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| Frustrated because you can't stick to your weight loss goals? Here's an easy 3-step plan to change your life today! |
Last Updated: January 16, 2021
It's January, and time to start carving off the pounds you gained over the holidays.
Yes?
But how many times have you actually decided that you are going to lose weight this year?
And how many times have you said:
"I'm really, really SERIOUS this time around! I'm going to do this!"
If you're like me, then you aren't running around saying diets don't work. Every single January you've been making weight loss a part of your New Year's resolutions.
So, the ultimate question is this:
Do you have the motivation to make it all the way through 2021 without falling out of the wagon?
And do you know what that takes to accomplish?
Do you have the mindset required to reach goal weight this year?
Or will you cave in before the first month is up and indulge in a slice of sizzling-hot pepperoni pizza or a slightly under-baked, soft and gooey, chocolate chip cookie?
Maybe, more than one slice of pizza and a fistful of cookies?
Losing weight isn't easy.
Losing body fat is downright hard.
I had to really, really fight with myself to keep going as I watched family and friends eating my favorite foods that were no longer an option for me.
Dieting sucks.
Especially, when you have to go low-fat low-carb to make the miracle happen. There's not a lot of joy in living on baked chicken breast and steamed vegetables. There really isn't.
But you know what?
Even though I managed to get down to 145 pounds by tweaking the Atkins Diet to be lower in fat, and was wearing a size 12 by 2012, I quickly learned that maintaining that weight loss -- going from 257-1/2 pounds to 145, and staying there -- was even harder than losing the weight ever was.
Losing weight means you have to eat less food than you could eat when you first started your weight-loss journey. And losing body fat means you have no more rewards to help you stay on plan.
Once you reach goal weight, people are not going to congratulate you for a job well done because the job is already over and done with. People aren't going to notice that you're maintaining the weight; they stop saying that it shows.
Once the weight comes off, it's just LIFE.
So I want you to know that I'm just like you.
I understand how hard it is to go on a diet because I've been trying to diet since I was a teenager.
And . . . I'm still fat.
Granted, I don't weigh 257-1/2 pounds anymore. I've managed to keep off 75 pounds, but when I first started dieting as a teenager, I was only 10 pounds overweight.
That's right. When I went on my first diet I was only 10 pounds overweight.
Today, I'm 58 pounds overweight.
And that's the problem!
A diet is generally seen as a temporary restriction to help you lose some weight, but the negative aspects of cutting out carbs, whittling down your calories, or counting points are more profound than that.
The body loves equilibrium.
Take in fewer calories and the body will go to work trying to bring the energy it uses into balance with those fewer calories. Most people call the body's goal, once accomplished, a stall or weight-loss plateau.
A stall is the body's solution; not a problem.
A weight-loss stall is really a series of adaptions that the body made to bring everything back into balance.
One of the adaptions is to slow down your metabolism, so that fewer calories are needed to help you get through the day. The body will also make you feel more tired than usual, to slow you down, so you won't feel as energetic as you did before.
You'll be less fidgety and more kicked-back.
Slower metabolism and less activity will cause your weight loss to stall.
If you get upset at that stall and quit your weight-loss diet, rather than take the steps needed to alter that equilibrium, you'll likely go back to your old eating patterns, or some type of mindless eating habit, but your metabolism will still be depressed.
A depressed metabolism, when coupled with your prior eating habits, will result in you eventually weighing more than you did before.
I learned that lesson the hard way.
Hence, over a series of years or decades, you'll weigh more than you ever did.
What started out as being 10 pounds overweight when I was a teenager eventually led to an overabundance of 131-1/2 pounds when I was 52!
Even though I did manage to carve off over 100 pounds by tweaking the Atkins diet to be lower in fat, between 2007 and 2012, I bounced back up again when I went rogue.
Okay. Time for some more honesty. There are a handful of exceptions to this.
A small group of people can go on a weight-loss diet and succeed in losing all the weight they need to, and then move into maintenance without gaining any of the weight back.
