The weight loss method that works better than any other way

For years, actually centuries people have been struggling to lose weight. In fact, it’s believed that the very first person to go on a diet happened to be a man and his approach seems rather masculine as well, He gave up food, and only ingested alcohol – yes, he invented the “drinking man’s diet.”

Like most unhealthy and unbalanced diets, this one failed. The famous dieter was none other than William the Conqueror. William may have conquered plenty of things in his life, but weight management wasn’t one of them. He required an XL coffin.

10 facts we learned about diets over the last thousand years or so:
  1. Losing weight isn’t easy
  2. There is no single food that can effectively bring about weight loss all on its own
  3. There is no single food that can completely ruin weight loss success all on its own
  4. Physical activity can enhance weight loss progress
  5. Lack of physical activity can reduce or reverse weight loss progress
  6. Physical activity isn’t a reliable way to lose weight without making any changes to eating habits
  7. Rate of weight loss is rarely consistent
  8. Body weight can fluctuate by several pounds over the course of a day
  9. Weight loss success isn’t always easy to recognize
  10. Nobody can lose weight by quitting (unless they have underlying health issues)

These facts are the foundation of the one weight loss method that works better than any other way. Food and exercise are part of effective weight loss, of course, because they’re essential elements to any successful weight loss plan.

In the end, what you choose to eat or how much you plan to exercise won’t get you to goal unless you address your thinking and feeling. If you don’t think right so that you’re feeling confident, you won’t get anywhere no matter what diet and exercise plan you use.

Your intentions to eat better and move more can be quickly overturned or forgotten entirely, if you allow your thinking to go where it shouldn’t and your feelings follow into that negative place.

Example:

Marianne needs to track 10,000 steps on her Fitbit everyday. She does it by taking a 4,000 step walk morning and evening. She gets at least 2,000 more steps in the course of her normal daily routine. If she doesn’t get her 10,000 steps, it’s a bad day.

Yesterday she took her morning walk, but it started raining hard around 3:00 in the afternoon preventing her from taking her evening walk. She canceled her gym membership so she didn’t have access to a treadmill to get her additional 4,000 steps. She had no way to get her 10,000 steps so she went with her co-workers to happy hour at a bar down the street from the office.

She felt like a failure. She wasn’t going to reach her goal of 10,000 steps today and she was going to indulge in beer and free buffalo wings the bar served every day during happy hour. She was blowing the whole week and probably was going to gain weight and end up failing again.

Her problem wasn’t the rain, nor was it her lack of a gym membership to be able to use a treadmill. It wasn’t her co-workers or even her accepting the happy hour invitation. It was her negative thinking which pushed her into making undermining choices based on her feeling of failure.

She needed to examine the facts to determine if they are really true.

  1. It was raining and she couldn’t to walk in the rain.
  2. She couldn’t walk on a treadmill at the gym because she no longer had a membership.
  3. She chose to have beer and buffalo wings
  4. She feels like a pathetic failure

The objective facts:
  1. It was raining and she didn’t want to walk in the rain.
  2. She doesn’t have a gym membership anymore (but she could get 4000 steps walking inside the mall where she would stay dry.)
  3. She decided to have beer and wings after work and that’s okay.
  4. None of those things alone or even all of them altogether could make her fail to get to her weight loss goal.

The method of losing weight that works better than any other way is a 3-step process.
  1.  Listen to how you talk to yourself.
  2. Challenge the thoughts that make you feel inadequate or unable to be successful.
  3. Explore your options.

 

Jackie Conn

About Jackie Conn

Jackie Conn is married and has four grown daughters and four grandchildren. She is a Weight Watchers success story. She's a weight loss expert with 25 years of experience guiding women and men to their weight-related goals. Her articles on weight management have been published in health, family and women's magazines. She has been a regular guest on Channel 5 WABI news, FOX network morning program Good Day Maine and 207 on WCSH.