1.  The Waiting Game – I often hear people say that they plan to do something about their weight when they have more time or when a stressor in their life has passed.  “I will try to lose weight in the summer because I’ll be less busy then and the weather will be better for exercise.”  The problem with life is that we never really are less busy or have less stress later.  The problem with the waiting game is that days turn into years in what feels like a blink of the eye.  The convenient time to make a big life change is never coming, but if that life change is necessary then the best possible time is RIGHT NOW.  By delaying your start, you delay the outcome. You deprive yourself of something that is important to you.  Even if you were to get a temporary break from a busy time, the busy times will inevitably return, just like the bad weather.  Truly changing your lifestyle means living a different life under any and all circumstances, not just when you have free time and no stress.   Dive in now because the minute you do, you are instantly closer to your destination.

2.   The One Day Experiment.  We talk so much about how losing weight requires a lifestyle change–and it does, but lifestyle change sounds soooo very overwhelming.  The overwhelming part is the commitment of changing behavior for life, so it may be necessary to remove the commitment aspect to take some of the pressure off (great news for commitment phobes!).  By removing the commitment, you will get an accurate assessment of just how challenging the behavior changes really are.  But how do you remove the “commitment” from something that seems to inherently require one?!   Try a “one-day experiment.”  This is where you commit to only one single day of change.  For that one day, toe the line:  keep a diet journal, make the healthy choices, and workout.  The next day go back to your normal routine.  If you feel like trying another healthy day, then do so, if not, try another one the following week.  Add a second day when you feel ready.  The objective is to get some momentum going by accomplishing at least one day and only progressing further as you feel comfortable.  Making a lifestyle change is not an all-or-nothing venture.  Work your way towards it and appreciate that even though the goal is to live a healthy life, it is a gradual journey that is built one day at a time.

3.  2 Minute Challenge­-  The 2 minute challenge follows along similar lines but is specifically for someone who is having trouble getting an exercise program started.  If you are having a failure to launch with exercise, commit to a single 2-minute workout.  Climb on a machine or go for a walk, pick any activity of your choice, but commit only to 2 minutes.  If you end up doing more than 2 minutes— great, but the goal is just to accomplish the 2 minutes.  Once you have accomplished it, try another a few days later.  Then begin to add a minute to the workout each week.  Even though 2 minutes may sound like nothing, you are using this tactic to overcome the biggest barrier to exercise of all—getting started.  We all have to start somewhere, so why not start easy?

4.  A-Ha Moment Fallacy – When I encounter people who have lost large amounts of weight I often ask if they had an A-Ha! moment that precipitated their change. Usually people will say yes, but interestingly these moments are rarely major things like heart attacks, being diagnosed with diabetes,  or having some other serious health problem.  In fact, serious events like these are not always effective at creating a sea change of motivation but instead can result in demoralization.  After a serious medical event I have heard people say, “It is too late to change now, the damage is done.”  More often A-Ha moments are day-to-day instances such as a belt or pair of pants no longer fitting, feeling sick after a day of overeating, or catching a glance of oneself in a mirror.  Are these really A-Ha moments?  Why is putting the belt on one day so much more meaningful than it was the day before?   Who knows, but there might be no such thing as a magical moment of readiness— where everything seems clear and all doubts and fears have vanished.  Even the Real Life Biggest Losers I have interviewed on this blog say they experienced many early doubts about whether they could do it, but they moved forward in spite of the doubts.  The only way to dissolve doubts is through action. Motivation does not stimulate action, it is created by action.  You will feel more motivated once you see the first signs of progress and that motivation will propel you to achieve a little more, and so on.  Don’t wait for motivation to arrive at your doorstep, create it with action… and next thing you know you will be flying high in the sky.

<———- you are here.

This is not a test.  Urgent intelligence information has been released by the US Department of Waistband Security. Several weight gain terrorists have been sighted in neighborhoods across the nation.  Terrorists have infiltrated local establishments and we suspect the infiltration is related to US holiday celebrations this weekend.  This is an extremely dangerous situation and we are doing the best we can to identify and eliminate the terrorists. The public’s help is urgently needed to effectively contain the situation. The terrorists are dressed in flashy packaging, seem friendly, and like they would be fun to have at a cookout or party. See Figure 1 below.

See what I mean by friendly?  The public is strongly cautioned NOT to bring these terrorists into homes. Close encounters with the terrorists will result in an initial sense of euphoria, that is followed by gastrointestinal discomfort, bad mood, sluggishness, horror, sleepiness, regret, guilt, loudly shrieking “Agh! Why did I eat so much!”, elevated blood sugar, weight gain, and uncontrollable yet unexplainable desire to have additional close encounters.

With a highly classified government owned photo-taking communication device (aka, camera phone) we were able to capture photos of the terrorists as they roamed local grocery stores preying on unsuspecting holiday revelers. Please review these photos and avoid anyone and anything resembling these photos. See Figures 2-5 below.

