Weight Loss Reality

The Reailty of Failure To Lose Weight

You can’t fail to lose weight.

The only way you can fail is if you decide you’ve failed and then stop trying for a very long time. And even then, really, it wasn’t failure, it was you stopping for a while. Losing weight isn’t something that happens to you, that you do what you’re supposed to do and then sit back and hope that the weight comes off. That supposes that you are not in a position of power, that something else is. That losing weight is some mysterious thing your body does or doesn’t do for you. And you’ve got to sing the right song and dance the right dance and then IF your body agrees it will let go of the fat. Actually there is a formula to making your body let go of fat.

Powerlessness is the root of what some people call failure. Until you grow up inside your body and take charge and own the power you hold, you will remain a slave to your body and will stay feeling powerless. Every set back will be proof that you can’t do it. The truth is that your mind IS your body. Your will IS your body. You have control over what your body looks like and does. By reading this you are learning more tools and information on how your body functions so that you can use those tools to be in control and guide the fat loss and muscle building. It’s math, it’s formulaic, it must happen. There is no failure, there’s no “let’s hope”. If you eat well, if you move your body and IF you intend to lose this weight, your body must do what it is programmed to do, it must let the fat go and build muscle.

So you are not powerless, you’re not a child, you’re not at the whim of a body that does strange crazy things. It’s measurable, it’s science, you control it. And now you understand it more. So once you take charge and realize you will lose, and the only question is going to be how quickly, then you know there’s nothing to fear, nothing to question.

If you are scared, if you are looking for the first sign of “failure” so you can quit, then you are looking to identify with failure and you need to stay overweight so you can continue to be the victim. Look inside yourself and feel if this rings true to you. Are bad things always happening to you? Do you find yourself always saying “See, I told you”, do you feel unlucky? These things are indicators that you have identified with a victim mentality. It’s alluring and easy to slide into, especially if you grew up hearing it in your home. But look underneath that. It has sort of a childlike “somebody help me” quality to it, doesn’t it?

I’m not laying blame and I know nobody would ever WANT to be a victim, we’re talking about going underneath the surface and feeling something a little deeper. I don’t think identifying with victimhood is something anyone wants on the surface, I believe it is frustration, a lack of answers, a true, “What’s going on, why are things like this, why is this happening to me?”,kind of thing.

It’s strange that stopping asking those questions, is actually the answer to those questions; that to help yourself, to end fear, powerlessness and confusion you have to stop feeling powerless and fearful and stop asking for help. In doing so, you have to grow up, you have to be wiling to not know and be okay with that. You have to not have an identity with “help me”, you have give up the “poor me” talk, you have to stop feeling broken and unlucky and you have to begin to say, “Okay, if I’m not those things, then what, and who, am I”? And for a while you may not know. It’s weird how people will lose friends, abuse others, make bad choices and stay overweight just so they don’t ever have to experience not looking at who they are for a while. But once you do it, once you sit in a lack of victimhood but not yet in a place of power, you begin to get good at it. And after a while it’s not so bad. Until one day you realize that you have slowly begun to find out you are powerful. This beautiful person emerges that, all that “I can’t” was covering up all along. It doesn’t mean you have all the answers, it doesn’t mean you are perfect or that now you’ll lose weight, you won’t fail (there’s that word again) and that life will be rosy. But it does mean that now you see everything differently. And hopefully you’ll understand what I write next.

There’s no failure

So when you fall off a diet, you used to tell yourself, “See, I’m a failure, I can’t do this, I thought this diet would help but it too failed, I’m a failure and there’s no point continuing if this is just going to fail too.” But when I “fall off a diet’ , firstly, I don’t consider it falling off a diet. I consider it, eating badly for a few days. By calling it a diet, I’ve created this campaign that I’m a part of that has some direction that’s right or wrong. Then by saying the word, failure, I’ve created finality to it, not continuity. It’s not a diet, it’s eating differently to steer my body in a direction, it’s not final, everyday is a new day. Each day bleeds into the next, each hour into the next, each moment into the next. How can I separate that? So the BIG difference, the IT that will decide whether or not “this” diet works and you will lose the weight lies in what we call it, what we tell ourselves and how we see it all. Do we see some big campaign with a win/lose proposition or just another day where we are doing our best because we TRULY don’t want to be victims to our body anymore and we really want to lose the weight.

My head

So in my head it went like this. Usually it was one of those times where my body really mounted a great defense against me and had decided that this new low caloric intake was just not acceptable and it tried its best to make me eat. And it really pulled out all the stops and cranked the appetite up so high I thought I hadn’t eaten, ever. So I’d start with the raw carrot, then the popcorn, celery and peanut butter and finally, I’d just pig out on dinner and eat so much I felt bloated. And my body won and I just gained back a week’s worth of work of losing weight. But I told myself, oh well, more work this week. And usually it was an easier week because my body got the calories it wanted it usually left me alone. I might throw in an extra 10 minutes into my walk/run or do a few more laps on the rock wall or throw in an extra day of biking or go around the block one more time, stuff like that. No big deal.

