I Finally Made It!
I had been overweight since second grade. Not only was I fat, but I was (and still am) short (5'3"). I endured many nicknames because of my physical appearance, but the most creative was “Tater-tot.” My dad and mom were also overweight and were constantly trying out different diets, so I was exposed to the dieting culture at an early age. I tried many of the diets with them and some were more successful than others. All my life my weight has fluctuated, going up and down, up and down. At one point, I had lost as many as 30 pounds, only to see those pounds creep back slowly over time.
The highest I would ever allow myself to get was 175, which was a lot for a short guy like me. Why 175 you might ask? Well, a primary reason was that adding any more pounds would prevent me from buttoning my pants and I really didn’t want to buy new pants. Every time I got up to 175, I would have to deal with the discomfort of tight pants until I couldn’t take it anymore, and that has usually pushed me, kicking and screaming, to the next diet plan. After several years of losing and gaining, I became cynical and talked to one of my brothers about how I didn’t think I would ever be able to lose all the weight I wanted and keep it off. I honestly had begun to believe that losing the weight was not possible, and this made me reluctant to try yet again.
Thank goodness I did try again. I was able to lose 55 pounds, close to one-third of my total body mass! I have now kept that weight off for more than three years and have made some guidelines to ensure that I will never regain that weight again. So what was different this time? Well, I applied four simple truths that changed everything.
Four Truths about Weight Loss That Nobody Tells You
In an increasingly overweight society, dieting has become a multi-billion dollar industry. In fact, in 2013 alone more than $60 billion dollars were spent on dieting just in the United States. The dieting industry is lucrative specifically because each diet plan does not only include a book or blog, but is complete with all kinds of products ranging from specialized exercise equipment to supplemental shakes and candy bars. It is in the best interest of each of these companies to inspire loyalty to their products by bashing their competitors and claiming to be the one, true path to weight loss. They want you to try to stay with their plan throughout your life, so that you will be a repeat customer of all their many products and services. These companies get you to buy into their system through complex formulations and explanations. You can easily get so carried away by the details of a specific diet plan that you don’t recognize the simple truths that make all the difference. Applying the four simple truths in this blog is crucial to any successful weight loss and maintenance plan.
So what are these four, important truths that nobody tells you because they are too busy selling you the specifics of their plan? They are:
1. Pain
2. Pleasure
3. Variety
4. Accountability
I will give a brief overview of each of these truths and we will then apply each of the truths throughout the rest of the blog. Regarding pain and pleasure, there is a carrot and stick idiom that comes from the idea of dangling a carrot in front of the mule to get it to move forward while smacking it with a stick from behind as additional motivation for it to move forward. Both pain and pleasure are strong motivators, the stronger of which is pain.
Pain: The Stick
Ultimately we are motivated most by the desire to avoid pain. This has been shown by psychological literature to be more powerful than the desire to gain pleasure. For instance, think about how fear has motivated people to commit numberless atrocities. Wasn’t the fear of retribution for disobedience to authority a major motivating force for Nazi soldiers to execute millions of innocent Jews? Wasn’t the fear of death from starvation enough to motivate members of the Donner party to eat each other? Of course these are extreme examples; however, they illustrate the point that pain or the fear of pain can be an enormously powerful motivator. Perhaps this is partly why you checked out this blog. Do you fear an early death that could be brought on by obesity? Do you want to avoid all the diseases and health issues that are strongly related to weight? Perhaps you are experiencing joint pain that you want to alleviate. Do you feel unattractive when you look at yourself in the mirror? Whatever your specific case may be, I imagine that the desire to avoid future pain or alleviate the current pain you are experiencing are key reasons why you are reading right now. In this blog, I will teach you how to channel these fears and the desire to avoid pain to the ultimate benefit of your health.
Pleasure: The Carrot
Although the desire to avoid pain is probably the most powerful motivator, the desire to gain pleasure is also highly motivating. Perhaps you’ve heard Kate Moss’s quote, “Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.” Although being thin is highly desirable, the problem for most of us is that it’s always difficult to pass up something that would be absolutely pleasurable right now (a slice of raspberry cheesecake) for something that might be pleasurable down the road if everything works out (a thin body). Therefore it’s important to create pleasurable short-term incentives for your weight loss, in addition to reminding yourself of the ultimate pleasure of having a fit, thin body. I will discuss specific ideas for waving the pleasure carrot throughout the blog.
Variety: No One Silver Bullet
As I previously mentioned, just about every diet book out there will spend the first few chapters bashing all the other diet plans and trying to tell you why their plan is the only scientifically valid plan that will work. Although this marketing tactic is perfect for enticing you to purchase their products, it cheats you of the freedom of changing your approach when you become fatigued. There is no one and only true path to an ideal body weight and anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something. Diet plans are all based on marketing, there is no one silver bullet to weight loss.
The truth is that there are countless paths that could lead you to your ultimate goal of having a thin, fit body. Furthermore, I believe that you should not select just one diet plan to take you to your ultimate destination. Unless you are one of those people who just wants to lose 10-15 pounds (in which case one diet plan may suffice), it’s going to take a great deal of time and extended effort for you to make it to your goal. I believe that it’s nearly impossible to sustain enough motivation and momentum to make it to your ideal body using one diet plan. Instead, switching between diet plans can boost your motivation, momentum, and keep your body guessing. Keeping things interesting and changing it up is a key to success when it comes to weight loss. This can seem challenging, but we will explore specific plans and ideas in later posts.
Accountability: Teams
A crucial ingredient in any successful weight loss or maintenance program is accountability or teamwork. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to maintain your weight loss without a strong system of accountability. It’s not enough to be accountable to oneself, as it becomes too easy to rationalize poor decisions. When accountable, giving inadequate excuses to someone who is holding your feet to the fire becomes much more difficult. There are so many motivational bonuses to being regularly accountable to specific individuals and to using a team approach to losing and maintaining weight. In future posts, I’ll describe how to make yourself accountable to others in powerful ways so that you can not only lose weight, but keep it off for good.
Mission of This Blog
First let me tell you about my general approach and credentials. I am not a medical doctor, dietician, nor trained fitness professional. Instead, I have a Ph.D. in psychology and therefore I focus primarily on the role of the mind in weight loss by discussing issues such as motivation through pain, pleasure, variety, and accountability. I provide suggestions for how to more fully tap into these driving forces of human behavior for weight loss and maintenance.
Because I am not a doctor, dietician, nor a trained fitness professional, I will not lay out specific details of a particular diet or exercise plan. I trust that you have probably read several of these books or know where to find them. This blog will give you the freedom to choose what works best for you. My objective with this blog is to illustrate how the four truths can guide you in your chosen approach to losing weight. I want to help you to tailor an individualized plan that works for you and will describe strategies for keeping you motivated along the journey to lose and maintain your weight! I hope that you will tune in each Monday and Thursday and let me guide you to a fit body before summer!