Emergency preparedness plan. The public is cautioned to protect itself in this highly dangerous situation by arming itself with this artillery, all of which is now available at local grocery stores. See Figures 6-9 below.

Thank you for your cooperation. Controlling this emergency situation will require everybody’s effort. It is expected that the terror threat will lift on Tuesday, although flare ups are expected throughout the summer.

Have a healthy and happy holiday!

From,

FUdiet

To get the revolution started I joined my close friends and family in dumping some JUNK this past week.  We stomped our feet, got out our baseball bats, golf clubs, SUVs, and ummm… toilets to help us DUMP THE JUNK!  Watch and enjoy the destruction of junk food!  Speaking from experience I can say dumping the junk was MUCH more fun than eating it!!  The next time you are confronted with some junk food, be sure to DUMP THE JUNK!  Oh and don’t forget to send me the pics and videos!

Ok here goes! Let’s DUMP THE JUNK!

Birthday Cake Baseball featuring Mike Bauman @mbfgmike and Ross Grantham

Bye Bye Donut & Cake Drop  featuring Mike Bauman @mbfgmike

Cupcake Stomp featuring Sue Bakke @suebakke and me!

Drive By Dumping & When God Opens a Window Shoot a Candy Bar out of It   featuring Julie Mulcahy @ptrunningmomof4 and Nick Mulcahy

Munchkin Golf  featuring @suebakke and me!

Pop Pop Pop Goes the Cake featuring @mbfgmike and Peyton Grantham

Dump The Junk Michigan Style featuring @mbfgmike and Ross Grantham

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

THANK YOU TO ALL MY JUNK DUMPERS and a STANDING OVATION FOR ROBYN BAUMAN, for compiling these videos.  Please check her out at Robyn’s Nest Video Creations for all your video needs.

1.  Congrats for Dumping the Junk!  First of all, congratulate yourself for transforming your diet so much that healthy foods are now your temptation foods!  Overeating unhealthy food is certainly worse than overeating healthy food, however overeating period is still not a good thing and this tendency can eventually derail your progress. Your appetite is still a bit out of control and we need to drill down to figure out why.

2.  Stack The Deck In Your Favor. The key really is to get the foods you overeat off the grocery list (regardless of how healthy they sound) and replace them with foods that you do NOT have a tendency to overeat. This takes some experimentation. For Tom, I might have him try a few other cereals that he likes but doesn’t feel the urge to go beyond one bowl.  I can’t emphasize enough the importance of keeping temptation foods off that grocery list and out of the home.

3.   Volumetrics.  You might feel that you will overeat nearly anything put in front of you and if that is the case then consider the Volumetrics approach.  Developed by a fantastic appetite researcher, Dr. Barbara Rolls, Volumetrics involves consuming foods that are high in volume but low in calories. Fruit and vegetables are great examples.  You can consume a great deal without consuming a great deal of calories.  Dr. Rolls has tons of strategies and recipes in her book for people who like to eat large amounts but don’t want to pay for it in calories.

4.  Be Predictable.  The thing about habits is that they are pretty predictable if you begin to pay attention to the patterns. Find out when you are most likely to do this— what day?  What time of day?  Jot this down in your diet journal and then look at the patterns over a week.  Once you know when it happens you can make a plan to make sure temptations aren’t around and/or interrupt the habit.  For example, Tom does this at night, so maybe he can make a deal with his wife that she help him stick to one portion.

5.  Work It Out.  One time we never snack is while exercising.  Once you figure out when the out-of-control snacking occurs, consider placing a workout in that time slot instead.  This is one way to get a much bigger bang for your buck out of exercise.  For example, I find that by exercising in the afternoon I eliminate a good hour in which I might snack. This is not the case when I exercise first thing in the morning because I never snack in the morning.

6.  Change Up.  The time of the day you overeat might not be a time you can exercise though, in which case it might be helpful to do something different at that time, anything at all.  Eating habits get tied to routines, and then the routine itself may end up prompting the habit, which over time might make it very difficult to do the routine and NOT eat.  For example, if you overeat while watching TV you might find that just by doing something other than TV you will not have the urge to snack as much.

7.  Emotional eating.  When we think about emotional eating we often think of comfort foods, not Cheerios.  However, as your diet gets healthier over time, your tastes change.  You find yourself letting go of old comfort foods and adopting new ones.  Cheerios might be Tom’s new comfort food.  Weight loss is not simply about food choice, it is about understanding why we eat.  If you think this might be a case of emotional eating, check out this post on overcoming emotional eating.

8. Healthy= OK!.  One of the dangers of “healthier” type foods is that we might give ourselves permission to overeat them because they are healthy.  When eating Haagen Dazs ice cream you might be very careful about portion control, but then when the Edy’s Slow Churn Low-Fat ice cream comes out you figure it is safe to have 2-3 bowls because it’s “healthier.”  At the end of the day though, you have consumed more calories.  Be very careful of this trap.  If you have a tendency to do this, you might actually do better off eating the smaller portion of the richer version.