But, these exceptions are very few and far between.
For most people, diets simply do not work.
Look at the posts at any weight-loss forum, come January, and you'll see hundreds of people saying:
"Okay, guys! I'm back! Remember me? Wish me luck!"
Dieters are always cycling on-and-off a diet.
While some might be enticed to try every new diet scheme that comes along, hoping for a miracle cure to their overweight or obesity, most dieters are pretty sincere when it comes to dieting.
Those New Year's Resolutions are not filled with lies. You really do believe that this is the year you're going to lose the weight!
So how well did you do in 2020?
Did you move forward toward your weight-loss goal, or did you somehow find yourself going in reverse?
Reverse seems to be a regular pattern among dieters. You go on a weight-loss diet filled with hope, lose 20 or 30 pounds, then something causes you to go off the diet, and you regain all the weight back -- plus, more!
Me?
I spent the greater majority of 2018 doing low carb and trying to repair my elevated blood glucose level only to discover that very low carb was making my blood glucose worse!
Instead of regaining blood glucose control by ditching the carbs, my blood sugars continued to stay very high. Very low carb simply didn't work for me.
The good news?
I didn't gain any weight back.
In fact, I'm another 10 pounds down from my last review post, (January 2019) but so far, ketogenic dieting hasn't lived up to its promises.
Once again, I didn't lose a single pound cutting down on carbs.
Luckily, I didn't gain weight this time. My body simply adapted itself to what I was doing.
And this is why weight-loss diets don't work over the long term:
The body doesn't like having to empty out its fat cells, shrink them, and get rid of them. It believes that storing fat for the next famine situation is a good thing.
It doesn't understand what weight-loss dieting is about, so it will do everything in its power to protect its fat stores. The body's goal is to save your life, so you can go on living, and that's what the body does for you.
My last reflection post was in July of 2017. At that time, I had lost 40 pounds and had just moved from Utah to Texas.
Since then, I was able to maintain the weight I'd lost just by living my life and not really dieting. I did go back to Keto after we moved to Texas, but not because of the potential for weight loss. I was trying to get my blood sugar back under control.
However, at the end of August, circumstances in my life made it impossible to continue doing Keto, and I dropped 10 more pounds after upping my carbs.
That's right!
I LOST weight by returning carbs to my diet.
My body is much happier with smaller portions and more carbs. Hence, the new name of this blog:
Just Do You
When it comes to weight loss, life works better for me than dieting!
And as long as those changes are permanent, there's no danger that I'll ever gain those pounds back unless I return to the old, mindless eating habits I had when I weighed 257-1/2.
Yes?
But how many times have you actually decided that you are going to lose weight this year?
And how many times have you said:
"I'm really, really SERIOUS this time around! I'm going to do this!"
If you're like me, then you aren't running around saying diets don't work. Every single January you've been making weight loss a part of your New Year's resolutions.
So, the ultimate question is this:
Do you have the motivation to make it all the way through 2021 without falling out of the wagon?
And do you know what that takes to accomplish?
Do you have the mindset required to reach goal weight this year?
Or will you cave in before the first month is up and indulge in a slice of sizzling-hot pepperoni pizza or a slightly under-baked, soft and gooey, chocolate chip cookie?
Maybe, more than one slice of pizza and a fistful of cookies?
Losing weight isn't easy.
Losing body fat is downright hard.
I had to really, really fight with myself to keep going as I watched family and friends eating my favorite foods that were no longer an option for me.
Dieting sucks.
Especially, when you have to go low-fat low-carb to make the miracle happen. There's not a lot of joy in living on baked chicken breast and steamed vegetables. There really isn't.
But you know what?
Even though I managed to get down to 145 pounds by tweaking the Atkins Diet to be lower in fat, and was wearing a size 12 by 2012, I quickly learned that maintaining that weight loss -- going from 257-1/2 pounds to 145, and staying there -- was even harder than losing the weight ever was.
