The Weight is Over

INTRODUCTION: This is not a diet plan. The Weight is Over gives you the information and knowledge that you need to gradually begin living a healthier lifestyle that leads to weight loss and an increased quality of life. What I am about to share with you are principles that I have learned through life experiences. These are things that I have walked through, times I have fallen, pulled myself up, walked again, ran, and continued the race. I have traveled down the road to healthy living and weight loss and want to share what I have learned with you. This is your time to experience health, happiness, and weight loss. More than 2 in 3 adults are considered to be overweight or obese. About one-third of children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are considered to be overweight or obese. Why are we overweight? 1. We are eating and drinking more calories than we are burning. Excess calories we consume that are not used for energy turn to fat. 2. We are starving on a nutritional basis. The food we are eating is low in nutrition and high in calories. Our bodies are starved for nutrients so we keep eating. 3. Our lifestyles have become sedentary and we simply are not burning calories. In one sentence: We are sitting around eating excesses of high calorie, low nutrition food and we are making ourselves sick. If you’re carrying many extra pounds, you face a higher-than-average risk of a whopping 50 different health problems. These health conditions include the nation’s leading causes of death—heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and certain cancers—as well as less common ailments such as gout and gallstones. Perhaps even more compelling is the strong link between excess weight and depression, because this common mood disorder can have a profound, negative impact on your daily life. One third of all women and one quarter of all men in the United States are on a diet. Up to 66% regain more weight than they lost. Why can’t we lose the weight and why can’t we keep it off? Diets don’t work. They set us up for failure. At first we may lose weight, but we end up gaining more weight back in the end. When I stand and look at the shelves in a book store that are filled with weight loss books, I am astounded at the ideas that people come up with and then believe that readers will actually purchase these books containing their outrageous ideas. They are not practical and really are not even possible. I don’t want you to lose 14 pounds in 14 days. If someone is presenting that option to you, you are either going to starve yourself, eliminate an entire food group, or just experience torture. I don’t want to talk about belly fat, drinking a cure-all smoothie, losing a pound a day, or a pill that will solve all your weight loss problems. I want to teach you how to live a healthy lifestyle that will lead to weight loss, a higher quality of life, and longevity. I’m not going to teach you a fad or trick. I’m going to teach you how to guide yourself. One step at a time, I will give you the tools you need to eliminate bad food choices, change your palate, begin to exercise, AND as an added bonus - lose weight. The exciting news is that when you choose the path to healthy living and begin to make healthy changes in your life, you will find this path so rewarding that you will want to stay on it and you will be able to take your family, friends, and loved ones along with you. They will want to share this new lifestyle with you. Some of the greatest moments in peoples’ lives are when they step out of their comfort zones. I hope that my story and wisdom will inspire you to step out of your comfort zone and begin your journey towards a healthy lifestyle and weight loss. You will begin to feel better and you will see your body transformed. Now turn the page, take my hand and let’s begin our journey. May you live longer, play with your children more enthusiastically, hop on an airplane to your favorite destination, experience more joy, and celebrate life with more gusto!   Chapter 20 - Step 1: Acknowledging there is a problem. Excuses and Justification. Since you have picked up this book and have read this far, I can only assume you are not in denial, and that you recognize your need to begin living a healthier lifestyle. Most of us recognize our need to change but make excuses to others to justify why we are not changing. *** To justify something means to show or prove it to be right or reasonable, to give grounds or reasons. Many of us try to justify the bad habits that we love the most. We know our eating habits or lifestyle is detrimental to our health but we don’t want to give it up, so we try to reason with those around us to make it seem appropriate. We make excuses to others and to ourselves to condone our lifestyle. We blame our parents, a past experience, our childhood, a bad relationship, etc. We use the excuse that we are in good shape for the shape we are in. We compare ourselves to others around us who are in worse shape than we are and we use them to justify our weight or health. I hope that you are able to come to the point where you can be honest with yourself and your health, stop making excuses, and admit where you are and get excited and determined to get to where you want to be.