9.  Trying To Get Your Fix.  Research shows that smokers given “light” cigarettes will unknowingly inhale more deeply and end up getting the same amount of nicotine as regular cigarettes.  I wonder if this happens with food too. Maybe it is the case that Tom needed 3 bowls of Cheerios to get that sugar fix he used to get with the cookies and ice cream.  Sugar, salt, and fat may create addictive like patterns where your body yearns for a certain amount and will propel you to get it even from healthy foods.  See this post for more on food addiction.

Have you gone a little overboard on healthy food?  Let’s hear about it!

Fill in the blank.  Lose 50 lbs?

In case you are in a hurry, here is the punch line: Happiness that is dependent on a goal is never coming.

One of the most troubling mental traps that I have observed in some people trying to lose weight is the feeling that they won’t be truly happy in life until they lose the weight.  The equation is simple:  overweight = unhappy.  This equation is faulty.  I write a lot about happiness because the flipside, depression, is extremely common among people who struggle with their weight and it is one of the most significant barriers to progress.  The problem is that making your happiness dependent upon a weight loss goal (or any goal for that matter) locks you into a pretty miserable life.  I’m not saying this because I don’t think you will achieve your goal, you may or may not, but rather because happiness does not come from achieving a single goal. Sure losing 50 pounds might make you happy for a short time, but true happiness in life is not a function of an event, a goal, a single moment or accomplishment. Believing that it is prevents you from experiencing the joy that is present elsewhere in your life.  It is there, do you see it?   A contented life is an accumulation of moments.  It doesn’t burst out everyday, it simmers.

Consider this analogy.  Imagine the stars in the dark night sky.  The sky isn’t bright because of any single star, no matter how big the star.  The sky is bright because it has a million stars scattered about it.  In the analogy, each star is a moment in life that brings you joy, makes you smile, makes you proud, or makes you feel accomplished, productive, or a job well done. I don’t mean the birth of a child or a promotion at work.  I mean having a laugh with friends, finishing a project, getting a workout done– the day-to-day stuff.  These moments aren’t North Stars, but enough of them make for the brightest sky. The challenge is how to fill your sky with as many stars as you can.

Here’s a neat exercise to try.  Write down the moments of the past week in which you were the happiest.  If you aren’t sure, keep track for a week by making a note of what you are doing every time you are really enjoying yourself or feeling good about something.  Be sure not to count what I call “delayed cost” activities –these are activities that are enjoyable in the moment but have a cost that comes later. Having a huge celebratory meal that sets you back 2,000 calories, playing a video game at work to avoid getting things done, or drinking too much are “delayed cost” activities. Let’s set those aside for now and just focus on the pure joyful moments that come with no cost.  Here’s an example.

Meet Christine, a 52 year old mother who is trying to lose weight and feels depressed because she believes that she’ll never be happy at her current weight.  I ask her to do this activity for 1 week. Here are the activities on her list:

Dinner with her husband and teenage kids–lots of laughing, joking around

Walk with friend, Joanie

Chatting with husband right before bedtime

Gardening

Church

Searching the internet for family vacation ideas

You can see what Christine enjoys most. Whenever she is feeling down, she needs to turn to the list and work some more of these activities into her day.  The list also tells us what Christine enjoys the least. How so?  Well, Christine has a full-time job at a bank, a fact we would have never known by looking at her list.  The absence of a single moment from such a big part of her life is a signal of a problem—so I ask about it. It turns out that Christine is burnt out with her job and has a highly critical and rude boss which makes every day painstaking. The only joyful moment she can come up with is leaving at the end of the day.  Unfortunately, a lot of her “delayed cost” activities come from dealing with the stress that the job causes, including snacking throughout the day and collapsing in front of the TV in exhaustion instead of exercising after work.

Christine isn’t depressed because she is overweight, instead her weight is a consequence of something else that is wrong in her life.  Even if she were to lose 50 pounds, her job would still be ripping a demoralizing hole in her life. Truly feeling better will involve finding a way to bring joy to her work life and adding even more joyful moments to her time outside of work.  She needs to realize that not doing anything about work will limit how bright her sky can be—and her ability to lose weight.

By attaching happiness to your weight you will miss the joy that is right in front of you. Pay attention to where your stars are (and aren’t) and be sure to throw a few more up in the sky once in a while.

It makes you wonder, if a family member or friend doesn’t support your goals, does it mean that they don’t really love you?

Probably not, but these are tough questions with no simple answers.  Here are 9 ideas for what to do when a family member or friend is unsupportive, critical or sabotaging.