How Long Have You Been Dieting?
Losing weight means you have to eat less food than you could eat when you first started your weight-loss journey. And losing body fat means you have no more rewards to help you stay on plan.
Once you reach goal weight, people are not going to congratulate you for a job well done because the job is already over and done with. People aren't going to notice that you're maintaining the weight; they stop saying that it shows.
Once the weight comes off, it's just LIFE.
So I want you to know that I'm just like you.
I understand how hard it is to go on a diet because I've been trying to diet since I was a teenager.
And . . . I'm still fat.
Granted, I don't weigh 257-1/2 pounds anymore. I've managed to keep off 75 pounds, but when I first started dieting as a teenager, I was only 10 pounds overweight.
That's right. When I went on my first diet I was only 10 pounds overweight.
Today, I'm 58 pounds overweight.
And that's the problem!
Why Do Diets Make Us Fatter?
 |
| If you see a diet as a temporary solution you'll never reach goal weight and stay there |
A diet is generally seen as a temporary restriction to help you lose some weight, but the negative aspects of cutting out carbs, whittling down your calories, or counting points are more profound than that.
The body loves equilibrium.
Take in fewer calories and the body will go to work trying to bring the energy it uses into balance with those fewer calories. Most people call the body's goal, once accomplished, a stall or weight-loss plateau.
A stall is the body's solution; not a problem.
A weight-loss stall is really a series of adaptions that the body made to bring everything back into balance.
One of the adaptions is to slow down your metabolism, so that fewer calories are needed to help you get through the day. The body will also make you feel more tired than usual, to slow you down, so you won't feel as energetic as you did before.
You'll be less fidgety and more kicked-back.
Slower metabolism and less activity will cause your weight loss to stall.
If you get upset at that stall and quit your weight-loss diet, rather than take the steps needed to alter that equilibrium, you'll likely go back to your old eating patterns, or some type of mindless eating habit, but your metabolism will still be depressed.
A depressed metabolism, when coupled with your prior eating habits, will result in you eventually weighing more than you did before.
I learned that lesson the hard way.
Hence, over a series of years or decades, you'll weigh more than you ever did.
What started out as being 10 pounds overweight when I was a teenager eventually led to an overabundance of 131-1/2 pounds when I was 52!
Even though I did manage to carve off over 100 pounds by tweaking the Atkins diet to be lower in fat, between 2007 and 2012, I bounced back up again when I went rogue.
Weight-Loss Diets Don't Work Long Term
Okay. Time for some more honesty. There are a handful of exceptions to this.
A small group of people can go on a weight-loss diet and succeed in losing all the weight they need to, and then move into maintenance without gaining any of the weight back.
But, these exceptions are very few and far between.
For most people, diets simply do not work.
Look at the posts at any weight-loss forum, come January, and you'll see hundreds of people saying:
"Okay, guys! I'm back! Remember me? Wish me luck!"
Dieters are always cycling on-and-off a diet.
While some might be enticed to try every new diet scheme that comes along, hoping for a miracle cure to their overweight or obesity, most dieters are pretty sincere when it comes to dieting.
Those New Year's Resolutions are not filled with lies. You really do believe that this is the year you're going to lose the weight!
So how well did you do in 2020?
Did you move forward toward your weight-loss goal, or did you somehow find yourself going in reverse?
Reverse seems to be a regular pattern among dieters. You go on a weight-loss diet filled with hope, lose 20 or 30 pounds, then something causes you to go off the diet, and you regain all the weight back -- plus, more!
Me?
I spent the greater majority of 2018 doing low carb and trying to repair my elevated blood glucose level only to discover that very low carb was making my blood glucose worse!
Instead of regaining blood glucose control by ditching the carbs, my blood sugars continued to stay very high. Very low carb simply didn't work for me.
The good news?
I didn't gain any weight back.
In fact, I'm another 10 pounds down from my last review post, (January 2019) but so far, ketogenic dieting hasn't lived up to its promises.
