It is very common in clients I work with that they believe that once they reach goal weight they won't go back to their previous behaviour of overeating. The reality is though that 95% of dieters regain either all, or the majority, of their weight within a year of finishing the diet. The 5% are classed as a dieter who has reduced their weight by more than 30 pounds and has regained less than half of it after 12 months.

 

Now let's be honest, that is not a good statistic! Yet we all know it is true as we all see the majority of dieters regain weight, regardless of the diet itself, and how they reduce it. I saw a fantastic study last year that showed fifteen different diets studied over a five year period and they all showed exactly the same percentage of regain.

 

Therefore, the solution isn't to keep doing what we are doing now, which is to just concentrate on food (or lack of food) as the answer to the problem.  The answers have to come from how people think about food, how they act around it and, more importantly, what they really use food for. Diets are a fantastic tool to get people to reduce weight but they aren't a lifestyle choice and when you finish them what do you do next?

 

Let me give you an example...

 

I used to use food when I was at University as I was very lonely. I was living a couple of hundred miles away from my friends and family and hence, I felt a huge sense of loss and a void in my life. I therefore used to overeat to try and stop the feelings of loneliness and sadness.

 

Did it work?

 

Yes! For the few seconds that I was doing it....

 

But the problem was it didn't work the minute I had finished the mouthful of food and I needed another mouthful of food for that sticky plaster to my real problem, which was being lonely.

 

I learnt then that when I am lonely I can eat to help me.

 

Now I have learnt that, it will always be with me. You can't forget it so the key isn't to believe you can forget how to overeat, it is to make sure you don't pull the trigger on the behaviour.

 

The article is called, can you still ride a bike? Most people will answer yes. I can definitely still ride a bike as I learnt to do it when I was seven years old on my bright blue grifter! Now, I still know how to ride that bike but I CHOOSE not to because I prefer to drive a car as it is quicker, easier and allows me to take the family places. Also I don't walk past a bike rack at my childrens' school and have the urge to grab a bike and start riding it! Understanding why you want to overeat is the real key to long term success.

 

Just because I know how to ride a bike it doesn't mean I do. Just because I still know how to eat a whole box of Jaffa cakes it doesn't mean I choose to. I used to have loads of "vices" and I still know how to smoke, gamble, drink, fight, take drugs and spend money but I choose not to do those behaviours anymore as I value myself and my health too highly to go back to such damaging behaviours.

 

The point of this article is to make you realise that you will always be able to eat too much. If you got big once, you can definitely get big twice but you can control and choose whether you go back to overeating or whether you do something else instead.

 

As they said in Trainspotting once --> "I choose life"

 

Have a fantastic week!!!

 

Mike :-)