1. Nothing is Personal.  First and foremost, it is important to know that when a family member or friend is critical, unsupportive or in some way let’s you down, it isn’t personal. What? How can it NOT be personal?  One of the best blog posts I have read all year is entitled, Nothing Is Personal.  This is highly recommended reading.  The most impactful point of the post is that everyone is trying to wrestle through their own pain and life issues, and as we wrestle through to adjust and escape our pain we bump and bruise each other. When someone hurts you, it is more the case that they are bumping into you as they wrestle their way through their issues, and less the case that it has anything to do with you. The less personal you take these slights, the less impact they will have on you.

2. Say this, not that.  When dealing with a family or friend who expresses criticism or cutting comments about your progress, a best initial step is to tell them how it makes you feel and what you would prefer they say/do to be supportive.  Make sure the person knows exactly which comments you are referring to (e.g., “When you said, “Are you going to eat that?!”) and how it made you feel (e.g., I felt really judged.).  When giving someone feedback, always stick with expressing how you feel rather than what you think of them or their intentions.  So for example, avoid saying, “You are trying to undermine me” or “You are just a mean person.”  Putting your audience on the defense will more quickly lead to an argument than a resolution.

3. The 70% Rule.  I’m a huge fan of this rule. Ask yourself, “Is this person good to me at least 70% of the time?”  If the answer is “yes” then perhaps letting the bad moments slide is best, because the person’s value in your life is much larger than the occasional slights.  If the answer is “no” then it may be time to redefine the boundaries of this relationship.  One way to keep a friend or family member above the 70% cutoff is to spend somewhat less time with them. Some people are more tolerable if you don’t see them daily or weekly. Figure out what is the ideal frequency of interactions that keeps you feeling satisfied and fresh in that relationship without the negativity taking too much of a toll. If no level of contact is without slights then you really have to think about whether having this person in your life is providing any benefit to you. If it is a friend you can walk away from, that might be the right choice.  If it is a family member that you cannot walk away from, finding the lowest level of contact that is tolerable may be your only recourse.

4.  What If The Offender Is My Significant Other?  One of the toughest situations is when the person who is critical is your spouse.  If you tried # 2 and it has repeatedly failed, and the frequency of offenses is intolerable, then this pattern may be a sign of a bigger relationship issue that needs to be dealt with.  In some cases, it may be emotional abuse. Read about the signs of emotional/verbal abuse here. If you think your significant other may be emotionally abusive in general, getting into counseling for yourself and/or as a couple will probably be the only hope for change.  This problem is likely affecting far more than just your attempt to lose weight.

5. Choose Your Words Carefully. Healthy lifestyle comes with enthusiasm for healthy behaviors as well as disdain for unhealthy behaviors.  How you talk about your lifestyle changes may come across as passively judgmental to everyone who hasn’t embraced a healthier course for their life.  For example, you might say, “Back when I was fat and lazy I thought it would be impossible to finish a 5K and now it’s EASY!”  Consider that someone who is still feeling like a 5K is impossible may feel bad hearing such a comment, no matter how proud of you they are.  Or you might say, “I never eat fast food anymore, what garbage! I can’t believe I treated my body like such a garbage can before!”  Consider that someone who regularly eats fast food could perceive this as an insult.  Even subtler statements can hurt others who are struggling more than you are.  Choose your words carefully, always considering how a comment would have made you feel back when you were having a hard time.

6. Are You the Object of Resentment? Even if you aren’t making comments like I described above, keep in mind that someone struggling might still feel some resentment towards you as you lose weight.  Your frequent trips to the gym and healthy orders in a restaurant draws an unspoken contrast between the two of you. They may feel that you have less in common or assume you don’t want to spend time with a “bad influence.”   In this case, avoiding judgmental language and spending time with the person doing “neutral territory” activities (those that have nothing to do with food or exercise—such as going to the library or a play) might be helpful.

7. Change is Scary.  Losing weight requires a pretty big change in lifestyle, and a change in lifestyle can change the dynamic of your relationships.  Maybe you are spending more time with friends who exercise and less time with those who don’t. Your significant other might worry that you will find them less attractive, or they may be jealous of any new attention you are getting. All of this may stem from the fear that your lifestyle change might threaten the relationship, so negative comments could be their way of slowing down your progress or their only way to express these feelings.  The person may not be aware that this is at the root of the problem so confronting them may not work.  Instead, do what you can to make the person feel safe and loved, and if this is at the root of the problem, the negative comments will subside.

8. 100 Positive Voices Drowns Out 1 Negative. If you aren’t successful at silencing the negativity, drown out the negative with positive. Find positive voices of support for your weight loss journey. I highly recommend social media for this purpose. A whole cheering section of healthy people exist on Twitter (click here to find them), or consider starting a blog about your weight loss journey (click here for more on how)—blogs attract tons of positive attention.