Once again, I didn't lose a single pound cutting down on carbs.
Luckily, I didn't gain weight this time. My body simply adapted itself to what I was doing.
And this is why weight-loss diets don't work over the long term:
The body doesn't like having to empty out its fat cells, shrink them, and get rid of them. It believes that storing fat for the next famine situation is a good thing.
It doesn't understand what weight-loss dieting is about, so it will do everything in its power to protect its fat stores. The body's goal is to save your life, so you can go on living, and that's what the body does for you.
What Does Work for Long Term Weight Loss?
My last reflection post was in July of 2017. At that time, I had lost 40 pounds and had just moved from Utah to Texas.
Since then, I was able to maintain the weight I'd lost just by living my life and not really dieting. I did go back to Keto after we moved to Texas, but not because of the potential for weight loss. I was trying to get my blood sugar back under control.
However, at the end of August, circumstances in my life made it impossible to continue doing Keto, and I dropped 10 more pounds after upping my carbs.
That's right!
I LOST weight by returning carbs to my diet.
My body is much happier with smaller portions and more carbs. Hence, the new name of this blog:
Just Do You
When it comes to weight loss, life works better for me than dieting!
And as long as those changes are permanent, there's no danger that I'll ever gain those pounds back unless I return to the old, mindless eating habits I had when I weighed 257-1/2.
(Life got away from me again. I regained 30 pounds and had to return to Keto to get my blood sugar back under control about 90 days ago. Keto works for the short-term. It's the long-term that plays havoc with my blood glucose control. I'm back on carb restriction, so I've changed the name of this blog from Life After Low Carb to Just Do You.)
Small, but permanent, changes that focus on healthy eating and using an intuitive eating style is what works long-term because you're able to bypass the mind's opposition to dieting when you're not dieting at all.
Here's a 3-step non-diet plan to get you to goal weight:
An abrupt change in attitude is the first step.
You gotta ditch the old knee-jerk reaction that says you're desperate to try anything and everything to get rid of the fat. Otherwise, you're going to fall for any weight-loss scheme that comes along, distracting you from your real goal:
To lose the weight permanently.
You also need to let go of any success that you have had with prior diets because weight-loss diets never work the same way twice. This is because the body remembers what you did and how it adapted to your tricks.
Your body will just stay one step ahead of you if you try to repeat history.
This is why I can no longer lose weight on a standard low-carb diet. Even on low carb, I have to trim way back on the fat and calories to see any weight loss at all.
Plus, when you choose to keep the dieting mindset, your whole life will be focused on food and how much you weigh.
You'll constantly think about food, worry about what the scale says, complain about how slowly the weight is coming off, and get obsessive about not only what you eat, but what you look like, as well.
What you need is a solution that will enable you to lose the weight permanently because the dieting industry is built on the foundation of people failing to do that.
If diets worked, no one would ever need another weight-loss diet -- ever. Or diet food even, for that matter.
So switch your attitude from diet to just living life to its fullest.
Step 2 in being successful long term at losing weight is to change how you think.
Instead of reading every new diet book that came forth last year, look at naturally thin people for awhile and then start thinking and acting just like them.
So the key is to think, feel, and behave as if you were already at goal weight:
Fat people avoid putting on a bathing suit. They don't participate in sports. And they bury their body in clothes that are baggy and unattractive.
You've probably restricted your activities to just an occasional walk and try to avoid social gatherings, so you won't feel self-conscious about what you look like.
All of these things just isolate you from life.
Don't wait until you lose the weight to start living. There's no time in your life to wait. And no good reason not to live today!
Teach yourself how to be naturally thin, and you won't be able to not be successful.
Diets don't work mostly because they are not individualized.
Since the author's intent is to sell either a book or weight-loss program, the author tries to reach the largest amount of readers they can by sharing what worked for them or their patients.
However, what worked for the author and their patients might not work for you.
