Where to Start – Getting into the Right Mindset

The first step to losing weight is to decide to lose weight. Sounds easy doesn’t it? For many people this is probably the hardest part of weight loss.

Something like 40% of American adults say that they are on a diet, but no where near that number actually lose weight. To many that may attest to the fact that weight loss is hard, which it is, but I wonder how many of those people are really trying to lose weight. I known people who have ‘been on a diet’ forever and have never lost any real weight, I’m sure you know them too. A large portion of people who go on diets don’t put their hearts into it. Many people go on fad diets because they are feeling the pressure to lose weight from the people around them and want to do it easily and quickly. They buy into the false and/or dangerous claims of the advertisements because they, themselves, didn’t really make the decision to lose weight – others did it for them.

If there is one thing I’ve learned over the past few years it’s that you can’t make people do what they don’t want to do. You can’t help people who don’t want help and will not help themselves. The same goes for yourself; you can’t make yourself lose weight if you don’t really want to. If you do not feel ready to lose weight then don’t worry about what other people are saying, if you do not put your heart into it you won’t accomplish anything. But, if you feel ready to really begin to lose weight it’s time to stop saying ‘I want to lose weight’ and start saying ‘I WILL lose weight’. There is a lot of power in words and that, along with education, will be a re-occurring theme of this blog.

Similarly, if you’ve decided to start losing weight go ahead and tell those closest to you. I know that keeping it a secret is by far emotionally safer. That way if you fail no one knows besides you. I hate looking like I failed at something, probably way more than I should, and it’s a problem I’m working on. As harmful as the fear of failure can be, it was a vice that turned into a blessing during my weight loss. After I had decided for myself that I was going to lose weight I made sure to tell my parents, my sister, and my friends. It made it much easier for me to keep to my goals knowing that other people were going to be asking me how I was doing. The fact that I did not get the feeling that most of those people really believed I was going to do it pushed me even harder to prove them wrong.

I know it is repeated by everyone, but to lose weight ‘diets’ are not the answer. The key is not following some cut out plan of what to eat and when – life rarely works like that – but rather to undergo a life-style change that you can live with forever. If you are doing something that you know you can’t keep up forever then it is time to change your approach. This leads into what I think is the second most important key to weight loss and the topic of my next post – Education.