9. Don’t Believe Them.   Whatever you do, never, ever believe a naysayer.  They are always wrong.

Joey lost his dad to heart disease when he was in high school.  This loss is what fuels him to keep moving forward to his goals every single day.  Even though he calls himself a Work in Progress, he has been on a steady trajectory of weight loss for a long time.  His all time high weight was 310 pounds, he had lost 50 pounds but only gained back 10.  Now he’s going another round to see how far he can take this.  He asks, what type of person is successful at losing weight?  Well Joey, the one that thinks far more about the NYC Marathon than Big Mac’s and fries.  I think that person is YOU.

Occupation: Information Technology

Age: 32

All time high weight. 310

How much do you weigh now?  270lbs

How much weight do you want to lose?  100lbs

WHY do you want to lose *this much* weight?  According to BMI charts, at my height I “should” actually be 160lbs, but that just seems to skinny.  I have always been a bigger guy, and honestly cannot remember the last time I weighed so little.  So I would like to be considered in the “normal” BMI zone.  In all honesty, I am more concerned about getting my body fat % down.  It is current at about 33%.  I would like to drop that down to around 25%.

How would you feel if you lost half this amount but kept it off forever?  If I were to lose 50lbs from here and keep it off forever I would be very happy with that.

 WHY do you want to lose weight at all?  My father died of a heart attack and stroke when he was only 59 years old while I was in high school. I don’t want that to happen to me and my kids (that don’t exist quite yet).

On a scale from 0 (no confidence at all) to 10 (extremely confident), how confident are you that you can lose the weight?  8 – I believe if I commit to it I will succeed

On a scale from 0 (not at all difficult) to 10 (extremely difficult), how difficult will it be to lose this weight?  10 – Losing 100lbs is going to be a huge undertaking, but I am up to the challenge.

What motivates you the most?  The thought that I want to be around my family and friends for their hard times as well as all of their good times.  I think about how I wish my dad was around when I was having a hard time with something.  It was incredibly difficult getting through things when I knew it would be easier if he was just here with an arm on my shoulder.

 How long do you think it will take you to lose this much weight?  2 years – 50lbs a year

 If you have already started your journey, tell us a little about how things have been going so far.  Off to a good start.  I’ve lost 10lbs in the past month.  I started seeing a personal trainer two times a week, training for some distance races (1/2 marathon), and have been diligently tracking my food to make sure my caloric intake isn’t as bad as it has been in the past.

How much weight, if any, have you lost so far? 40lbs.  I used to be 310lbs as recently as 4 years ago.  That year I actually lost 50lbs and have kept off most of it ever since.

What is the hardest part about losing weight for you?  It has always been diet.

Tell us about your diet.  What is the toughest part about dieting?  Fast food and pop has always been a part of my life.  In learning about what is put into some of the things that are sold at fast food restaurants, I am starting to finally get put off by them…like pink ooze…ew!

Tell us about your exercise.  Started going to a personal trainer two times a week.  He concentrates on a lot of core work, plank work, on all fours, or BOSU ball, etc.  Some of the exercises come naturally to me which I am grateful for, but there are some that I really struggle with.  I know I have to improve on those.  I try to run twice a week too.  When it gets a little warmer out, and if I get into the NY Marathon, I will be running as much as 4 times a week.  I have also started doing yoga about 2-3 times a week to keep flexible.  And of course I do a #PlankADay before I sleep at night.

Tell me about your relationship with exercise? Love it, hate it, on again/off again?  I hate when I am not doing it, I love it when I am.

Who has been helpful to you on your weight loss journey?  Other friends who have the same struggles as I do.  It is good to have the overall support of family and friends, but there is something about struggling through something WITH someone else that is very effective.

What part of the whole process do you need the most help with most?  I think like anything in life, things start getting old.  When I do the same thing over and over I end up getting bored and just start going through the motions.  As long as I can keep moving and adapt along the way I can be successful.

What questions would you like to ask to people who have lost the weight and kept it off?  How did you go about attacking your weight loss? Did you just break it down into “milestones” (e.g. 20lbs at a time) or was your mindset just going after the big goal?

I asked Real Life Biggest Loser Mike Bauman, @mbfgmike. He said: 

I kept my eye on the big goal but took pride in the smaller milestones.  For me, I attacked by focusing on just one main thing–net calories.  I wasn’t worried about anything else, I just tracked the one thing. My advice would be to keep your eye on the prize and don’t let yourself get pulled into too many directions. Stay focused on only the things that matter for weight loss.

What questions would you like to ask me?  What type of person succeeds at weight loss?  I’m not referring to body type or physical features, but what does a person need to think in order to succeed?

There are a few characteristics I think are very important to success. First is patience.  Do not get too wedded to a certain timeline because it’s hard to know how long it will actually take and there will be bumps along the road that may delay things.  It is the person who can ride the bumps out and keep pushing forward that will be successful.  When I say bumps, I mean plateaus, weight gains, injuries, and stressful times.  Second, is the ability to live, eat, and breathe healthy lifestyle. It becomes who you are.  People who are successful become viewed by others as a healthy person, they exude health. Living a healthy lifestyle becomes, over time, part of your identity, part of who you are. Finally, people who are successful do enough exercise to have fallen in love with it. We are all capable of this.  I don’t know a single person who has lost a large amount of weight who doesn’t do a great deal of exercise on a regular basis, meaning almost every day.

