 Thinking About Weight Loss
It's a Journey Not a Destination
by Robert A Hart, MD
Most people have short term weight loss goals. "I want to lose weight in time for my daughter's wedding". "I want to lose weight before my summer vacation". While it is only natural to have the short term goals, let's consider the harm that this type of thinking sometimes causes.
Short term goals may set you up for failure. Setting an arbitrary weight as a goal is not always good. If you don't reach the goal, you will feel guilty and feel like a failure. Then likely you will just start eating more again. On the other hand, if you reach your goal, then you have to decide what to do next. Continuously adjusting your goals may result in more frustration.
Consider having more achievable goals. I set these goals for myself: 1) I will weigh myself every day, 2) I will keep my food diary every day, and 3) I will do some kind of exercise every single day. By focusing on the tools for weight loss rather than the weight itself, I am actually focusing on the weight loss journey, NOT the destination weight. This may sound hard to believe, but I have almost never had a patient who faithfully kept an accurate food diary and exercised who did not ultimately lose weight. Think of a common analogy. When you were in school, you may have taken courses in art, American History, Biology, or subjects that seemed to have no bearing on your career path. Why did you waste this time? Because the very act of learning new information and synthesizing new ideas helped you on your ultimate path to sucess in life. Sometimes tools that may not seem helpful to our goal may actually help us much more than we think.
Forgive Yourself. When you gain a few pounds, realize that you are simply repeating a life long pattern. As long as you live, you will have times of weight gain. Despite the gain of a few pounds, tell yourself "I'm at least going to start keeping my diet journal every day and tracking my activity and daily weights". Before you know it, you will be back on the path to weight loss. Studies have shown that negative feelings of guilt are poor motivators for long term change. Better to reward yourself for positive behaviors. For example, tell yourself "I can't seem to lose weight right now, but I'm going to treat myself to a nice reward just for faithfully keeping my diary for the next month".
Love the Journey. So many people seem to hate the thought of eating a healthy diet. They just want to punish themselves until they make it to their goal. Try a different approach. Buy some healthy eating cookbooks. Enjoy the taste and mouth feel of really healthy whole foods. Make new vegetables. Visit some outdoor markets during the produce season. Maybe even pick some of your own food. Each day imagine how much better your body feels when you feed it lots of good vegetables. Rather than feeling deprived, cultivate a feeling of sadness for those who eat junk food.
If you are interested in setting up an intermittent program, let us know. We can help provide the proper protein supplements to minimize lean body tissue loss and help control hunger cravings. You can reach our office at (330) 473-4525 or (800) 673-5340.
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