Stop Dieting And Act As If…
The January Jump Start is over. What now?
It’s not that a weight loss program couldn’t provide me with a great running start. It often did. It was only when I was suckered into the promise that there is a magic fix, that I would be a changed individual by the mere fact that I was now a thinner individual that I got myself into trouble – no relearning of habits required, no figuring out how to come back from a fall, no contingency plans for when I didn’t follow their plan. Get real. Skinny is not a destination. It is an ongoing process. So, I would arrive at my goal weight (or not) and go on my merry way with no concrete, accurate way to quantify what it takes to stay there.
How many of you are coming into 2013 with years of these plans already under your belt, but still living the lifestyle habits of someone several sizes larger than you actually want to be?
No doubt, your target weight is intended by you to be permanent. Unfortunately, diet programs tend to be temporary solutions for most, not in the least because we treat them that way. Read the stats. If the new budget and new behaviors are temporary – so is the weight loss.
“Ok Smartie Pants, so, what is your program?,” I am often fairly asked. “It’s not a program,” I reply. “More of a philosophy. Use simple logic.” Stop dieting (which by the very word implies temporary) and act as if you already are the weight you want to be (which is permanent)”. First, if I want to be a particular weight, doesn’t it just make sense to eat for that weight right from the start instead of temporarily dieting and desperately hoping that this new thin head will magically implant itself and its associated behaviors into my brain and run the thin person program for me without any deliberate, continued actions on my part? Second, learn to recognize and stop the I-don’t-care-train long before it is going 100 mph. That takes some Monday morning quarterbacking and a lot of practice. Third, take any action steps I can take (like managing my environment) to support myself and pre-pave the outcome I want. That means, doing the part I can do.
Here’s the rub. Sustaining a weight loss means living the life of the person who weighs whatever that target weight is. Yes, it is a quantifiable caloric number, but it is far more than just a number. You have to do what people who weigh this weight do to maintain it. When you look at it from this angle, you can ask yourself telling questions like, “Does a person who weighs what I want to weigh graze on this? Can they afford this? What must they eat for lunch? Do they choose this restaurant? Would they walk or drive? What does their refrigerator look like? To what lengths do they go to fit their exercise in?
Two client stories bring home both these points: calorie accountability and assuming the habits of your goal weight. First there’s Laurette who recently told me a story of how she was brought up short by two lean friends on two separate occasions. Apparently the Universe thought she missed the message the first time! Each friend went with her to lunch at her favorite regular haunt in the same week. To each she said, “Oh, you’ve just got to try this ham, pear and brie panini I always get here. It’s fabulous.” Both had replied, “Oh, I know. I love it too, but it’s not what I get. I usually just get a salad.”
Second story is about Frank, a long time friend and fellow struggler who has always battled a large amount of weight. He was very distressed one day because his physician had really been on his case about his weight and blood work numbers. Frank said to me, “I’m desperate. I know I have to do something about this, Susan. I know what I will do. I’ll go away on a spiritual retreat. I need an epiphany.”
My reply was, ”Frank, we’ve been friends forever. I know your pain. I’ve known you through 1000 epiphanies. Let me ask you this, “What’s in your refrigerator right now, ready to eat for lunch when you get home today?”
Maybe a more immediate and practical question than, “Where is the nearest spiritual retreat center?” is, “Am I desperate enough to make my lunch in advance?” After all, that is all most diet programs really are: a menu and sometimes the actual food. They have done for us exactly what we could be doing for ourselves – taking the negotiation out of the equation by making all the food decisions in advance. Weight Management 101.
Oh I know, I know, I know, if I would have just been willing to eat “right”, eat exactly the way I was advised** I would doubtless have saved myself the added challenge of budgeting for the treats, planned or un-. OK, given. Come on though, it’s not like it hadn’t occurred to me just to not eat junk, to just practice portion control and to just push away from the table. And it’s not like I never ever pulled this off. But what about those of us who just aren’t great at this, those of us who appear to have been born without an off button? How can we find the balance with our pleasurable (intentional or unintentional) imperfection?