If we want to follow your journey, how do we find you?

Email at joey@deekin.net or my blog at http://www.deekin.net and Twitter @_deekin

 Joey lives in Buffalo Grove, Illinois with his wife.

The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do.  Andrew Carnegie

…and it made me wonder, why do we sometimes say we want to achieve a goal and then don’t act on it? I have worked with more patients that I can count who have looked me in the eye and said how much they want to lose weight, but then put in seemingly very little effort. Truth is we all do this on one thing or another.

Are we liars?  Are we lazy?

Neither is the case. Life is more complicated than that. It’s easy to want, it’s much harder to do. Here are 10 reasons why we want but don’t do:

1. I Don’t Know How To Do This- Sometimes it is as simple as this. You may just not know how to effectively lose weight. You might try a few things, none of them work, and then get confused and discouraged.  Feel like you don’t know where to begin with weight loss?  Check out this post.  I also recommend that you find an experienced counselor.  You might be surprised to know that many clinical psychologists (like yours truly!) have this expertise and can dig a little deeper into the emotional issues with you. Find a clinical psychologist with training in behavior therapy for weight loss—it may be covered under your mental health insurance too.

2. Something/someone is punishing your effort– This is the scenario where you feel like every time you try, you get hit over the head.  This can come in many forms. I remember one person I worked with talked about how every time she tried to lose weight her mother would make infuriating comments, like “Are you going to eat that? I thought you were trying to lose weight!” or “I can’t even tell you lost 10 pounds, isn’t that strange?”  Kindly ask the person to stop once, but after that I recommend distancing yourself from the offending person–not entirely, but to the extent that you can tolerate them without losing your enthusiasm.  Maybe seeing them once a week is too much, but you can handle an interaction once a month. Find the comfortable distance and stick to it.

3. Fear Part 1—Fear is the number 1 thing that holds us back from our wants.  If you are stuck, try to imagine what would happen if you achieved your goal exactly as planned. Does it terrify you? In one fear scenario, we are afraid of bad things that might happen if we achieve the goal.  I have had patients who worried a lot about the discomfort they would feel with attention they might attract if they were leaner.  And others have said that being leaner might take away their longstanding excuse to not have sex, which would bring a deeper relationship problem to light—one they aren’t ready to deal with. Success can come with new problems, or unearth old ones that have been buried for a long time.  As a first step, try to understand what problem you might be fearful of, what is at the root of that problem?  Keep in mind that successful weight loss may hinge upon your progress with that problem.

4. Fear Part 2 – Another fear is fear of the process. I’ve heard someone say, “I’m afraid I’ll feel deprived all the time.”  “I’m dreading being exhausted from the exercise.” “I’m afraid I won’t have time to do the other things I love.”  If these sound like you, the very best thing to do is to talk someone who has been through it (Maybe a Real Life Biggest Loser).  Ask them, did you feel deprived? Exhausted? Did you still have time for your hobbies? People who have been through it probably have lots of ideas on how to navigate through these challenges and will show you that the process may not be as bad as you think.

5. Fear Part 3- The third fear is the fear of failure. Victorious weight losses are sometimes followed by devastating regains. This feels REALLY bad, sometimes worse than you felt before you lost the weight in the first place.  Taking the plunge means taking the chance that a failure will happen again.  However, not going for it guarantees you won’t achieve anything.  Before starting though, think very hard about what went wrong last time so you don’t relive the cycle all over again.  I have a post about how to do a post-mortem on a regain that you may find helpful.

6.  Unrealistic Expectations. Sometimes our idea (or hope) of what it takes to achieve a weight loss goal is a bit unrealistic. If your efforts are repeatedly resulting in little to no progress, you may need to reassess whether those efforts are intense enough.  You may feel like you are doing a lot, but it still might not be enough to be really moving that scale.  See this post about getting started losing weight for more on making sure your efforts result in outcomes.

7. Resentment.  Have you ever wanted something so badly that you found yourself feeling negatively about or even angry at someone who has it?  We’ve all been there at one point in life or another and while we know it’s unreasonable, you can’t help but feel it’s not fair that it’s easy for some people, but not so easy for you. This can lead to an “us” versus “them” mentality and consequently, self-defeating behavior. If you have found yourself thinking that you don’t want to exercise or make a healthier diet choice because it feels like “giving in” to the skinny people, you might be stuck in this type of thinking.  Remind yourself that making healthy choices is not about living up to a skinny ideal, but very simply to be the healthiest person you can be.

