Pick your diet. They ALL work when you follow them.
DANG!
Well, that blows all my excuses out of the water, how about you? Think of it, when have you followed a plan to the letter, and NOTHING happened? It may happen after you’ve been on a plan for a while, lost a number of pounds. The body is balancing, but generally, when we follow a plan, we get the desired result.
What’s the variable?
ME: staying within the parameters. Big sigh.
We know WHAT to do. The hard part is doing it. It’s finding within us whatever it takes to do what we know we need to in order to get the result.
I don’t know about you, but I got quite discouraged along the way. So many fresh starts. So many plans. So many dollars for this or that – magic powder or plan or exercise equipment that would make it easy. Or that strict plan that I was going to stick to no matter what – and did for a time, and then – well, I don’t quite know what happened, but whatever it was that made it work just evaporated.
I get it. You’ve worked hard at this for so long. You’ve made amazing effort. And now you may be beyond frustrated. Yet giving up doesn’t help either, does it?
Okay, so how do we get back on track?
Start with one thing. Do one thing differently, but do it well. It doesn’t have to be massive—self-sabotage is sneaky enough to suggest something huge that we know we can’t really stick to. Start with one small thing and get accustomed to that. That wouldn’t be too hard, would it?
Then add another change. Small, incremental changes over time make a big difference.
A client was a little annoyed that the scale wasn’t moving as she’d hoped. We’d been talking for some time, and she expected more progress. So we reviewed her progress.
–She’d limited her intake of a particularly tempting food to weekends only.
–Next, she tackled her binges. She planned ahead, enlisting support for the times when she’d be tempted and creating alternatives.
I asked her how many times she’d gone off the rails, and she realized she hadn’t.
Even more, it had been easy. She stumbled once or twice, but it looked a lot different now as she’d maybe have one portion extra rather than several.
Those aren’t huge changes, but they don’t have to be. Consistent, small, sustainable changes create significant changes in the body.
Is it quick? No.
But it can make the difference in the long-term. Would you rather lose ten pounds during one diet OR lose the bad habits that created the extra weight?
What’s one small change you can make this week?
