The path to success is far more complicated for everyone than the quick conversations, Facebook posts, quips and cliches could ever do justice.
“Eat less and exercise more!”
This five-word diet as it’s been called is about as offensive for those struggling with their weight as any oversimplification can be. The truth for the weight fighter about how to lose weight and keep it off lies in the details. But what is a weight fighter and what is this “truth” I claim to know something about?
I define a weight fighter as someone who has been unsuccessful at achieving reasonable weight-loss goals for at least a year. A weight fighter is also someone who has lost weight only to REPEATEDLY put most, all, or more than all of their weight lost back on.
Why distinguish the weight fighter from others who want to lose weight? Let’s face it. There are a few people on earth who can simply set their own mind to weight loss and “just do it” as Nike says. There are a few people who have never been overweight until some event occurred, they gained 10-20 pounds, and then they simply set their mind to it and lost the weight to go back to their healthy-weight set point. By definition these people are not weight fighters. The weight fighter is a tougher case. If you are a weight fighter you will most likely agree.
If you are a weight fighter here are six key strategies you should put 100% in place to stack the odds in your favor for weight-loss success both in the short- and long-hauls of lasting weight control. I developed the six strategies over more than a decade of working closely with weight fighters and watching who was successful and who wasn’t.
1. Super strong WHY with a burning desire to succeed
2. SMART goals
3. No-retreat and no-escape commitment and leveraging as needed to increase it
4. The right, complete, science-based program with a proven track record of success addressing a nutritionally-fit, actively-fit and emotionally-fit lifestyle.
5. Necessary allocation of (MET) money, energy and time to yourself, the process and the goal
6. Work closely with and/or hire expert(s) as needed who understand weight loss beyond calories-in and calories-out and the intricacies and interplay of food addiction, food allergies and other eating disorders common to the weight fighter.
In future posts I’ll go into more detail about each of these success strategies, what they mean, and how you can set them up properly for more consistent wins rather than failures. Through Leanness Lifestyle University I continue to work very hard to make sure my students have all six strategies firmly in place at all times. It’s not always easy but it’s what’s necessary to really make the scale behave for life.