Losing Successfully

Introduction
"What we eat is always clouded by emotions." (Pawlek)

Losing Successfully is a must for anyone who wants to lose weight and keep it off. Here is why. Weight loss is more than just eating certain foods or adjusting our lives to fit an easier said than done diet plan. Instead it is about developing a way of living that promotes weight loss and fitness by using the things we already know and care about. In this book you will learn how to accomplish this and more. Does this mean it will be easy? Yes and no. Some tasks will seem effortless while others will not but since we are building on the skills already owned, we are able to approach each section with confidence and enjoyment!

Which leads to another point, weight loss is more than just eating certain foods. It is identifying good, bad, and ugly eating habits so that we can build on the good while changing the bad and ugly. It is using the body’s natural dietary system to crave healthy foods and stop eating when satisfied. It is adjusting our diets so that we lose weight without giving up favorite foods. It is setting realistic goals that include recognizing and planning for relapse. In Losing Successfully we are able to learn this and more because weight loss is approached from the psychological, physical, and nutritional aspects of weight management. In other words, you will learn the skills needed to begin a lifetime of successful weight management.

Section I
I
In The Beginning
"To diet or not diet, that is the question." Ray Platt

Today, "diet" is one of those nasty four letter words associated with weight loss that triggers feelings of anguish and frustration to lose weight and thoughts of struggling with an uncomfortable diet. Yet in an effort to win the battle of the bulge millions surrender enjoyable foods while working hard to adapt to unnatural diets that promise weight loss. Eventually, these are abandoned, the old eating habits resurface, and the weight returns. Later another diet plan is tried but like the others is eventually dumped. The cycle of losing and gaining begins and in some cases becomes a life long struggle. No wonder "diet," stirs so many negative thoughts and feelings. Most prove to be ineffective. A good example of this is Heather’s story.

Heather’s Story

"I hate the way I look. I feel like such a slob," Heather cried as she tried unsuccessfully to zip her slacks.

"My clothes don’t fit because I am fat." As the tears streamed down her cheeks she sobbed, "I diet and lose the weight but then I gain it back. I’ll never lose this weight. Why try!"

Heather’s frustration and distress is understandable. For years, she struggled to reach and maintain a target weight by following various diet plans. Sure, the diet books provided knowledge but did little to stop emotional and thoughtless eating. When she tried giving up certain foods, her cravings increased, and she eventually binged on the foods she tried to quit. Counting calories and fat grams was cumbersome and time consuming, so eventually this too went by the way side. For two months, she ate pre-packaged weight loss foods but eventually gave into her cravings for "real food." Heather knew first hand that weight loss diets were inefficient yet her drive to lose weight kept her searching for the plan that would help her reach and maintain her desired weight.

Here is why Heather’s and our efforts often turn out to be failures. Most weight loss diets are ineffective because success is determined more by our ability to follow a specified plan than our personal needs and life styles. This makes them unnatural and difficult to maintain. In other words, the focus of these programs is on the outcome: weight loss. No attention is given to the process (the lifestyle changes necessary to reach and maintain the goal). This is putting the carriage before the horse.

Successful weight management requires developing a process that includes attention to personal needs and life styles. In other words it requires attention to the process. For example, suppose you decide to lose 100 pounds by limiting calorie intake to 900 calories per day for the next year. The process is limiting food intake to 900 calories/day for a year and the outcome is losing 100 pounds. The real question becomes, "could you realistically continue this diet for any length of time?" This is the reason most people abandon a diet; the process is too difficult to maintain.

Some weight-loss diets create more problems than bargained for. For example, when a diet is discarded, we return to our former eating patterns and eventually regain any weight lost and sometimes more! In addition, some diet plans are dangerous and lead to various negative health and emotional problems such as depression, nervousness, weakness, and irritability. At the very worst, chronic dieting could develop into one of the life threatening eating disorders of bulimia or anorexia.

Weight management differs from other weight loss diets because the focus is on the process, not the outcome. (If the process is correct, the outcome takes care of itself.) So what makes this different? After all, the other programs have a process also.

What makes the difference is how the process is developed. Instead of receiving a pre-packaged list of things to do, we learn to develop a weight management program that takes into account our personal needs and life styles. This eliminates the requirement to give up favorite foods, to adjust to a special diet, or to conform to someone else’s eating habits. Which is another point. We already retain good eating habits. So why not amplify and include them in the process.

In conclusion, weight management is not an event arrived at but a healthy lifestyle that overtime becomes a natural part of our lives. It is an effective alternative approach to the "diet to lose weight" trap because it is customized to our unique characteristics and needs. It is empowerment toward a lifetime of healthy living. So why not get off the insane dieting-to-lose weight cycle and begin the journey toward successful weight management?