Home

Obesity

Fighting Obesity: Psyching Yourself to Act
Part 2 in a four-part series on obesity and weight loss

You may be only thinking about trying to lose weight. Or perhaps you’ve evolved to that next step and feel ready to commit to do what it takes to drop some pounds. Either way, it’s tempting to seek out a quick fix.

And all around you are suggestions that losing weight or getting in shape can happen with relative ease. Who doesn’t know somebody that went on a low-carb diet and lost a bunch of weight? Who wouldn’t take a magic pill if it could melt the pounds away? And who hasn’t been lured, even briefly, by the incredible claims for fat-burning products? But the hard fact is that fad diets aren’t the way to go and no one miracle exercise will melt the fat off.

Sure, on a fad diet you may lose weight—at first. But unless you’ve made real long-term lifestyle changes, you’re just going to gain the weight back—at best. And if your genetic make-up predisposes you to be fat (as I discussed in the first installment of this series), then every time you try one of these rash weight-loss approaches you’ll just end up even heavier.

To really lose weight and keep it off, what you need to understand is not only will you need to eat better and be more active, you’ll need to do it forever. You’ll need to quash your urge for dramatic, instantaneous results. Instead, you’ll need to be patient. You’ll need to be able to recognize the small achievements you make on this long road. You’ll need to create a motivational reserve so that when you feel like nothing is working or you’re simply tired of making the effort, you’ll be able to bolster yourself back up to stick with your leaner lifestyle.

The magic pill to reap the results you want is consistency.

The way to be consistent with the eating and exercise choices is to wrap your mind around a whole new perspective. Here are five hard facts that you must know. Use them for a reality check. Read them and then read them again. Let them soak into your subconscious. They’ll help you psych yourself up to stick to a leaner life.

1) You may have to struggle (for a while).

Some people don’t have to live the same battle of the bulge as you do. They are either genetically lucky or have adopted healthy habits that make living lean easy. If they overeat, they exercise enough that they suffer no weight gain. If they get by with minimal amounts of exercise, it’s because they’ve accrued a life of activity that allows them to cut back yet maintain their fitness.

You may not have this luxury. At least not right now. You may have to do more, work harder and be more patient than other people. Life is not always fair. But it’s better to know where you stand so that you realize what you need to do, rather than fool yourself into thinking that you’ll see results from minimal or short-lived efforts. .

Your first instinct may be to take an all-or-nothing approach. You’ll block out temptation by being strict about exercising and following  a very specific food plan. But I can promise you, you won’t have long-term success that way. Instead, you should take it slower and smarter. You will need to make subtle changes in your life rather than drastic, temporary ones. This may feel more frustrating, as you teeter on the edge of discomfort long past the point where you feel motivated to make a change. But you’ll need to keep making better food choices and prodding yourself to move more when you don’t feel like it. This is where the mental hurdles start.

The good news is that once you’ve converted to a lean life, it does become easy. But in the beginning, especially after your first few weeks or months of feeling motivated, it will feel like a struggle, and you will have to push through that rough spot to succeed..