Okay, so you probably heard Oprah recently talk about her weight gain. As someone who is constantly studying people who keep their weight down long term, I was fascinated by the recent story about Oprah.
I mean here is someone who is obviously successful and focused with personal chefs, trainers, and coaches who has not been able
to maintain the results she wants.
The questions is why?
The good news is that having all of those things is NOT what creates permanent weight loss.
After studying hundreds of people who have lost weight and kept it off long term, it has become very easy to spot the biggest problem that
sabotages most dieters success. And the funny thing is that Oprah, like most people, knows exactly what the problem is too. To me this is the most important sentence in the entire article:
“I use food for the same reasons an addict uses drugs: to comfort, to soothe, to ease stress.”
She says this and then goes right back into I need to refocus and get motivated again, etc. But, if food is her main way of easing stress and dealing with unpleasant emotions, then she’s never going to get long term success. Why?
Because being alive means that we’re going to experience stress and crave comfort, and if her best way of doing that is with food, no amount of motivation is going to outlast those deep emotional needs.
So, what do people who permanently change their weight do differently?
They create new and better ways to relax, take their mind off of things, and enjoy themselves without food. Think of all the work people put into exercising and eating right, and compare that to the energy they put into learning new ways to feel good emotionally without food, there’s a real imbalance.
I’m not saying that it’s necessarily easy to do this, but I am saying that your results will last a lot longer when you do. Imagine how much easier it would be to control your weight if you didn’t look for food when you got stressed, depressed or bored?
I believe almost all weight issues come down to emotinonal eating. If you only ate when your body needed genuine nourishment,
what would it look like? So, the next time you’re considering a weight loss plan or a diet, don’t make the same mistake Oprah did, make sure that it teaches you how to feel the way you want to without the food.
To experience what I’m talking about, I’ve put a progressive relaxation
session up for you to use here:
http://www.programyourselfthin.com/relaxation
Listen to this 8 minute relaxation
session and notice how it automatically
influences your eating for the rest of the day.
To your beautiful body,
Jim