When I was big I did perceive myself as having this disease, every diet I tried I was trying cure this obesity that I had, and I thought once I found the diet that got me slim then I was slim for life. Now I meet a lot of people who do very well on diets and are convinced they will never regain the weight as they are now cured of the problem.
The reality though is very different, the reason for that is that being overweight it not a disease, therefore there is no cure for it. That may sound very negative but actually it really isn't! The good thing is that the reason we all became and become overweight is that we ate too many calories, that is a behaviour! and the good thing about a behaviour is that it is learnt and therefore can be changed.
So if someone, for example me!, learns that when you are lonely and need comfort that by eating something you get it, then that becomes a learnt behaviour. The more you do it the more you reinforce it and hence you just learn that when your lonely you eat! Now if you didn't actually put weight on, then it wouldn't really matter, but the problem of course is that if, like me, you use food to change your emotional state then it leads to health issues.
You could say isn't this very obvious, but if it was and everyone realised that actually we need to change behaviours and nothing else to solve the crisis we are in then we would be tackling it in a totally different way.
The focus is of course on dieting and diets DO work. The problem is if you have a learnt behaviour that when you are angry, sad, tired, lonely, bored etc that you eat then if you don't change that behaviour then you will simply lose weight and then find it again. It is exactly what I did through my twenties, I would lose a couple of stone, I would then have a tough time at work, or a row with the neighbours, or have a wedding or some other event that would make the behaviour reappear and hence so would the weight, not long afterwards.
Therefore, instead of trying to find a diet that cures you and gets you slim, instead you need to look inside and realise why you do what you do. When people say to me that they just find themselves eating it actually isn't true. Don't get me wrong, I used to just grab things and eat them myself but it is always a decision to do it! Therefore the next time you are eating when you think you really shouldn't be as you aren't actually hungry or need the nutrition, then ask yourself what you really are eating for. If you can realise why you trigger off the behaviour to overeat then you can take steps to change it.
Let me give you an example
My wife works nights as a nurse, when I was big she would go to work at 7pm and leave me in the house by myself. At that time I hated being by myself and within minutes of her leaving I would be raiding the kitchen fridge and cupboards and would slowly graze throughout the evening on the sofa. I would then, before I went to bed, hide most of the food wrappers and go to my bed. I never really saw it as an issue even though I was some fourteen stone overweight.
You could blame the food here! You could say I needed to just find a good diet, but what was the real issue?
The real issue was that I didn't like myself and that I didn't like to spend time with myself alone as it made it more obvious that I didn't like myself, therefore I would overeat instead to give myself something to do and to numb my mind and my thoughts.
Instead this week of focussing on what diet you are doing, focus on why you really overeat in the first place, because if you can get rid of that reason then the diet is just a great tool to get slim and stop dieting forever as you won't need food anymore to give you that emotional lift.
I hope you have a fantastic week!!!
Take care
Mike :-)
A Book For Change
