The new year is now here, and we’re into the third week of January already! This can be a tricky time if we decided to start a diet in the new year. In fact, it can feel like a long battle, I know, and one that feels as if it’s sometimes an massively uphill one. You might find yourself having thoughts about giving up. It’s easy in these cold months when you’re swathed in warm woolly clothes to think that it really doesn’t matter what you look like….the summer holidays seem an age away from where we are right now, and you can give yourself a hundred reasons to let the little devil on your shoulder persuade you to eat the so-called ‘naughty’ foods. That little voice is ve-ery persuasive! She croons in your ear “Just one little biscuit won’t hurt” or “I’ve worked hard to day, I deserve a treat” or “I’ll get right back on the diet again tomorrow“…and on and on with endless reasons to reach for the ‘treats’! She’s great at her job…she should be on the telly!
It doesn’t take long then till you’re finding that ‘one little biscuit’ is turning into a few, and that ‘one little treat’ is happening daily, and before you know it, you’ve put the hard fought pounds you lost back on, and the feelings turn to defeat and that all-or-nothing thinking that your little devil is so good at “Well, I’ve eaten that cake, so I may as well have some chocolate and be done with it!“, or “I’ve already put weight on so what’s the point? I may as well eat what I want!” “I’m happy being this size really anyway!”
How did this happen? You’re back to square one!!
Well not quite. In fact, not at all. You just got one step closer to your goal. You just LEARNED something very precious about yourself. You just learned what NOT to do! So now…..just take all that glorious experience and start to use it to your advantage, to take a pause break and just a little step back and you will start to see the bigger picture…
Here is a list of the (at least!) 10 most popular reasons that diets can fail…maybe you will identify with a lot of them?
Once you realise that there IS a solution you can then start your successful weight loss:
- YOU LEARNED that doing what you’ve done before in the hope of it being ‘different this time’, didn’t work.
SOLUTION: Now you can start to do something you’ve NOT done before, and see that’s it’s probably time for a change of tactics - You learned that being on a diet doesn’t last for you, and you go back to your old eating habits, and THEN SOME.
SOLUTION: Now you can decide you’re NOT going to be on a diet ever again (yes, you can sigh with relief at this point!) - You learned that trying to force your body to stay hungry makes her want to eat more.
SOLUTION: You can find a way to give yourself permission to feed her and allow yourself to feel satisfied and full instead - You learned that striving and forcing don’t work…no matter how hard to you try!
SOLUTION: You can now begin to make this easy weight loss instead. It’s going to be something that happens NATURALLY …NO EFFORT REQUIRED (sigh again if you want!) - You learned that seeing this as a hard battle of wills won’t work for you.
SOLUTION: You’re going to make it a pleasure instead!
- You learned that self denial only makes you crave the ‘treats’ even more.
SOLUTION: Now you know it’s time to stop with the self denial and simply ‘switch off’ those foods from being a treat for you, and see SATISFYING foods as being a treat instead. - You learned that setting a time to ‘start being on a diet’ doesn’t work for you, and in fact, makes the end goal even further away in time, and even harder to achieve.
SOLUTION: You’re going to decide today to make some little changes that will begin, over time, to add up to huge changes in your body…OVER TIME! - You realised that all-or-nothing thinking for you means that you’re either in ‘denial’ or excess, and ends up making you heavier than you were before.
SOLUTION: Now you can decide to employ the opposite thinking…little and often with the changes, NOT beating yourself up when you eat a food that stalls your weight loss temporarily, but seeing it as a chance to learn about what your very own personal triggers are. Employ the 80/20 rule…eating in a way that’s right for you 80% of the time is all that’s required for natural weight loss over time. - You eventually realised that listening to all the diet advice out there appears to work temporarily, and then seems to back fire on you…over and over and over again. You might be successful for a while, but then a life situation happens for you, and you’re back to square one, a bit defeated and confused about how that happened.
SOLUTION: You can give yourself permission to stop listening to the 2 hugely lucrative industries that tell you how to lose weight and then make billions out of your repeated failed attempts…the food and diet industries, that is, and here is where you start to get a bit clever about your own weight loss journey!! - You learned, that just because a particular diet regime might work temporarily for someone else, and it doesn’t work for you that blaming yourself will lead to a negative spiral of guilt, and subsequently punishing yourself. This is the most vital lesson of all….and it’s this…it is NOT YOUR FAULT! Self control, willpower, higher motivation or somehow being stronger with yourself are NOT THE ANSWER! Because they didn’t work before, did they? They really won’t ever work again.
SOLUTION: What WILL work then? The opposite. No will power, no self denial, and no negative beating yourself up! If it isn’t easy and effortless, it won’t work for you, it really is that simple. Look for another way, do your research and listen to others who have successfully lost weight in the long term, and are now really happy with their bodies…it’s a simple equation….get back to a way of eating that a thousand generations before us have done. No processed carbs. No sugar. And lots and lots of lovely fats!
Do a quick test with yourself…do you think you are an emotional eater? Or do you think that you can’t ignore the sugary ‘treats’ at work just because everyone else can’t? Can you just have the one chocolate/cake/biscuit or do find them near impossible to resist? If so you might be a sugar addict, plain and simple…and you’re in good company because millions of us are! Do you think that you can’t stop eating when you’re full because you have no willpower, or it might well be because you’ve eaten processed food… simply because most processed food is designed to give you an unfillable feeling. Or maybe you are on a very low fat diet…if so, you’re brain won’t actually register that you’ve eaten so you won’t feel satiated and you’ll eat way beyond full.Your body chemistry is a very fine balance and once you find the sweet spot with it, you will go into fat burning mode with very little effort on your part and not only will it be easy weight loss, with the right foods, it will be an inevitable consequence.
And next January? You’ll look at those latest ‘diet’ books on the shelves and the shows on the telly and you’ll smile to yourself and say…”Phew! What a relief that’s not me anymore!”
So that’s more than 10 and plenty for you to think about! See this as an experiment and take the pressure off yourself a little. If you need more help, we have downloads and weight loss programmes that WORK- minus the striving! Take a look at our website for more information – http://www.breakthrough-weightloss.co.uk/
