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Many times when I'm chatting to someone about weight loss, I'm amazed by how they invariably make life so damned difficult for themselves by constantly ignoring the signs when their weight first starts on the upward trend (when the issue is far easier to address) until both their waist meaurement and the task ahead is overwhelming. We cannot press the stop button.
Take Fiona. Now she's an educated lady with a young family and a career to boot. She's also very overweight. And this she claims, is down to faulty genetics, lack of time and the fact that the task is just too overwhelming. But this lady is a business performance coach – a goal setting supremo! She very often achieves what she sets out to do. So she has lots of evidence of success. It's all down to her meticulous goal setting and action plans that her children attend a fantastic school, the family have visited several european cities together and she has been steadily learning to speak French over the last two years as part of a larger, more distant goal to run a B&B one day in rural southern France. But, claims Fiona, weight loss is different. It is less controllable, less predictable. And beset with obstacles. Each attempt is more difficult as the fear of failure becomes greater. And no-one could ever bear to believe that this is the way the rest of their life will roll out. Too horrific to face so let's not. Take values. These are things that really matter to us, things we hold dear. Examples would be family, freedom, fun, acceptance or achievement. Did you know that the top three things most people claim to value are family, work and health? I wouldn't like to comment on the first two but the ladies I see are definitely not behaving as if their health was something that really mattered to them! Most times it becomes very precious only after a wake up call. I do know that the issues of weight, eating and foods are emotionally charged which naturally exacerbates our reaction and makes it harder for us to approach shedding a couple of stone in a lucid, calm manner. We agonise. We panic and feel very, very anxious. We self medicate with food. If only...if only we could approach this as any other goal setting exercise with the necessary SMART conditions (SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-limited and all your goals should fit into this requirement). If we did this we would see amazing results. The most successful weight losers I see are those that make a very detailed plan of how they intend to reduce their weight. Then although they set time aside in their diaries to follow through on any actions such as trips to the swimming pool and they follow their plan pretty much to the letter, they – and this is important – sort of forget about it. What I mean is they get on with that whole other big fun thing which is all the other parts of their life. So the weight loss goal is not THE most important aspect of their day and does not therefore become an obsessive quest. Any lifestyle change obviously requires commitment, determination and a great plan. It's the obsessing that often screws it up.
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