3 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Starting On A Weight Loss Regime.
The diet industry is a multi-billion pound industry saturated with books, clubs, pills, potions, regimes, websites, gimmicks, shakes, soups, wraps, creams, fat burning this, metabolism booster that (and that is just a dip in the ocean!) All vying for your attention, all promising the world and all wanting your money. So, where do you even start?
Here's three questions you should ABSOLUTELY ask yourself before embarking on anything if you want to lose weight forever and enjoy a life free of weight and food problems. Because surely, that's what you're after right?
1. Have I done this more than three times already?
If something hasn't worked for you after three attempts, it's probably not going to work for you ever. I have had clients who have been members of slimming clubs since their teens and are now in their thirties and forties! If you lose weight, but then gain it back again, to me that's not a successful method. It hasn't solved the problem, let alone do it multiple times!
It's utterly crazy to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect the results to be different. Even if you're promising yourself you will do better this time, you'll try harder, you'll really stick to it. If you've done it several times already, you're more than likely going to see the same thing happen. Not because you haven't tried hard enough, but because the method has not provided you with a comprehensive weight loss solution. This is one of my biggest problems with diets. They make you think that it's all your fault for any failures. Clearly it has to be your lack of willpower, your greediness and addiction to chocolate that's the problem.
If everyone is losing, then regaining, going round and round in circles dieting, if the same people are there at your local slimming club, who have been there for the last ten years, time to question whether it's actually you that's the problem and if the method you're choosing really works.
2. Can I eat like this for the rest of my life?
All diets work while you're "on them". If you're going to drink shakes, cut carbs or fast for a few days a week your weight is going to drop. It's really not brain surgery. However you cut your calorie intake will result in your weight coming down. It's simple biology. You could be eating rabbit poo, you'd get the same results.
However, once you've stopped the regime, the shakes, the fasting, then what? Oh, yes, we know - the weight comes back again! Unless you can adopt the eating regime (whatever it is) for the rest of your life, the weight is going to come back. Then, you'll try again, you'll lose some, you'll come off it and the weight will return. Do I really need to go on?
If you want to lose weight and STAY THERE, you have to be able to eat that way for the rest of your life. So simply ask yourself, can I eat like this for the rest of my life? If not, then it links very closely to the question above - you're going to see the same results.
If you want something you've never had, you've got to do something you've never done.
3. Is this regime going to change how I think and feel about, and how I use food?
If you have struggled with your weight for a long period of time, there will most probably be some very well established underlying reasons why that is. Those reasons will NOT be that you simply lack willpower. You gain weight when you are putting too much food into your body than it can use up. The reasons why you do this are extremely individualised and can be very complex. It's not just a simple matter of having a sweet tooth.
We use food in a multitude of ways. We believe a million and one different things about what should be eaten, when and why. We turn to food for a hundred different reasons other than hunger. We are psychologically attached to food and eating in so many ways that simply telling yourself not to eat something just doesn't even come close to being enough.
If you want to lose weight more than anything else in the world, yet simply can't figure out why it is you can't eat the right things, you need more than just a list of allowed or not allowed foods. You need more than a simple regime to follow. If your next regime isn't going to help you change the way you feel about food or how you use it when you don't need it, it's not going to work and you'll be left believing you have no willpower. It has NOTHING to do with lack of willpower. It's because of how you think and feel about food. Change that and willpower becomes totally unnecessary.
If you want long term results, this HAS to be included.
