In the first post of this series, I talked about the general thinking and philosophy you need for successful lifestyle change:
- Make the decision (to sacrifice your old self)
- Accept the realization (thin people monitor and control their weight)
- Create a plan (monitor your weight, and control your food intake.)
- Learn about yourself (negotiate to find what you really want, keep yourself satisfied)
Those points were about committing yourself to a change of heart, a change of values, and ultimately a change of lifestyle. I want to talk some more about the sacrifice you are making and the new self you are creating.
1. Don’t go on a diet
How do people do on a diet? Sing along with me, you know the tune. (1) lose some weight by forcing yourself to make some drastic and unpleasant change, then (2) fall back into your old habits (your old life), suddenly or gradually, then (3) gain back that weight and maybe some more, and (4) repeat. For your own sake, please don’t go on a diet. Instead, change who you are. Let me explain.
I’ve checked out the weight loss forums and food diary pages, and read some weight loss books. The advice can be good. But it needs a framework. Why are you doing this? What does it mean for how you live your life? What are you sacrificing (forever)? Who will you be, when you have reimagined yourself? People are full of enthusiasm to give dieting a try. Motivation is not the issue! But they run into a few problems that make the whole thing self-defeating. The first problem is the dieting idea itself.
Diets set you up for failure because they are built around the idea that you do not need to permanently change your lifestyle or take control of yourself. They give you excuses that salve your self-image instead of inspiring in you the desire and ability to change forever. Once you accept the truth that thin people absolutely do monitor and control their weight throughout their lives, you are mentally halfway to getting there yourself. Think about it: if thin people must monitor and control their weight during their whole lives to stay thin, then so must everyone else, including you and me. (If you want to be thinner, anyway.) If you diet, then go back to your old life, your old weight will come right back.
On diets, you are following a temporary plan. Whether you are on the grapefruit diet, or low carb, South Beach, keto, Atkins, or paleo, or whatever, that diet has a built-in, self-defeating excuse and a dodge of your responsibility to yourself and others. (The people in your life who depend on you, need you to be at your best.) If what’s making you heavy is too many carbs, or processed foods, or the lack of grapefruit, well, it’s not your fault, is it? It’s those darned carbs, or the corporations, or some other demon. Remember: if thin people must monitor and control their weight during their whole lives to stay thin, then so must you and I.
Do you really want be someone who is on the diet cycle for the rest of your life? Don’t diet. Make a change to your thinking and create a new you who can lose weight and keep it off forever.
2. Instead, change your mind. Your body will follow.
Your old self was a person who couldn’t lose weight, and who is gaining weight. You need to be a new person, who can lose weight and keep it off. That means you must sacrifice the old you. It has to go. Does that sound hard? Well, it is. Very hard. You’ve built the old you over many years. It’s comfortable and secure. To leave the old you is like being a hermit crab leaving the old shell. It’s scary and makes you feel unprotected. Luckily, you have some help in making this difficult change. You know that successful people sacrifice. You will read here some ideas on to build a new and better lifestyle for yourself. Sacrifice your old thinking, goals, aims, and lifestyle that make you overweight. Find new ones that result in a new you. I will explain.
Maybe, like me, your old goal in eating was to feel completely full. Maybe you find that very comforting – being completely full. And maybe you have hurt yourself, failing on diet after diet until you can’t trust yourself any more. You might start to dislike yourself, or get depressed about your failures. Maybe you have punished yourself for straying off a diet. Maybe you eat quickly, to get to that full feeling faster. Maybe you eat while watching TV or using your phone or reading. The old life is not that wonderful when I describe it, is it? You must let go of all that. It will be hard. Even letting go of hurt is hard. But it is necessary and there are compensations. I know an adult who ruined his own life just to upset his parents. That’s someone who can’t give up their hurt and needs revenge. Let it go.
You need to create a new self. You need a plan to become a new person with a new set of values. THAT is the lifestyle change. You will become a new person who values being thin and is willing to put in a lot of time and effort to make it happen. It is a transformation! You turn yourself from a person who is overweight into one who can succeed at losing weight. You’re not doing it for anyone else or despite anyone else. You let the old parts of you burn away and your life is renewed.
You are building a new identity. What does the new you value above all else? What is your new aim regarding your eating? What does a person in control of their weight value? What is your new goal when you consider eating food? It all flows from the top. Change what you value in your life. If you value having your weight under control, then you need a new aim or purpose in living your life. Your goals in eating must be different, too.
3. Avoid the willpower trap
A couple of months after I started dieting, my mother sympathetically asked me if I was feeling deprived over the things I was cutting out. It was hilarious, there was no way to answer her. We were operating on different planes. She was thinking in terms of what I was cutting out of my food choices to lose weight. She was expecting me to be living on willpower and broccoli, constantly hungry and craving. And I had done that before and failed at it before. But this time, I was eating better (quality) and enjoying my food more than I ever had since I was in college and decently thin!