Every dieter is unique, so Step 3 in the process of being successful at losing weight is to take a good look at yourself and decide what you want to change about yourself and your lifestyle right now.
Saying that you want to ditch the weight is too general.
Because what you're doing right now isn't working very well. If it was, you wouldn't be reading this article.
Believe it or not, being overweight is not your problem. The mindset and belief patterns that stand behind your overweight condition is the problem.
Your belief "in" weight-loss diets being able to fix you is the problem.
Individuality means you need to zero in on what actually caused those excess pounds to be stored in the first place.
What is preventing you from taking them back off, and what is standing in your way of you being naturally thin today?
Do you know what your food habits actually are?
With no diet to tell you what to do, you can simply carve down your portion sizes to fit within your unique level of hunger and activity, but doing that is going to take a bit of soul-searching and mindful intent.
You can't do that if you go blind when you're dishing up your plate. You have to stay mindful of how much food you're eating.
When you do that, you'll create a unique approach to nutrition that makes room for your likes, tastes, and lifestyle. You'll be able to experience life as a thin person because your subconscious mind will work to help you become that.
For example, whenever we have tacos now, I just eat the filling I'd use for 2 tacos. Breakfast has gone from 2 eggs and 4 or 5 slices of bacon to just 1 egg and 2 slices of bacon or sausage. I very rarely go back for seconds at dinner. And dessert has shrunk from 3 scoops of ice cream down to 2.
Acting deliberately doesn't mean you'll never binge again. I'm not asking you to spoil your holiday fun. But it does mean that you'll need to start paying attention to why you eat and when.
These realizations will be unique to just you.
By observing yourself, and getting to know your food habits, you can see how the pounds came on, why they stay, and figure out how to get rid of them.
At which point, you can choose whether those habits are more important to you than being thin is.
Dieting encourages you to feel a certain degree of hatred for your body because you're unhappy with the way it's currently taking care of you.
And when you hate your body, that's going to spill over into the way you take care of yourself.
It's never too late to begin acting in a more loving way toward yourself. Nor do you need to beat yourself up when you eat a little too much because results come when you care enough about yourself to appreciate what life is actually doing for you.
Food is something you eat when you're hungry, and it's something you leave alone when you're not.
Food is not a solution to your problems and challenges.
Food supplies the energy you need to solve your problems, but there's a very big difference between your emotional appetite and your physical needs.
When you stop confusing the two, you can use the above 3-step plan to create your own nutritional approach to living that will enable you to live life to the fullest.
What Does it Take to Be Successful?
Small, but permanent, changes that focus on healthy eating and using an intuitive eating style is what works long-term because you're able to bypass the mind's opposition to dieting when you're not dieting at all.
Here's a 3-step non-diet plan to get you to goal weight:
Step 1
An abrupt change in attitude is the first step.
You gotta ditch the old knee-jerk reaction that says you're desperate to try anything and everything to get rid of the fat. Otherwise, you're going to fall for any weight-loss scheme that comes along, distracting you from your real goal:
To lose the weight permanently.
You also need to let go of any success that you have had with prior diets because weight-loss diets never work the same way twice. This is because the body remembers what you did and how it adapted to your tricks.
Your body will just stay one step ahead of you if you try to repeat history.
This is why I can no longer lose weight on a standard low-carb diet. Even on low carb, I have to trim way back on the fat and calories to see any weight loss at all.
Plus, when you choose to keep the dieting mindset, your whole life will be focused on food and how much you weigh.
You'll constantly think about food, worry about what the scale says, complain about how slowly the weight is coming off, and get obsessive about not only what you eat, but what you look like, as well.
What you need is a solution that will enable you to lose the weight permanently because the dieting industry is built on the foundation of people failing to do that.
If diets worked, no one would ever need another weight-loss diet -- ever. Or diet food even, for that matter.
So switch your attitude from diet to just living life to its fullest.
Step 2
Step 2 in being successful long term at losing weight is to change how you think.
