by patbarone
When I look back at my weight loss, and my current healthy way of living, I see that what I ate was much less important than what was going on in my head.
I was a fat thinker.
It didn’t matter if I wanted to lose weight; I was never going to succeed until I changed thinking fat into thinking thin.
One of the things I did was examine the equations in my head from a different perspective, and bust them if they led to overeating, destructive attitudes, or feeling bad about myself.
Here are some examples:
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by patbarone
This past weekend, I led a wonderful seminar full of amazing women learning about permanent weight loss for the first time in their lives. Many of them had been focusing on food as a solution to excess weight for 10, 20, 30 years! It’s funny how we tend to doubt ourselves, rather than the methods foisted on us by commercial weight loss, doctors, trainers, diet gurus, etc. So often, we naturally assume we did “something wrong” when the diets fail time after time.
But this workshop was about changing our minds! And we did! Mindgames, be gone! We witnessed some major change to thinking patterns that get in the way of progress towards a healthy weight.
March 13 also officially marked my own 10th anniversary at my current weight after losing over 70 lbs. I very much wanted to be teaching others on this anniversary so the timing was perfect. I was looking forward to raising a glass of champagne with friends and clients but, when the time actually came, I was oddly emotional.
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by patbarone
This blog post is inspired by my fabulous twitter buddy, Shannon. She asked for input on a particular diet on twitter. Since I wanted to say more than my initial “under 140 characters” reply (“DON’T DO IT!”), I decided to share it here.
The diet program that caught Shannon’s eye was first popular about 12-14 years ago, right in the middle of my 4-year weight loss period.
I had lost about 65 lbs when I entered a 9 month training program. At that point, I didn’t think of my weight loss as tenuous and I was committed to the idea of permanence, but I still experienced lots of anxiety about it.
During our training, we had a lunchtime speaker come in and talk about fitness. “Oh, this will be interesting,” I thought. The man brought the book “Body for Life” by Bill Phillips and talked about how great it was. I rolled my eyes (kinda like this):
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by patbarone
I just had my heart ripped out by a new client. Janet* came to me because she is tired of losing and gaining weight. Her latest experience was with a diet doctor who was fixated on dietary fat. He gave her a very low fat diet and, feeling desperate, she began to eradicate fat from her diet. Janet is an all-or-nothing kind of gal. She made every attempt to be “perfect” on the diet. When her weight loss slowed, she’d cut fat further. Most reasonable, healthy diets suggest approximately 30% of our daily food intake should be fat. Janet wound up making 10% of her weekly diet fat.
She lost weight. She was elated. She lost 80 lbs in 6 months. When I heard her say this, I held my breath. I knew what was coming.
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by patbarone
Successful weight management requires a lifestyle change that includes healthy eating patterns and lots of activity. Making far-reaching changes may be even more challenging if you are involved in relationships that promote or support an unhealthy approach to eating and exercise.
For example, does your best friend agree to go to the gym with you but, once there, grumble and complain the entire time? After an hour with a whiner, who wouldn’t avoid the activity again?
Does your mother tell you that you need to lose weight but constantly push fattening food at you when you visit?
Common saboteurs to a healthy lifestyle are the relationships around you. After all, change can be frightening or threatening within a relationship.
Take the spouse or partner who becomes nervous or argumentative when you being to lose weight. This partner may have his/her own weight problems or simply feel more comfortable when you are lacking self-esteem. When one partner begins to actively work on lifestyle issues and loses a few pounds, the saboteur may accept an invitation to a lavish party, or bring home chocolates, or simply insist on restaurants that lack healthy food choices.
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