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.
22. Stop waiting – We want permanent weight loss. I get dozens of calls a day from people saying they want permanent weight loss. I hear the desire in their voices. But, instead of jumping in and making it happen, they are waiting. Waiting for the right moment, waiting for the right sign from the universe, waiting for their marriage to stabilize, waiting, waiting, waiting… you get the idea. There is never going to be a perfect time. When I realized the perfect time wasn’t coming to me, I began my weight loss despite being in a deadend job, a deadend relationship, having a very young son ,and despite having NO support from friends or family.
23. Stop all or nothing thinking – Diet mentality trains us well. We are ether “on” or “off” a diet or plan. We are either “good” or “bad” today. We “deserve” or “don’t deserve” to be thin. All or nothing thinking takes us to extremes and denies a good part of reality. It’s not effective or helpful. Instead, it pulls us to a spot where we have to deny or defend our actions, usually to NO ONE – unless you count that sabotaging monkey mind that resides inside our practical brain.
24. Stop overthinking – Overthinking pulls us into analyzing every detail of every decision and, perhaps, every calorie ingested. It wastes energy and puts attention on the minutia which cannot help us strengthen our commitment or get us closer to meaningful action. It’s a big trap. Why do we overthink? We do not trust ourselves.
25. Stop believing perfection exists – Perfectionistic tendencies are another black hole for energy. Perfection sucks energy with the promise that the stars will some day align perfectly. But, it’s a messy universe, and a messy world. I remember a client calling me for her coaching appointment early in my career as a coach. She was miserable because she had not been able to put together a “perfect eating day” that week. “I just want to be like you Pat. For one day. I just want to have one perfect day.” I thought hard about her statement, before I realized what she had assumed. “Charlotte,” I said. “I’ve never had a perfect eating day. I don’t even expect one. But I’ve lost over 70 pounds and kept it off for years. If I had waited for a perfect day, I’d still be waiting in vain at 240 pounds.”
26. Stop controlling – Control is a lot like perfection. The diet books tell us it’s an important (and easy!) step leading to weight loss. But controlling food will never happen. Controlling your environment isn’t possible. Controlling other people – well dream on! Control is an illusion. Give it up.
27. Stop diminishing yourself – Diets diminish us, by prescribing a set number of calories, usually a number greatly reduced from our real needs. Diets tell us we can’t have the yummy foods other people eat because we are fat. Food plans tell us we can only have the desirable shape of a movie star by eating bland, tasteless, processed crap all day, when real life movie stars do really drastic things, dark and hidden things, to maintain those figures. Comparison to said movie stars is diminishing as well. Start lifting yourself UP, supporting and loving yourself instead of tearing yourself down. Forget the weight loss, that’s a WIN you’ll never regret.
28. Stop lack of gratitude – Feeling gratitude is one of the highest emotions available to human beings. When we get stuck in the never-ending cycle of diet and regain, it’s hard to feel grateful for our amazing bodies, which respond to our vicious debilitating diet attacks by getting better and better at running the vital body systems on LESS food. It’s also hard to feel gratitude for our precious lives, and our amazing ability to change upon decision, which only human beings can do.
29. Stop ignoring your body’s cues and messages – Underneath all the mental overthinking our minds constantly pursue, our body is talking. It is giving cues, messages and calling for help. But we don’t hear it. We have developed a habit of ignoring the body’s language, or perhaps we never learned to interpret it. But our bodies know when to eat, how much to eat, what to eat and when to stop eating. All we need to do, in order to achieve thinness, is listen.
30. Stop running your life by your limiting beliefs – Beneath our daily thought patterns and attitudes, we all have some limiting beliefs – about ourselves, our bodies, or our lives. We might believe we are not good enough. We might believe we don’t deserve love. If we boil down our limiting beliefs, there are only four basic ones. All our beliefs are variations on these four: fear, inadequacy, scarcity and lack of trust. Which limiting belief is running your life? Forget controlling food and exercise, forget denying yourself nourishment and love — figure out your limiting beliefs and start to change them. They are, after all, only beliefs. They only exist because we invest time and energy in them.
Whereas diets tend to deplete, diminish and shame us, making deeper changes empowers us. Begin now.
