Toss Those Diet Books and Read This

“I have every self-help and diet book out there, and here I am, still 40 pounds overweight. Sometimes I lose weight and get all excited, only to sabotage myself and eat like a horse. What is wrong with me?”

Sound familiar?

What if you said there isn’t anything wrong with you? What if you started from the opposite side of the judgment street and started calling yourself something totally awesome? If 85% of diets fail, maybe the problem isn’t with you at all, but with the approach to weight loss through dieting. Dieting is deprivation. It torments.

We are human. We don’t like being hungry or feeling deprived. We need energy to stay alive. When you get the right energy from the right foods, it will be just like high test gas in a car. You’ll burn your fuel efficiently and have the energy and focus to live life fully.

You Are What You Eat

If you want to lose 40 pounds, follow these 6 tips to get results:

Rev up your metabolism! Metabolism is the process within your body that converts the food you eat into energy. Your body needs energy just to manage all bodily functions; beyond that it needs energy for you to perform activities you might do throughout the day. The key is to eat enough food to give your body enough energy to manage these tasks, but not too much or too little. It’s like Goldilocks choosing the right bowl of porridge.

1. Be patient. Those 40 pounds didn’t show up in two or three months. Lasting weight loss happens over many months or even years.

2. Be happy you are headed in the right direction and take it step by step.

3. Fire any and all judges. This might include your spouse, friends, kids, who mention your weight or comment on what you eat. That’s called shaming and has a boomerang effect, yes?

4. Get all junk food out of your house. Save “treats” for outside special occasions and they will feel like treats.

5. Find sweetness in your life from things other than sugar. Hugs, good deeds, nature walks and pets can all work.

6. Get non-judgmental support. We are a very impatient culture. We want instant results. When you look at weight, you may want instant results when you want to lose, but those same pounds you want to lose were not gained in an instant. Weight gain is gradual, and if you want to lose, you need to be patient. You need to sort out the things that will help you from the things that won’t.

Non-judgmental support in the form of a health coach can be enormously helpful for some. For others you may be highly successful with a buddy. This is where you have freedom to choose the source of support that is best for you. You know yourself better than anyone, and when you trust that you know just what you need.

Don’t stay feeling frustrated. Clean out those bookshelves and get into the mindset of successful change. It’s much more fun.