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?
Sending a son off to college is a challenge. I expected that.
You expect emotional impact on your “momself.” The cost is astonishing! Then, there’s the uphill climb through amazing hills of paperwork, applications for everything from residence halls to scholarships to individual study programs.
What I never expected was the guilt-evoking barrage of sales packages, all suggesting ways to spend money to alleviate the “momguilt” of sending junior from his childhood home into the big, bad world.
Get this one, which arrived today:
After a long lead-in about how lonely and bereft DS would be at the big/intimidating university, and the assurance that the big/intimidating university will be doing their part to help the student assimilate, I am reminded that most students don’t get enough encouragement from home!
Momguilt!!
However, in our foodcentric and food focused society, there is really only ONE answer!
FOOD!
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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.
The popular movie, The Hunger Games, is raking in the profits after capitalizing on the word-of-mouth from readers of the popular teen book and a boatload of publicity.
I wish I had come up with this name for the book I am writing. The Hunger Games – doesn’t it sound like a self-help book for pulling yourself out of food addiction?
Well, here are some REAL Hunger Games we play. Which one’s your favorite?
1. Diet/Avoid Food All Morning and Binge the Rest of the Day
This is the surest road to excess weight. I did it for years. I thought I was “saving up calories” for the rest of the day and exercising my willpower muscles, but I was creating more hunger and programming my body to store fat faster and more efficiently. I was also losing touch with what real hunger felt like and teaching my body I would not respond to its natural hunger cues.
2. Plan Days/Events/Activities Around Eating
OK, my bad on this one. It’s still my favorite example though. I used to choose an Overeaters Anonymous meeting because it was near one of my favorite restaurants. Since I was the one doing it, I can cop to it now. It’s so counter-intuitive, it’s amazing. Many of my clients tell me they hit goal weight in Weight Watchers and have already planned their “reward binge” or mapped out the directions to the nearest fast food restaurant. Yeah, it makes no sense, but it happens. A lot. It’s a sign nothing has changed.
Do you choose events or movies because you like a restaurant nearby? Does “being in the neighborhood” sound like a good excuse to hit a favorite type of food? Or do you say, “Who knows when I’ll get a chance to eat this again?” That’s not a real reason to eat, just a Hunger Game.
3. Eating as Entertainment (Food Focused or Foodcentric Lifestyle)
When you get together with friends, family or a partner, is your main focus eating? A movie is entertainment. A bike ride is activity. Eating is functional. It’s the gas station. Fuel. It can taste great and transport your taste buds, but if it’s your main source of entertainment, it’s time to branch out and see more of life.
4. Fear of Hunger
Many of my clients stash food in their cars, offices, gym lockers, computer cases and bedrooms so they will never be without a fix. What’s so scary about being hungry? Well, it’s usually not hunger we really fear, but the needs underneath. These needs, often subconscious and unexplored, are darker and usually created long ago, in childhood. However, it doesn’t matter if it’s unlikely to happen (running out of food or not being able to get to food in our society???), fear loves to run our behaviors.
5. I’ll Fix it Later
This is my favorite. We live under the illusion, reinforced by the diet industry, that choices today are unimportant because we have the ability to fix our weight later. Have that rich, fat-laden five course meal and promise to run every day next week to make up for it. Turn into the drive-thru – it’s OK because you’re going to the gym tonight.
This is simply untrue. Dieting rarely works, and reinforcing this negative belief (or LIE) of the “quick fix later” just makes it feel true. The truth is, once fat is processed, it’s more difficult to remove and resists dieting and excessive exercise. In fact, the longer you work out, the less fat you will burn every minute.
Understanding how the body works is the key to ending the Hunger Games in your life. Being consistently healthy is simpler and more effective than playing games too.
If you (or anyone you know) is ready to end the Hunger Games in life, share this post with them and check out my next enLIGHTen Your Life! class starting soon! Click here for information.
Huge topic here. TRUST. In my role as on-air life coach for NBC-15 here in Madison, I spoke about trust this morning.
I’m interviewing potential students for the enLIGHTen Your Life! course, my mastermind permanent weight loss course, and I’ve heard several people make statements like “I’m afraid to try weight loss again. I can’t trust that I will lose weight and keep it off.”
When I ask them to explain, they mention trusting a diet, or a “plan.”
I like to gently point out that is not even a point of trust.
To lose weight and keep weight off, we only need to trust OURSELVES.
You have never failed at a diet.
I repeat: You have never failed at a diet.
Diets always fail and always will. If you’ve let the weight loss/regain process erode your trust, there’s a bigger issue here to address. If you’ve forgotten how to do that, come join the course!
Learning to trust is part of the process of re-educating ourselves for long-term success. Non-diet weight loss is so much easier than the alternative and leads to permanent weight loss because we create a new lifestyle and the kind of deeper change that has positive effect on behavior.
Why Trusting Ourselves is Important
- It’s up to us. We are responsible.
- Trust is essential to the process of developing natural eating and activity patterns based on your own, unique body cues.
- Attitude is the most important aspect of weight loss. This requires “rewiring” the circuits in the brain. It can be done and it helps establish or re-establish trust.
- To lose weight permanently, we have to learn to cut through subconscious emotions that sabotage progress; trust is vital to this process.
- Trust, once present, goes EVERYWHERE. You don’t just suddenly leave it at home one day and abandon your deepest wishes. It’s part of you, portable, accessible, and, therefore, powerful.
Think back to the times when you trusted yourself and really stepped into life.
Trusting may have felt a little wobbly at first. It’s a leap.
But the leaps in life are important – that’s where we get to show up and put it all on the line. That’s exciting and it’s memorable.
Today, I celebrate 12 years of sustained weight loss. If you are new to this blog, after years of yo-yo dieting, I set out to lose weight permanently. My initial weight loss of 74 pounds was an incredible journey for me, an education in life I never expected.
After losing that weight, I was determined to “keep” the results. I knew from my research that permanent weight loss is defined by the medical profession as weight loss sustained for 5 years and more. I also knew, sadly, it is very rarely achieved.
I had to keep learning and growing in order to maintain the weight loss. In the last two years, I’ve lost more weight. Today, I’m 92 lbs. lighter.
As I was thinking about this anniversary, it occurred to me that I got what I wanted. How many times can you say you got exactly what you wanted (and more) in life?
I don’t call it amazing anymore, because I know the work that was involved. It’s no miracle. I literally “grew myself up” out of food addiction. I found, for me, most addiction theories don’t work. To me, they just get a person addicted to a program, instead of freeing them from the addiction.
In essence, the entire medical and therapeutic community says, “You are damaged and will always be addicted. Here, be addicted to this, which we deem healthier, rather than that substance (food, alcohol, drug, sex).
That just didn’t work for me.
What I wanted was freedom. Freedom was a huge value and driver of my behavior. In fact, as a weight loss coach, it’s something I hear practically every day from a client, or two, or three.
“I just want to be free to eat what I want.”
It’s perhaps the most common derailer of the average diet, and why diets don’t work long-term. When I was in the throes of addiction, the minute anyone told me “you can’t eat that” or “at your weight, is that wise?”, you could be damned sure I was going to eat it! That’s the freedom value showing up.
Well, today, I am free. I’m free of the compulsivity of addiction, feeling as though my actions are occurring without my permission.
I am free of excess weight, which hindered my movement, my self-expression, my comfort in the world.
I’m free of a host of medical problems.
I’m free of my excess weight making, refusing or coloring decisions for me.
Once I grew up, I discovered huge gifts: Choice. Opportunities. Meaning. Connection. Self-esteem. Love.
And true freedom.
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