In working with my clients, I’ve found three stages ‘in the process of weight control that pose the greatest risk of derailing a weight program and undermining a new eating lifestyle. Navigating through these challenges is the path to truly mastering your control with food.
-At the beginning.
The motivation to start dieting often begins with a desire to look better, to fit into your clothes, to feel better about yourself, and to improve your health — and it often means experiencing strong, very negative feelings. You may feel disgusted with yourself for your lack of control, or hate to look at yourself in the mirror, or dread opening your closet in the morning because you have nothing to wear that will make you feel good about yourself. Although this is the stage that propels many overweight people into treatment, it can also become a black hole, in which motivation to change is overwhelmed by a sense of futility and self-loathing. This is why it’s so important to get started with a belief in yourself and your own ability to succeed again. I frequently remind my clients that it’s just a piece of food against them. Food has no life smarts or strategy — It has no I.Q. You have every advantage when you know yourself, your history, and how to approach food situations.
-At the midpoint.
There’s a natural tendency to become less careful when you’ve started to succeed. Most people on a weight program start to see significant changes in 10 to 30 days. You don’t even need to get to the end, to your ideal weight, to see the reward. Your clothes are looser, you’re getting compliments, you’re happier with yourself, your pain has gone away, and suddenly, you’re sliding into old patterns, sabotaging yourself. You may believe that because you’ve lost a few pounds, you’ve lost your control problems with certain foods. You may forget that just because the pounds come off, it doesn’t mean your history, your taste buds, or your vulnerability to your trigger or problematic foods has changed. Perhaps you’re telling yourself that you can handle “just a little.” You’re feeling a lot less urgency to watch yourself with quantities, to plan ahead, to shop carefully. You become complacent — and complacency is the enemy of thin. Fortunately, there are strategies to save you.
-At the end.
Success is yours! You’ve reached your personal best. Every time you look in the mirror, you feel a thrill of pleasure and a sense of pride. The intense satisfaction of achieving your treasured goal convinces you that you’ll never go back to your old ways again. Your motivation and commitment are high — for a while. But soon, the honeymoon is over, and you’ve got to get down to the business of living trim. Maintenance is the most high-risk period of any weight-control effort. Lots of people succeed with dieting — they get an A for dieting every time they stay the course — and then they flunk maintenance. The cause, of course, is usually a lapse in the strategies that are designed not only to carry you through but to help you realize that just because you’ve lost the weight, you haven’t lost the problem.
Many people think about achieving their weight goal in the same way they think about achieving a high school diploma — you get it once and then you can take it for granted for the rest of your life. But food control is an ongoing, dynamic process. And to make the transition from dieting to lifestyle mode requires changing your thinking and staying with the strategies, which will give you the tools for life, to maintain a lifetime of trim.
Reprinted from: The Thin Commandments Diet: The 10 No-Fail Strategies for Permanent Weight Loss by Stephen Gullo, Ph.D. © 2005 by Dietech Co. Permission granted by Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098. For more information on this book, please visit www.writtenvoices.com.
