by patbarone
What the world calls “weight loss” is a temporary condition based on a diet, not on real life. As I discovered, we pay for temporary weight loss with deprivation, excessive exercise, and, most importantly, we pay with the body’s precious metabolism. Then, we’re forced to give back the “weight loss” when we can’t support the payments anymore.
I call this “renting weight loss.” It’s prevalent in our society, and heartbreaking.
As I lost over 70 lbs. (and sustained that loss for 10 years), I learned a few things. Speaking at my 10th year celebration forced me to think about all my lessons from an overview perspective. It looked like this:
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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
As I travel, spreading the word about permanent weight loss, I often speak to middle and high school girls about health, body image, and the negative impact of dieting on weight. It’s always very touching for me to look out over the classroom and see the young women as I speak. Many of them (according to some statistics, about 50%) are already dieting and associating being thin with deprivation.
Thin = Deprivation
Wrong!
Most of them can’t look ahead to see how their current behavior and stringent dieting will lead to frustration, anger and excess weight in their twenties and thirties. It takes many years to see the real equation:
Dieting and Food Avoidance = More Fat
If I could do one thing for these girls, who deserve a healthy future free from disordered eating, it would be to freeze them right where they are.
Why?
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by patbarone
As the 21st Olympics enthrall the world, I find myself once again amazed by the grace, beauty and achievement of the world’s finest athletes.
This year, perhaps because I’m a bit more reflective about life these days, the games have reminded me of all the Olympics I’ve watched through the years. Beyond the athletic achievement, competition and “overcoming the odds” stories guarantee drama.
One of the reasons I think the games appeal to us is that we live cathartically through them. After all, most of us will never achieve a triple axle jump, even without the ice skates. I know I hesitate to jump off a fence, much less a mountain on skis. And I bet I can’t find one of my dear readers rushing out to luge down a frozen tube at 90 mph!
But, there is not one of us who can’t be an Olympian when it comes to permanent weight loss. I’m convinced of that. In order to compete on the world class stage, seek to develop these elements that Olympians master:
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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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