8. Genetic Destiny. Your efforts may be lacking because of an underlying belief that your genetic destiny is in more control than you are. Just because several or all of your family members are overweight does not necessarily mean it is genetic. Families share more than genes in common—households, neighborhoods, and learned habits.  Even if your weight was genetically driven, it is a misconception that it isn’t malleable by your efforts.  Check out this post on genetic destiny. You are in more control than you think.

9. Hierarchy of Needs Imbalance.  Sometimes people who genuinely would like to lose weight have bigger fish to fry in more basic areas of life.  If you are worried about whether you can pay your mortgage, put food on the table, or keep your marriage together, losing weight will easily fall by the wayside.  Unfortunately, some people live in a constant state of stress about basic needs that they can hardly get to a point where they can really focus energy on self-improvement. If you are feeling like this is the case, put all your focus on taking care of those basic needs because doing so will eventually free you up to really focus on this. If you can’t resolve your basic needs issues, get help or time may run out on you.  Getting your life on solid ground will be good for your health.

10.  I say I want to lose weight because other people think I should, but secretly—I don’t.  Maybe you don’t really want to do this now, or ever.  If you are overweight you might feel like you should want to lose weight, but if you aren’t ready, you aren’t ready. Be sure that when you try, you do it for you and not because people in your life, or society says you should.  You will never be successful at a thing if your motivation is to satisfy someone else’s expectations.  Your attempts will always come off half-hearted.  It’s ok to say, “Not now.”  Wait until your heart says, NOW. You’ll know when you are ready…and when you are, blast off…

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This post also appears on EmaxHealth.com, click this link to check it out.

SP: What inspired you to study self-weighing?

DS: Given that research shows that self-monitoring (keeping food and exercise diaries) is important for making changes to diet and exercise habits, I knew that it is important for people to be aware of what they were doing in order to be able achieve weight loss.  However, most people find it too difficult to keep up with the diaries, which led me to think that perhaps if people just focused on weighing themselves as a strategy to maintain that awareness, then maybe that is all they need to see weight loss success. Weighing daily is very simple, so we thought it would be easier to do than keeping diaries and enough to see weight loss.

SP: Tell us a little about the design of your study

DS: We randomly assigned participants to a group that received the daily weighing program right away or a group that received the program after 6 months (they received nothing during the 6-month period). The program consisted of 3 main components.  1.  Weighing daily using a smart scale – this scale sent weights to a website for participants to view their weight loss progress and a graph of their weight loss trends overtime. 2.  Tailored weekly emailed feedback on progress with daily weighing and weight loss.  The scale also sent weights to a website where we, as researchers, could review each participants’ progress. If they were weighing daily and losing weight, we instructed them to keep doing what they were doing.  If they weren’t weighing or needed more help with weight loss, we provided them with strategies and other information to help them get back on track.  This feedback was batched so that each person in the same category received the same email. 3. Weekly emailed lessons on topics related to losing weight (e.g., portion control, implementing an exercise program, stress management, problem solving).

SP. What were the results?

DS: The daily weighers lost on average about 13lbs after 6 months, while the other group just maintained their weight.  We also found that people were able to stick with daily weighing as the group receiving the program weighed just over 6 days/week on average.  They also reported that daily weighing was positive, helpful, and easy to do.

SP: It seems to me that people reacted to their weight info during the day in ways that helped them manage their weight.  What sort of strategies did participants tell you they used?

DS: The goal of this program was to allow participants to come up with their own individualized ways to help them lose weight, rather then have someone tell them exactly what changes they should make.  The idea behind this is that each person learns what changes work best for them, with the hope that these changes will become incorporated into their daily lives.  Anecdotally, participants said that they made small changes to their eating and exercise habits each day to help see the number on the scale go down. 

SP: Some people tell me they are fearful of weighing themselves daily given fluctuations related to water weight gain, time of the month, etc, what advice do you have for them?

DS: At first it may take a week or more to get comfortable with weighing daily.  We are told time and time again not to look at the number on the scale, but the truth is that the scale is just a tool to help become aware of how your eating and exercise habits are affecting your weight.  If you see your weight go up as a result of eating a certain food, that provides you with awareness to cut back on that food.  Similarly, if you see your weight go down after a few days of cutting out certain foods, then that reinforces that those changes are working for you!  Fluctuations will occur, and the goal is to just be aware of them.  For example, if you see your weight go up because of hormonal changes, then recognize that connection and keep going.  The goal is not to be reactive to the number and see it as your “identity.”  It is just a tool to help you make connections between your eating and exercise habits and your weight.

If you are already weighing yourself daily, keep it up, it may be doing more for you than you know.  If you aren’t, you might try a week where you weigh yourself everyday and notice what effect it has on your behavior. Then consider keeping that habit going. Knowledge is power because it makes us think and do differently. The scale has a story to tell, sometimes we like it and sometimes we don’t, but either way, it’s one we need to hear…everyday.

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Dori Steinberg, MS, RD is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Nutrition Cancer Control and an Education Program Fellow at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She can be directly contacted at dori@unc.edu.

