And nothing works. No really. I tried every pill on the market. I tried the healthy diet thing. And the exercise thing. Weights. Spinning. Weight Watchers Jenny Craig Atkins South Beach...
Nothing works.
I hear it 14 times a day. 28 on Sundays. Now that I'm a bit of a local mascot I even get stopped on the street and told all the many ways in which the stopp-er has utterly failed to lose weight.
In the end, the stopp-er will say, it all came down to self control. I just couldn't do it. It's just not possible. I'm a slob. I'm not good. I'm going to die of fat.
They say this to me, the stopp-ee. The one who, using healthy diet and exercise, lost and has maintained 130 pounds. Run two marathons, started a successful weight management/ fitness guru business blah blah blah. Me. The stopp-ee, someone who's successfully proved wrong the theory that you can't lose weight successfully. Let alone maintain it.
Why they are giving me this litany of failure I don't know. my best theory is that it's preemptive: she won't try to convince me to get healthy if I tell her what a flop I am right from the beginning.
Tried everything, have you? So you know how many calories there are in a banana? You know what BMI stands for and why it's a measure of healthy weight? You know what's at the bottom of the food pyramid and how many ounces there are in a serving of roast beef? You know what your BMR is, how much calorie deficit you need to create to lose a pound, how many calories you burn in an hour walk versus an hour on the elliptical.
Well I DID Atkins.
So you know how many grams of protein there are in a....
You don't have to know that stuff on.... (Fill in the gap crazy diet program).
No. You don't. You DO NOT have to know. The diet, or program, or regime or trainer or what/whoever... Purports to do all that FOR you.
So all you have to do is sit back, relax, and lose all the weight you want. Just relax. We'll take care of it.
Or at least lose all the weight you can while eating nothing but bacon. Or dangling upside down in something called "the Abinator." Or having a trainer/ drill sergeant/ dojo instructor/ jerk make you do things that will hurt bad enough to a) give you the illusion you're doing something productive and b) make you wonder why YOU are such a flop you can't lose weight no matter HOW much bacon you eat and Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness you suffer through.
The fact is, as I always point out to my stopp-ers, no human can survive on lettuce and beans nor do so much exercise you'll die from the pain alone. Your brain will react to its perceived deprivation by unloosing a veritable SYMPHONY of hormones designed to increase your appetite, depress you enough to barely want to get out of bed, make you that cheeto loving couch potato you believe yourself to be.
No, there is nothing wrong with YOU. If you've ever been on a diet or forced yourself out of bed to go exercise on a frosty winter morning. If you've ever stricken carbs or fats or cheese or tomatoes from your diet. If you've ever woken up and wondered where the aches came from that weren't there the previous night.
You have put forth more than sufficient effort to lose and maintain your weight.
The problem is not with the AMOUNT of effort your putting in, it is the TYPE of effort and where your putting it.
If you put $100 in a savings account, you'll have $101 dollars at the end of the year. If you put $100 dollars in Gramma Mellie's investment fund you will have $150 plus dividends. Or so I hear.
At any rate, the answer is: if you invest 2 years doing the Atkins South Beach Weight Watchers Snickers and Coffee All Juice Salad and Peanut Butter Crazy Exercise until you Fall Over diet...
You are almost GUARANTEED (statistics show about 90%-98% chance depending on source) to, at the end of the 2 years, have either made NO net losses OR actually gained weight.
Or you can invest 2 years learning how many calories are healthy for you. How many you burn doing an hour's exercise. What kind of exercise works for you and what will you enjoy doing in the long term. You can find out what percentage of your daily calorie intake a venti mocha is, and learn to choose the mocha OR the sandwich instead of opting for both and more than half your daily food intake.
Whatever you've heard.
Whatever you've tried. Or failed at. Or that's failed you.
Whatever.
There is only ONE way to successfully lose and maintain weight:
You have to take YOUR health, YOUR diet, YOUR exercise into YOUR hands.
Trainers can help you. A nice website like caloriecount.about.com or getalegupforlife.blogspot.com or active.com or whatever can be GREAT tools.
But there is no way, none at all, to lose weight without just Doing the work.
Ah, but the work is good. And there is nothing more wonderful, nothing more rewarding, more delightful, more healthy than being taken care of.
And best of all? Knowing that you're the one providing the care.
Dreams are just Plans for which no goals have yet been set. Reality is just the dream of someone who's goals have been achieved.
