Weight loss mindset

Most people will agree that 80% of the solution to being overweight is in the lifestyle/diet choice that is adopted, and 20% of the success is through exercise.

The key issue is whether a person can successfully envision his/her new “healthy self” as a creative goal (and here I’m borrowing from Robert Fritz’s The Path of Least Resistance) that then serves as the “driving force” (aka “structural tension”) to a new lifestyle. Most people simply are reacting to the physical, social, and emotional discomfort of being overweight or obese, and hence take steps to relieve this tension (i.e., by “going on a diet”). When this tension is relieved (by losing pounds) the “hunger/tension” to go back to eating the old way comes back, until such time as the “tension of obesity” surfaces again. It’s the vicious cycle instigated by a “reactive-responsive” mindset that keeps us in this loop — an approach fueled by a quick fix mentality.

I think that most successful “weight loss masters” are able to create a new vision/idea of themselves as healthy, slim, and energetic beings who do not have to constantly deprive themselves in their eating behavior. Rather than deprivation, they adopt a new path of sustainable behaviors and correct nutritional choices.

However, the latter is the key: without proper chemistry to help us (i.e., achieved by an optimal high nutritional/low caloric density) the “behavior” of eating will be compromised and will always be hard to sustain. The better the food, the easier it is to sustain eating the right foods and in the right amounts. I maintain that there is such a thing a the “right” diet — what I call the “nutritionally excellent” diet , and not all diets are created equal.

The closer to this “ideal” one eats, the easier I think it is to maintain over the long haul. A good example of a positive spiral.