So, you’re looking to lose weight and your journey has brought you here. Hello there, traveler.
Let me ask you what I ask all of my clients who come to me for help in losing weight: What does your vision of success look like? Where are you trying to get to if it isn’t right here?
Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.“
Alice: “I don’t much care where.”
Cheshire Cat: “Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.”
– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
You need to know where you want to go in order to have any chance of getting there.
The journey to weight loss is so difficult that if you don’t have a powerful vision for yourself, you will likely quit and wander off long before you get anywhere close to where you want to go.
In fact, I’m guessing, like many of us, you’ve wandered off plenty of times before.
Does this sound familiar?:
You decide this is it. You’re going to lose the weight this time. You pick the latest weight loss program and you are full of hope. You start out strong… then something comes up — a vacation, a big life event, stress, busyness, boredom, frustration at feeling restricted, deprived or hungry, and you go astray. You fall off the wagon. You go back to eating too much of the foods that don’t work for you…
Then you buckle down. You get back on track (maybe even berate yourself for good measure that this time will be different). And then life happens again. And again. And again. All progress is erased and you are right back where you started, maybe even with a few extra pounds.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Interrupting this cycle comes down to one basic skill: saying no to a lot of things you’d prefer to say yes to. Consistently. Not perfectly, but consistently.
The guiding force that will help you with all of those “no”s will be your vision for your future self, so I recommend you make sure it’s a good one.
Try to think past just a number on the scale.
Sure, pick a goal weight or a pants size, but also think about how you will feel when you get there. What things you will do that you can’t do now? How will it feel to look at your body in the mirror? To put on a bathing suit? To get your picture taken? To go on a hike?
If none of these matter, what does to you? Longevity? Not being a burden on your family as you age? Being a good example for your children? Keeping your health, mobility, memory, independence?
Why do you want to lose weight and what will it look like when you do? Think about it. Write it down.
And might I recommend you add to your vision to ultimately achieve freedom from this godforsaken pattern of relentless weight loss obsession and cycling through failed attempts at conquering it? It sucks and it’s exhausting.
Don’t you want to be able to just live, eat well, and be healthy once and for all?
Of course you do. Here’s the issue… If you’re like most people I’ve talked to, you want to lose weight but you also want to keep eating the foods that are keeping that weight stuck to you.
We hate giving things up.
What we don’t often think about is the possible, healthier body we could have THAT WILL NEVER COME TO BE if we don’t change how we are eating. That healthy body, that vision you wrote down, is what you are currently giving up by hanging on to foods that don’t serve you.
Each day you are making a choice: your current way of eating or your vision of your thinner self.
Make good choices.
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