But people who “fail” tell themselves lots of huge things, with big words, with lots of drama and negativity and bigness. Can you change what you tell yourself? Can you learn how you identify yourself? Can you see that failure is only a definition created by you? Where was this line? Where was this place you dropped off? Where did this failure exist, except in your mind and your own decision to stop eating well and moving your body? No one can define it but you, there is no end point, there’s no certain amount of days that if you haven’t eaten well, then you failed.

If I stop eating well for a month, then I can tell myself one of 2 things:

1. I failed, that diet is over, time to shelve it and find something new after I eat a lot of crap that I deserve now that I did without for a month and yet again I failed.

2. Geeze, I think it has been 4 weeks that I haven’t eaten right, now. I bet that set me back a few pounds. Actually it only set me back 4 weeks, but in the grand scheme of things what’s 4 weeks, if I start looking better in a month, any looking better is good and at the back end of it, what’s 4 more weeks, when I’m a size 8 versus a size 7? So now I eat better and get back to moving my body more. And again, in a few weeks, actually probably less, I’ll start feeling better and noticing a difference.

When people ask me how the diet’s going and I hadn’t eaten well in 4 weeks, I can answer in one of these ways:

1. Yeah, that didn’t last. Not so good, it failed. That book was stupid anyway. I mean there wasn’t even a diet to follow, plus you know it was birthday party time and all that cake, LOL you know. Oh well, better luck next time.

2. Great! It’s up and down but it’s all part of the process. I’m learning a lot about my body and I can’t wait to see a difference. (Then be grateful for the wonderful gentle reminder to eat better and keep at it).

Do you see how the external circumstances were the same but it was the choice on the individual’s part that determines the failure or success?

I’ve been there. I had to make these choices. I had to answer these questions, I had to face these feelings and circumstances and I had choices. I had to face my victim identity, I had to not know who I was for a while. And so do you. Just don’t ever choose failure and you will never fail.

Epilogue

I began my endeavor to lose weight in the spring of 2004. I worked at it hard fast and steady throughout 2004, continued in 2005 but somewhere in the fall of 2005 my weight loss kind of stopped or plateaued out between 115 and 120. Sometimes it would dip a little below 115 but usually bounced back up. My size steadied at jeans size 7. Once I realized that this was where my body was going to stay I backed off on dieting and enjoyed a few more carbs and relaxed some on the training. For the rest of 2005, and all of 2006 I remained there. In 2007, somewhere near the fall, I started losing weight again. I didn’t do anything different, didn’t eat differently, or exercise differently, my body just started burning more fat. So I decided to work with it and started watching what I ate, and started doing more core work. I lost another size and instead of a soft smooth tummy, I was starting to see ripples of obliques and abs. Hubby was quite pleased and so was I, especially with so little effort on my part.

After thinking a lot on what was different, I realized some things. I hope this helps you understand the power of your mind and the power of stress on your weightloss. During 2005 I ~~was a victim~~ experienced hurricane Katrina. The depression and stress, and fall out and move and subsequent debt stayed with me for 2 years (the debt hung around longer). When I started pulling my way out of that, I started feeling happier and getting back into wanting more for myself again. I started seeing other girls’ abs at the gym and wishing I could get that. I started thinking much more about my tummy I was looking at it in the mirror and trying to see what I might look like with ripples and how it would feel.

My body responded to these wishes and with my newfound lack of stress it was able to, once again, put energy toward weight loss. These wishes were suggestions put to my body much like cancer patients are counseled to do during their support therapy. It works in the same way imagery works. Each time I looked in the mirror and saw my abs and ripples, even though they weren’t there, I was doing imagery.

There’s a lot of research that backs up the power of imagery. In college I was a gymnast and cheerleader then went on to coach a swim team and teach gymnastics. A fundamental part of training to was to imagine, in great detail, any part of what you’re working on. I remember every single night, when I went to bed, the new stunt I was learning, going over and over it in my mind, where my hands were, when I jumped, where I looked, where my legs went, in perfect execution. I would do this many times. We know through research that this causes changes in the part of the brain where the physical actions are stored, not just memory. There’s emerging research now that is studying how this affects the nerves and muscles.

So I don’t doubt that each time I looked in the mirror and visualized the abs I wished I could have I was making changes in my brain and eventually after several months of this, my body began to respond by creating that. This, mixed with the new lack of stress, caused this turn around. I wonder how much my body could have done without my help physically but I know that of all the weight I lost and muscles I’ve built, those last pounds and these abs came the easiest.

As I write this epilogue I sit at 110 and feel strong and fit, my abs look great and I must say, I never figured at 42 I’d be looking like this.

I’m not done yet though.

I’ve always had a rear end that hung down a little lower than most but after 2 kids, forget it. I have been recently picturing the buns from a beer poster girl, as being what’s actually back there, every time I look in the mirror. I can’t wait to see what I’m going to do with this……

To learn the science of how the body is programmed to hang on to or let go of fat, click here to read lots of free excerpts from the book, The Reality of Weight Loss by Teresa Bondora or log onto, www.HowToTeachScience.com where you are welcome to stay and read and learn.