Are you tired of running in circles when it comes to your weight?
The idea of losing weight seems pretty simple – eat less, move more, so they say. But if it is as easy as all that, why do 95% of the people who lose weight gain it all back?
I did that several times a year for literally decades, gained and lost nearly 1,000 pounds in my life.
If there is one thing I wish I could easily convey it is this:
So why are we so predisposed to gain back the weight we lose? There are more reasons than we have time to explore in a short blog post, so let’s just look at one: We tend to drastically underestimate the scope of the change required to lose weight because we have heard thousands of times that it should be fast and easy.
Our eating behavior may seem like a series of conscious decisions that we control. But these decisions are rooted in our habits and reinforced by our desires. These desires of ours have been well trained day in and day out to expect to be fed a certain way. While we think we are in charge of everything we eat, something within us is influencing us in a more powerful way than we realize.
Think about it this way. Imagine a thoroughbred race horse, let’s call him Beetlejuice, who lives the first few years of his life running full out around a track. Lap after lap after lap, Beetlejuice has done the same thing every day for the formative years of his life, practiced to perfection.
Then Juice retires, still young. He is purchased by an adoring woman who intends to train him to be a show horse, jumping high jumps and prancing around pretentiously in odd configurations called dressage. She changes his name to Thurston Howell III. What is involved in taking a horse from the race track to the show ring? Hint, he doesn’t quit racing Friday and enter the show ring Monday. Beetlejuice must learn to overcome his instincts to run and learn how to listen to his new master, who has a completely new plan for him. It is going to take some time, patience, love, and encouragement to transform Beetlejuice into Thurston Howell III.
We are like well trained racehorses in what we do every day. When it comes to losing weight permanently, the change we must navigate is more like the transition that Beetlejuice must go thru to become Thurston. By the time the transformation has taken place, Thurston can never go back to being a racehorse. He doesn’t want to. He has a new identity and desires to please a new master.
No, changing how and what you eat consistently enough to lose weight and sustain that loss is not what advertisers make it out to be. It is a different process completely.
But it doesn’t have to be hard. Would you rather learn how and do it for the last time, or keep running in circles as fast as you can?
Are you ready to learn what it takes to make real change that lasts?
Abundant blessings! -Laura
