Weight Loss Personalities
Spring is in the air, summer is just around the corner. It’s that time of year where if you’ve stumbled since New Year’s you’re really going to kick it into high gear now to get in shape for the warmer months ahead. There are all sorts of diets and weight loss programs available, some easy, some more difficult, some with odd and unusual recommendations.For most people the missing ingredient is accountability and support along the way. Let’s start there, let’s discuss why it’s so difficult for us to get in shape or attain a number of different goals without having an expert or coach to guide you. Our personality, or should I say personalities, is such that we acquire continual affirmation or instant gratification to avoid making illogical and irrational decisions.
Let me explain, ironically this analogy which is so perfect for the discussion of fitness was written in a business book called the E-Myth by Michael Gerber. When it comes to fitness all of us have two distinct personalities. The fat person and the skinny person, it’s this time of year when the skinny person receives the inspiration needed to push to make an appearance. What this means is most people for one reason or another will simply decide they’ve had enough of their current physical state and set forth to make a change. Overnight their whole life changes, they start to exercise and adjust their nutrition. All junk food is gone, out with the trash, they have a renewed look on life and are determined this is the time to go from coach potato to Olympic athlete.
The first few days go well, the food tastes great it’s fun to avoid the pitfalls, you drop a few pounds and you realize you have forgotten how wonderful the fresh smell of the morning is while out for your run at sunrise. Into your second week you begin to get tired, getting up extra early to exercise is taking its toll but you can do it because your committed and after all the scale has been dropping steadily and people are starting to notice. A couple of days later you step on the scale again, it doesn’t drop, that’s odd but you push on, but over the next few days it continues to stay the same.
The bed in the morning is so inviting, the scale hasn’t dropped so you decide you may as well just sleep in today and take a break. Tomorrow comes you struggle through your exercise, it wasn’t fun but you did it and for that you deserve a reward, today you will go out for lunch and enjoy the dessert you’ve been dreaming about the last few nights. You see the trend as our instant gratification wears thin the fat person personality reappears as the wind leaves the sails of the skinny person. This happens time and time again and over the years we continue to gain weight.
If you want this time to be different you need to take a different approach. If you are going to tackle the challenge on your own begin by educating yourself about the different methods for accomplishing your goal, make a decision about what will be best for you before you start. It’s important to develop your plan fully before beginning as it’s our own work ethic and need for instant gratification that will lead us to irrational decisions when things don’t feel like they are happening fast enough. Good goals for weight loss are:
- 1-2 lbs per week lost or as much as 3 lbs a week if you are trying to lose more than 60 lbs total.
- A loss of 5-6 total inches per month when measuring 5-8 different locations. (ie. Waist, hips, thighs, arms, chest/bust, shoulder circumference.)
- A loss of 1 inch on the waist measured at the navel per month
Official Home Of:
