Weight Loss Reality Check: Thinking Your Way to Healthy

With the prevalence of weight loss advice available today, why is obesity still such a problem? The answer may have more to do with your head than with your stomach. A shift in perspective may be just the thing to turn the tables and give you a fighting chance for success in the battle of the bulge.

The Stats Don’t Lie

More than one-third (34.9 percent or 78.6 million) of U.S. adults are obese, according to a 2014 article in the Journal of American Medicine. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), globally 1.9 billion adults are overweight, with 600 million of that number classified as obese. That means that approximately 13 percent of the world’s population is obese. Excuse the pun, but that is a whopping figure!

Why It Matters

As you read this article, it is likely that you or someone you love is struggling right now with this problem. Many Americans suffer adverse health effects from obesity in the form of hypertension, stroke, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, some forms of arthritis, and even certain types of cancer.

According to the CDC, the estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was $147 billion in 2008 U.S. dollars; the medical costs for people who are obese were $1,429 higher than those of normal weight. In view of these alarming statistics, what can be done to counteract this trend?

Why Yo-Yo Is a No-No

Much research has been done about the role of calorie reduction and increased exercise as a means to achieving weight loss. Most people have heard the mantra “Eat healthy, and exercise” to lose unwanted pounds. Sounds simple, right?

However, while eating healthily and exercising are the most basic two elements of any sustainable weight loss program, putting that advice into practice can be overwhelmingly difficult for some. What can help?

Increasingly, it is becoming clear that the process of following restrictive fad diets results only in temporary weight loss and often leads one down the dangerous path of yo-yo dieting. Some studies indicate that yo-yo dieting (the process of losing and regaining weight over and over) may be more harmful than never dieting at all. If you accept the premise that fad dieting is not the most effective means of weight loss, where do you go from there?

Breaking the Mental Mold

Perhaps the simplest answer is that it is time to focus first on what is going on between your ears before you focus on what goes past your lips. While fad diets tend to make you think only about what you cannot eat, perhaps the healthier and more mentally satisfying outlook is quite different. Sustainable weight loss is achieved through developing a different mindset about food and its role in your life.

Food as Fuel

Instead of focusing attention on food as gratification or pleasure, it is better to begin to think of food as what it truly is–the fuel your body needs to perform the tasks you need to do at any given time.

Now, just as your automobile performs more efficiently with a better grade of gasoline, so too your body performs more efficiently with better quality foods. Intellectually, it is easy to understand this thought.

Perceiving the change to healthy eating choices as a permanent, positive lifestyle change (as opposed to a “diet”) appears to be a healthier way to think about long term weight loss goals.

This change in perception does not occur overnight, however. Sometimes, you must simply plow right in and start eating more carefully, more mindfully, and more healthily before the mind can catch up with the new paradigm. Just as most habits are born of repetition, so too is the healthy eating habit.

Embracing the New You

So, if you can conquer your thought process, making your mind over to truly relish the thought of the health you will be able to enjoy as a result of positive steps taken now, you will have a much better chance of losing weight in a healthy way, and keeping it off for the long haul. Here’s to the new you.