Not only are your up-and-down weight-loss efforts frustrating as heck; they actually make you fat.
What?!
That’s right. According to Dr. Mark Hyman, author of the hormone optimization book Ultra Metabolism, the average yo-yo dieter gains five pounds for every diet attempted. Talk about unfair, right?
We’ll save the science lesson as to why this happens for another day. Chances are if you’ve lost and regained pounds over the years, you don’t need any more convincing that it is a merry-go-round that you’d like to get off of, thank-you very much.
Whether or not your biggest weight-loss fails have to do with flagging motivation for your exercise routine, a weak spot for French Fries, or both, here are my suggestions for removing yourself from this self-defeating cycle and avoiding the weight loss roller coaster.
#1. Take Guilt Out of the Weight-Loss Equation
It’s all too common to talk about exercise and eating habits with the language of morality: should and shouldn’t, good and bad, etc. And so, just like keeping our garage organized or sending out thank-you cards promptly, we adopt this nebulous belief that our weight is somehow a reflection of our character.But what many people don’t realize is that the urge to chow down on sugary, creamy, carb-rich food isn’t a moral process but a scientific one. For millennia, our bodies relied on cravings and natural urges to help sustain us and keep us alive.
For example, the reason we are drawn to sweet foods is that in the diet of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, our taste for sweetness ensured that we ate only the berries that were ripe, not ones that were still green and could make us sick. Those primal food longings actually kept us healthy, not prone to obesity.
But that was then—when we rose with the sun, hunted or gathered for food all day, regularly sprinted to avoid being attacked by lions, and slept to recover from all that energy expenditure. From an evolutionary standpoint, our bodies’ processes just quite simply haven’t kept up with our culture in which we start our days with sugary coffees and cereal before staring at a screen at work for 8 hours, scarfing down take-out in front of the tube while we sit some more, than washing it all down with a few cocktails before we drift into a fitful sleep well after the sun has gone down. Which leads us to Point #2.
#2. Choose Specific Changes
You can’t manage what you don’t measure, including weight-loss. The resolution to “exercise more” or “eat better” just doesn’t inform our daily decisions enough to make a difference. In general, we all seem to have this common sense idea of what constitutes “more” and “better,” but when life gets in the way it becomes very easy to talk ourselves out of those general norms with conditional excuses.
But excuses, however legitimate they may sound in your own head, won’t make you skinny.
Specific changes will. Stuck on a twice-a-day soda habit? Decide to cut back to one. Is the only daily exercise you’re getting during your 10-minute walk with Fido? Set an intention to increase that to 30 minutes 5 days a week. Stick with two or three specific, new changes that you’re going to incorporate this week, then schedule out additional changes over time so it’s less of a shock to your system.
#3. Focus on how you feel, not how you look.
I recently spoke with the personal training district manager of a health club chain here in Phoenix, during which he told me that 80 to 90% of new clients have a major appearance-based goal. That’s fine—after all, if being unhealthy didn’t take a toll on our vanity, how much less motivated would we be to get healthy? I think expanding waist-lines are God’s way of doing us a favor—we’ll only let ourselves go too far before we do something about it!
But I have found that those who stay thin for years and decades, without bouncing between jeans sizes like they’re on a trampoline, are primarily motivated by how exercise and fresh food make them feel.
And the best part is that we can have instant gratification on this one. Increased lifetime expectancy? It may be decades before we get to cash in on that reward. Dropping a dress size? That could take a few months, realistically. But happiness? Confidence? Brightened mood? Increased energy? That only takes about twenty or thirty minutes.
So while the desire to look good may first draw you in to the weight-loss journey, the addiction to feeling good is what will keep you hooked for the rest of your life.
Have you struggled with weight-loss off-and-on? Share your experience, and what you’ve learned along the way, below, or in our free Wellthy Boss Community private Facebook Group.
Then, kick off your week with at least one new healthy habit by downloading my free Make-Ahead Breakfast Recipe Guide.
