanted to be that good for my clients.
9. I Found My Home – My body was always a revolving door. I rotated in and out of it, at will. Accepting it and supporting it, despite its many challenges, helped me understand love in a whole new way. Now, I see it is the only home I will ever have and I accept complete responsibility for it.
10. I Designed the enLIGHTen Your Life! Permanent Weight Loss Course – In order to do this, I had to take all the lessons I had learned and translate them into lessons, augmenting them with research and scientific data. I had to design them in a way that served class participants and “grew them” along the process of leaving diet mentality behind and truly taking charge of their lives and weight. It’s a work of art. People all over the world have taken the course and I’m very proud of it.
Has my life had challenges? Yes, I would say so. But, a friend of mine once remarked to me, “You’ve had such a tragic life.”
I was completely shocked. I don’t see it that way at all.
I have had a blessed and amazing life. I love my life and all life. I don’t judge the pain differently than the joy. We need both.
Every challenge gave me an amazing experience, a great lesson, a chance to show life who I am. I know there’s a lot in life I can’t control, and I don’t even try.
What interests me now is showing up, fully, every day.
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