I could only answer her by showing her how I was reframing everything. Mom, I’m just not thinking about it that way. I’m not giving up any foods, deprivation is not part of my experience. Willpower is not being used in the way you think it is. For breakfast, I had 3 slices of bacon and 3 eggs with cheese. For lunch, I had a Reuben wrap sandwich. For dinner, I had a carnitas burrito. I ate 1730 calories that day and I was hungry for every meal and I enjoyed every bite. Oh, and I was losing weight too. The willpower was all used for paying attention to what I was doing. Deciding which foods would be worth waiting for. Figuring out how much of them would be enough to enjoy, but not so much that I wouldn’t be hungry for my next meal. Paying attention while I was eating, so that I would eat carefully and remember to enjoy satisfying my hunger with that first bite and every bite. I was making a sacrifice, and then ensuring that the sacrifice would be worth it. What was I sacrificing? My old self. My old goal. My old comfort (which came from eating until I was completely full).
Don’t use willpower to force yourself to do things you don’t want and can’t live with. You can’t force yourself to do them forever, and then you will go back to your old life. Plus, when your willpower fails, you will feel terrible about yourself. You need to feel your body and mind are working together. Fulfillment comes from that partnership.
4. The new you
Imagine you were helping someone else on a diet and they are letting you down, time after time. How can you trust someone like that? How can you work with them to accomplish the goal? Think of your body as another person you must work with. You need your body and mind to be working together in your new life. You must love yourself, work with yourself, and reward yourself for a job well done. You also must figure out (in consultation with yourself, strange as that may sound) a lifestyle that will make you successful at losing weight, and one that you could enjoy being on for many years. That’s right – if your new lifestyle is enjoyable, losing weight will be enjoyable too. Losing weight will almost seem beside the point.
The new you will have to be discovered. I can tell you about the new me. Unlike my grandfather, who very effectively controlled his food intake by eating a monotonous diet, I am very interested in the different foods I can eat and I want to keep eating them. A lifestyle of eating only broccoli wouldn’t work for me, though I like broccoli (with enough butter and cheese). The new me still values eating as a sensual experience.
What changed? I moved “in control of my food intake” and “I want to be thin” near the top of my moral hierarchy. They are up there now, higher than my desire to be frugal, higher than my desire to save money, higher than my desire to buy a house or a new car. I haven’t saved any money by eating less food, because what I am eating isn’t as cheap, but is more satisfying. You know, my new values are higher in my mind than “I want to eat together with my family”? If they don’t make it home in time for dinner, I eat without them. That sounds terrible, but I am in a serious calorie deficit. By dinner time, I can get seriously grumpy if kept hungry for too long. They wouldn’t like me when I’m grumpy. It’s better if I eat. When they come home, I can serve them, sit with them, and talk to them about their day. Do you see how that works? Being in control of my food intake and being thin are now more important to me than they were before. I sacrificed that old me, and I sacrificed my old values and I will sacrifice eating with my family, if that gets in my way. (There are limits – we’re not the Donner party.)
My aim now is to be in control of my food intake and to be thin. There are many physical and social benefits to being thin and I won’t go into them here; they are well known and I accept most of them. But my new aim is a great moral good that I have brought into my life; I will be responsible for my body and how it looks and I will be proud of it. I am focused on my aim and I will cut off anything that gets in the way (unless it conflicts with a higher value; there are some things even rats won’t do!). Other things, like spending time with my family, are still important. But I fit them in if I can. If it’s work on my food journal, or play with the kids, I complete my journal. It’s that important to me now. I don’t compromise in my new aim. I intend to be like this for the rest of my life, too. It may sound a bit selfish, but my family will benefit from me being a stronger, fitter, and more disciplined person who is living responsibly.
My goal now, when eating, is to be hungry. Using the power of my mind, I have turned hunger from a bad thing into a good thing. Let me explain. Before I changed, I wanted to feel absolutely full after every meal. That was my old goal. Consequence: overweight. My new goal is to have every meal be as enjoyable as possible, while still under control. That goal means that I must be hungry when mealtime comes. Food tastes best when you are hungry. The food has to be worth getting hungry for and has to be truly satisfying my cravings. It has to be just enough to satisfy me and keep me happy until the next meal. I have found this arrangement works for me, if the food is worth it. This brings me to rewards.
Reward yourself for doing a good job. Your body will love you for it. Make promises to yourself and keep them. Build your trust in yourself and your abilities. Each 10 pounds I lose gets rewarded. I reward myself with special foods. Do you see how the new me has a system that reinforces itself? The special food is the ultimate in “worth waiting for”. I will prepare by getting hungry; I will take my time and enjoy it; I will eat just enough so I will be hungry for the next meal. I admit that if the reward is an Indian buffet lunch, the next meal might be breakfast. But I will be hungry for it.
What if I have a bad day or fall back into my old thinking? What if I get too hungry, overeat, ruin my plan? Well, I don’t punish myself, ever. I try to learn why I did that. What was different about today? Did I get cold, did I have some emotional stressor, was I tired? Was I not planning my meals out? I learned that I need to have the foods I am craving in the house and ready. When I get hungry, it gets very urgent, and I really resent eating things I don’t really want. My old habit was to cook lots of extra food and eat the leftovers as lunch. Quantity was the goal. Now I want quality, and if all there is to eat is leftovers I don’t really want, I get resentful. Maybe rebellious. I am not satisfied, after the sacrifice I made! So I rebel.
So don’t punish yourself. Try to learn. Tomorrow is a new day. Losing weight is a matter of average calorie intake, week by week and month by month. Leave your anger and disappointment at yourself behind. It’s better to learn to listen and prevent future binging. I pay a lot of attention to what foods I keep around, now. Resentment is destructive.
Create a new life, one that you can be proud of, and enjoy. Who wouldn’t want that?
-The Doctor