References

Steinberg DM, Tate DF, Bennett GG, Ennett SE, Samuel-Hodge C, Ward DS.  The WEIGH Study: A Randomized Trial Focusing on Daily Self-weighing for Weight Loss Among Overweight Adults.  Presented as an oral presentation at the 2012 Society of Behavioral Medicine Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA.

This post is my attempt to start a revolution to wipe out this phrase from our discourse.  Why? Because it is not only an inaccurate assessment of a situation but it also prevents us from learning what is actually going on and how to fix it. Descriptions of behavior that don’t explain anything are actually pretty useless.

The phrase is inaccurate because very simply, ALL we have is time. Time is continuous, it is constant. How you spend that constant stream of time is a reflection of who you are, of your personal values. Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t.  That’s the problem.

If you don’t exercise, it doesn’t mean you don’t value it. It might mean that your life is not as values-driven as it could be.  If you remember anything from this post, please remember this:

The most fulfilling, contented life is one in which our actions are an accurate reflection of our values.

What do I mean by values?  Consider the following areas of life:  relationships, family, work/school, recreation, health/spirituality.  Now ask yourself what are the ideals you would like to be working towards in each of these areas of your life?  For example, for “health” one might say: a physically active lifestyle. For “family” one might say: to be a loving mother.  These are values. An action is something you do that demonstrates that value.  To be a loving mother (value) you might sing to your child each night (action).  Ideally, you are doing something everyday that is attached to each of your values.

When actions become disconnected from values, often depression, anxiety, and other symptoms creep in. We feel that disconnect even if we aren’t sure where it is.  At that point our behavior becomes emotions-driven, which creates a vicious cycle because emotion-driven activities begin to displace values-driven activities. In this fast-moving, high-octane world it is easy to look up and find that our actions have strayed far away from what we truly value.  Or you might look up to find that you have completely lost sight of your values, in which case your actions will be heavily driven by the moment, other peoples actions, emotions, or who knows what. In either case, it’s time for a realignment.

I challenge you to replace the phrase “I don’t have time” with the phrase “I choose to do something that I think is more important” for one week. It sounds easy, but it’s hard to do because it feels bad to say. It feels bad because it brings to light the disconnect. Imagine telling someone that you didn’t come to their birthday party because you chose to do something you think is more important. Ouch! Other things were more important, right?  Let’s find out…

The next challenge is to keep a journal of every single thing (hour by hour) that you did for a week. This is an eye opening activity if you are really curious about your actions-to-values alignment in general. At the end of the week, look at your journal. Do you believe that each and every activity was more important, more values-driven to you than a few minutes of exercise?  Hmmm…maybe watching back-to-back repeats of Cupcake Wars wasn’t all that values-driven. Maybe dusting the ceiling fan blades could have waited until more important things were done.

Next, identify activities that are not well-connected to any of your values. Ask yourself whether these activities were emotions-driven.  Take the Cupcake Wars, I did that because I was exhausted and stressed from a long day, but no, it’s not connected to any of my life values.  These disconnected activities are occupying time slots that could be used to do things that are more directly related to one of your values.  Remember, having a values-driven life WILL make you feel more fulfilled and contented, and therefore less stressed– meaning less time is spent in emotion-driven activities.  I would have been better to choose an activity that was values-driven (e.g., walk on the treadmill) because those have the inherent consequence of improving emotional states.

If you feel all of your activities are values-driven (Unlikely! Come on, we all waste time!), then it may come down to a better distribution of your time across values. For example, 70 hours of work and 0 minutes of exercise is an unhealthy distribution. Your actions over the course of time should be balanced across all of your values, otherwise you open yourself up to problems in the neglected areas of your life.  If you feel like you can’t pare back time spent on one valued-activity to make time for another, then start leveraging your activities. This is where one activity knocks out progress towards two or more values.  Exercise with your spouse, call mom while you grocery shop, or go for a walk during a conference call. The options are limitless.

If you are trying to lose weight, obviously the actions (like exercise) are highly value-driven.  The challenge is how to bring these actions into your life. Most of us engage in at least a few activities that aren’t values-driven—just the act of displacing these activities for exercise and other health behaviors will not only move you closer to living according to your values, but by generating a values-driven life you will experience more contentment and joy (and less stress).

I sometimes wonder what terminally ill people think of the rest of us. They are the only ones who are truly short on time. They must shake their heads in disdain when they watch how we spend our time. How we slowly kill ourselves with stress. How we don’t do everything in our power to take care of ourselves. How we don’t realize we are terminal too. We have the luxury of forcing that reality out of our minds, and then go watch Cupcake Wars, skip birthday parties, and dust the fan blades…

If you are having trouble fitting something into your life that is truly consistent with your values, realign your time.  Investing in your values is sure to lead to many, many happy returns.

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Time is the coin of life. Only you can determine how it will be spent. – Carl Sandburg