If you’re like many, you may find that was your intention last year and perhaps the year before and so on. You may have lost weight and gained it back. The pressure is on, the pot is boiling over (metaphorically), “I must lose weight or else.” You feel the push. You may buy new diet books, join the gym, throw out your snacks and sweets and fill the fridge with healthy foods. The race is on. You are pushing it, you know you can do this! ... at first.
A few weeks pass, a month, it’s late February. You’ve fallen off the diet track a few times, and drudged your way back on, and then off, and then on. Now there is built up frustration, a voice in one’s head may be chipping away at one’s self-esteem talking you down. Another month or 2 you are back to the same routine and any weight and/or effort you may have put into your resolution is behind you, trailed in the dust.
There is much that goes into something as large as losing weight, especially one wants to lose more than 10 pounds. And the longer you’ve had extra weight, the harder it is to do, for reasons in addition to biophysical components. There are many reasons. And they are different for different people. Ask yourself a few questions:
(1) Were you ever the weight that you would like to be? Do you know what it feels like?
(2) What is or are the reason(s) you would like to lose weight?
(3) Rate on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most important, how important is this within the scheme of things in your life?
(4) If you gave it a 7 to 10 rate, ask yourself are you able to give full attention to this matter, giving it priority over other things – and making yourself first – until you have a handle on this and it feels like you’re in the groove.
(5) If it takes you years, depending on how how much weight and how fast you want to lose weight, are you willing to devote 1 year? 2 years?
(6) If you gave it below a 7 rate, ask yourself why?
(7) Is there a part of you opposing losing weight? It is important to acknowledge this and pay attention to what you feel and the voice in your head around this.
(8) What are some benefits of being overweight?
(9) What are some negatives of being overweight?
(10) If you lost the weight you wanted to lose, what would be the benefits?
(11) If you lost the weight you wanted to lose, what would be the negatives?
(12) How long did it take you to gain the extra weight you bear?
(13) What do you feel caused you to gain that weight?
(14) Are you willing to create a lifestyle change to alter your weight to what you want, in order to sustain it once you get there?
(15) What are you not willing to do in a lifestyle change, that you feel might be holding you back from losing weight?
(16) When you have dieted in the past and started to lose a little weight and perhaps felt inspired, what did the voice in your head say that may have opposed you? And behind that voice what did it say?
(17) Have you ever explored the triggers that cause you to maintain extra weight?
(18) Have you ever explored your inner workings that may have created your extra weight?
(19) Have you ever considered that by altering the patterns you live by, that losing weight may come more naturally to you and become a lifestyle change?
(20) What does healthy look like to you? (define)
(21) Did you know that most of what keeps all of us from making the changes we want in our life, whether in losing weight or anything else, usually involves one or a combination of the following:
-- fear
-- shame
-- not knowing the inner tools when we need in order to alter the moment of binging
-- feeling unworthy
-- needing comfort on something, and replacing it with comfort-numbing with food
-- a need to come to clarity of self and a new vision of self one can believe in
-- a need to acknowledge what is really going on inside, which most have locked away
-- learning to alter patterns – the template we learned to live by around eating and lifestyle – there are simple methods to redo this template that is easier than would imagine, and is absorbed into the psyche quicker than one imagines (I call it rewiring and is a process my clients appreciate.)
Some places to start:
-- What: I want ________________.
-- Why: I want this because ______________.
-- What will I gain by having this: ___________.
-- What will I lose by having this, other than the weight?_________
-- Get really clear on the above, and every challenge that has been getting in the way. Write out your challenge list.
-- Create a vision of a day in the life after you lose weight -- and walk yourself through it verbally or written, everything you will do that may be different than usual, from the moment you get up in the morning, until and including when you go to bed in the evening.
-- Who in your life will help be supportive of this lifestyle change?
-- Is there anyone or more than one in your life that can do this weight loss experience with you and/or help you with it even if they’re not doing it?
-- Can you eliminate all foods that temp you and make you gain weight until you have a handle on the process?
-- Will others in the home support you on eliminating foods in the house that temp you?
-- Will anyone in your life be added to your challenge list in achieving this weight loss?
-- Have you ever considered allowing a certain break in diet for maybe one meal a week until you get a handle on this?
-- There are many methods one can use to lose weight, and they are each determined on the individual, what is happening within and outside of them, what is burdening them, where they can use the most support, and what triggers and templates can be altered to assist in changing the patterns of one’s life that helped created this situation.
I am a Success Coach in Life and in Business.
If you would like to discuss this matter with me, and/or share your challenges, you can email me either through the Contact page (click Contact tab atop the page) or by clicking the email icon atop this page and emailing me.
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