Instead of reading every new diet book that came forth last year, look at naturally thin people for awhile and then start thinking and acting just like them.
- Do they eat real food? Or diet food?
- Do they obsess over the scale or how much they weigh?
- Do they feel tired all the time or energetic and happy?
- Do they complain about everything or do they love their life?
So the key is to think, feel, and behave as if you were already at goal weight:
- What different thoughts would you have about food and yourself if you were already thin?
- Would you spend the day thinking about food or doing something fun?
- How would you feel when you woke up in the morning?
- If you didn't have to count calories, carbs, exchanges, or points, what would you do today?
- What have you always wanted to do but have been putting it off until you reach goal weight?
- What would you do differently if you were already at goal weight?
Fat people avoid putting on a bathing suit. They don't participate in sports. And they bury their body in clothes that are baggy and unattractive.
You've probably restricted your activities to just an occasional walk and try to avoid social gatherings, so you won't feel self-conscious about what you look like.
All of these things just isolate you from life.
Don't wait until you lose the weight to start living. There's no time in your life to wait. And no good reason not to live today!
Teach yourself how to be naturally thin, and you won't be able to not be successful.
Step 3
Diets don't work mostly because they are not individualized.
Since the author's intent is to sell either a book or weight-loss program, the author tries to reach the largest amount of readers they can by sharing what worked for them or their patients.
However, what worked for the author and their patients might not work for you.
Every dieter is unique, so Step 3 in the process of being successful at losing weight is to take a good look at yourself and decide what you want to change about yourself and your lifestyle right now.
Saying that you want to ditch the weight is too general.
Because what you're doing right now isn't working very well. If it was, you wouldn't be reading this article.
Believe it or not, being overweight is not your problem. The mindset and belief patterns that stand behind your overweight condition is the problem.
Your belief "in" weight-loss diets being able to fix you is the problem.
Individuality means you need to zero in on what actually caused those excess pounds to be stored in the first place.
What is preventing you from taking them back off, and what is standing in your way of you being naturally thin today?
Do you know what your food habits actually are?
With no diet to tell you what to do, you can simply carve down your portion sizes to fit within your unique level of hunger and activity, but doing that is going to take a bit of soul-searching and mindful intent.
You can't do that if you go blind when you're dishing up your plate. You have to stay mindful of how much food you're eating.
When you do that, you'll create a unique approach to nutrition that makes room for your likes, tastes, and lifestyle. You'll be able to experience life as a thin person because your subconscious mind will work to help you become that.
For example, whenever we have tacos now, I just eat the filling I'd use for 2 tacos. Breakfast has gone from 2 eggs and 4 or 5 slices of bacon to just 1 egg and 2 slices of bacon or sausage. I very rarely go back for seconds at dinner. And dessert has shrunk from 3 scoops of ice cream down to 2.
Acting deliberately doesn't mean you'll never binge again. I'm not asking you to spoil your holiday fun. But it does mean that you'll need to start paying attention to why you eat and when.
These realizations will be unique to just you.
By observing yourself, and getting to know your food habits, you can see how the pounds came on, why they stay, and figure out how to get rid of them.
At which point, you can choose whether those habits are more important to you than being thin is.
Stop Hating Your Body!
Dieting encourages you to feel a certain degree of hatred for your body because you're unhappy with the way it's currently taking care of you.
And when you hate your body, that's going to spill over into the way you take care of yourself.
It's never too late to begin acting in a more loving way toward yourself. Nor do you need to beat yourself up when you eat a little too much because results come when you care enough about yourself to appreciate what life is actually doing for you.
Food is something you eat when you're hungry, and it's something you leave alone when you're not.
Food is not a solution to your problems and challenges.
Food supplies the energy you need to solve your problems, but there's a very big difference between your emotional appetite and your physical needs.
When you stop confusing the two, you can use the above 3-step plan to create your own nutritional approach to living that will enable you to live life to the fullest.
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