Calorie knowledge to the rescue. It makes me crazy when the nutrition community argues endlessly about whether your body is a chemical factory or a calorie counting machine like it is an either or. It’s both. Thank goodness perfect eating doesn’t have to happen to successfully manage weight, even if it should, even if it is the right way to do it. Calorie balancing does though. Accountability does. Just like with money. And doesn’t it just make sense to know how much you have to spend and what you are choosing to spend it on? You don’t have to always spend wisely (even if you should), but if you don’t want your home foreclosed on, you do have to pay your bills. With knowledge of exactly how I am spending, my conversation about the foods I choose to pass up becomes about whether something is worth it to me, not whether I am “allowed”, as if someone else is making my rules.
It took me fifteen years of nutrition lectures to get guilted into where I am today with the quality of my diet. Because of calorie knowledge though, I have been the same 125 lbs. all along the way. I am not sure I could have accomplished that, could have stayed the course, if I had continued to be demoralized by my regular forty pound weight swings. I really get it why people bail on the struggle. At least calories are forgiving. Success at any aspect of weight management will breed success, and (although shortsighted in my opinion) pounds are what most use as their barometer.
So, doesn’t it just make sense to learn to live within your new means right from the very start, rather than eating for a flea for X months and then going back (immediately or gradually) to the old budget that put you where you didn’t want to be in the first place? That way for weeks or months you will have been learning to embrace the lifestyle for the weight you want to be and know how to do it. It just takes time for your body to catch up. It’s not my brilliant, original idea. It’s simple logic.
Money analogies explain it even better. Imagine that you find out that you are going to be taking a cut in pay in six months, and meanwhile you had charged up a lot of debt on your credit cards. While you probably feel the immediate pressure to to pay off the credit cards (lose the weight), the real priority long term, the task you must learn well and continue to do forever, is to live within your new means (maintain the calorie budget for the weight you want to stay), or you will ultimately find yourself in debt again (weight regain). If you learn to live within the caloric budget of your target weight now no matter how imperfectly you eat, you will continue to lose weight until you arrive there, all the time learning and practicing the ultimate, permanent task. Calorie knowledge buys you the necessary time to make dietary improvements, while allowing you to continue to enjoy your new, thinner body.
Boosting your calorie income. You also have the option of using your exercise calories to help lose the weight faster if you want – like having a part time job and throwing that money toward paying off the credit card debt. If you don’t eat those exercise calories along the way, you will be learning to live within your new budget without absolutely depending on your part time job (exercise calories) to get the task done – likely good insurance in case you ever break your leg. How many former football heros started really packing it on when they stopped playing but not eating as if they did? When you do get all the debt paid off (reach your goal weight) you can then spend your part time job money (your exercise calories) to deliberately budget for treats you know from your history of weight regain you are going to have whether you budgeted for them or not!
Running the numbers: Within reason we can figure approximately what that caloric number needs to be for what you ultimately want to weigh. You can find these mathematics on the metabolism section of my website. If you keep a diary, you can back into this number by using the information from your own record keeping to figure it out in retrospect – sort of like keeping your vacation receipts to see how much the trips run you.
Upping the anti. If you want to lose weight faster than the caloric savings that living within your new means (target weight budget) will accrue, you can practice some additional “skinny days” along the way and throw those calories into the mix to create a greater loss week to week – an important skill to put in your toolbox anyway. Regular use of individually tailored, realistic “skinny days” is a huge motivator as well as a crucial tool to budget for the inevitable return of the high calorie days we always promise ourselves we will never do again.
Doable? If it turns out that your target weight calories are a totally unrealistic level of change for you to make, you will find that out along the way too. And because of the ability to make caloric projections mathematically, you can also realistically predict how much weight you should be losing each week and override the often totally unrealistic expectations of the scale or the tendency to get misled and demoralized by water weight swings. You can develop the patience to wait for the scale to catch up with you, knowing it will.
Reality check. I often ask my clients, if you took a video of yourself over the weekend, would you look to yourself like someone who is preparing for a healthy week, for a week at your target weight? If you looked through all your cabinets and refrigerator, would you think that someone intent on managing their weight lives here?
**I personally and professionally lean towards paleo or hunter/gatherer styles – lean proteins, healthy fats and endless produce. See my So, What Should I Eat? page for ideas. This is much like the old Weight Watchers Core Program where you didn’t have to count because it is unlikely that you would over spend your budget staying within these guidelines anyway. And as added incentive, brand new studies confirm that eating this type of low glycemic load diet gives us an approximately 300 calorie a day advantage due to its effect on metabolism. That’s a potential 30 pounds of body fat burned off a year! For ideas on how to find your own forever food plan, read the March Morning Musings.
Begin your final weight loss journey now….
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