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"The Top 10 Things People Don't Know About Weight Loss Success"
By Dr. Frank B. Smoot, MA, DD
In this article we'll continue to investigate why 96% of all weight loss efforts end in failure, and how you can be among the 4% who succeed.
1. Weight Loss Success Is NOT About What You're Eating -- But What's Eating You
Losing weight and keeping it off has nothing to do with what you're eating, how much of it you're eating, or how often you're eating it. The truth is that weight loss success is not about food at all. In fact, it's not about anything physical. That's why physically-based approaches invariably fail.
2. To Succeed, You Must Focus Only On Root Causes, Never On Symptoms
Although it may at first be a difficult concept to understand, the problem you can see is not the actual problem. The problem you can see -- your unwanted pounds -- is actually just a symptom of a problem you can't see. The real, root causes of our unwanted pounds are non-physical.
As with anything in life, attacking symptoms is a only a waste of your time, money, and emotional energy. Instead, put your efforts where they'll get you real and lasting results. Focus on correcting the unseen cause of your problem -- which is the real reason you're overweight in the first place!
3. Dieting Doesn't Work. Nor Do Any Other "Diet Industry" Approaches
Recent clinical weight loss research has identified 12 weight loss "Success Factors" -- 12 specific things people do that have consistently been shown to lead to safe and lasting weight loss.
Yet dieting -- America's single most popular weight loss method -- is not even on the list! Nor are diet drugs, metabolizer pills, calorie counting, exercise machines, self-starvation, lo-cal foods, or weight reduction surgery.
So it turns out that we're doing all of the things that don't work, and none of the things that do work. Is it any wonder 96% of us fail at weight loss?
4. Self-Deprivation ALWAYS Backfires. (It Also Makes You Miserable In The Meantime)
If you try to deprive yourself of the foods you love, you're heading down a long and frustrating, dead-end road. Sooner or later (usually sooner) you just get tired of doing without...so you pig out.
It's a whole lot easier (and a whole lot less stressful) to use a weight loss approach that doesn't require self-deprivation or any other kind of "doing without." (To Learn about a program that does exactly that, please see the note at the end of this article.)
5. Forget About Will Power. It's Worse Than Useless!
Research shows that people who rely on will power not only don't maintain their weight losses, but actually gain back more than they lost! So all their struggle and effort was for nothing.
All that suffering...and you still don't win. What could be more maddeningly frustrating? It's a lose-lose scenario where the only thing you don't lose is your unwanted pounds.
Will power is useless as a weight loss tool because it puts you at war with your own "hidden agenda," which is a product of unconscious motivations that mere will power can never hope to control.
6. Focus Only On Where You Want To Be, Never On Where You Are Right Now
It is a reality of life that you get more of whatever what you focus on or give your attention to. If you focus on your excess weight, that's what you'll get more of. If you focus on food, that's what you'll eat more of.
A major success key is to train yourself to never focus on your present weight, and only focus on your desired weight. In fact, the more you can get yourself to think like someone who is already at their target weight, the sooner you'll get there, and the more easily you'll stay there.
7. Food -- Any Food -- Must Cease To Be A Reward
It's a basic psychological reality that no behavior continues that isn't in some way rewarded. So, to succeed at weight loss, you need to reward actions that help you shed your unwanted pounds, not ones that take you in the opposite direction.
This means that anything you eat must cease to be a "reward" for good behavior. You will need to find rewards in other areas. As long as food remains a reward, you'll constantly be at war with yourself -- and it's a war you're certain to lose.
The best and most beneficial reward is to cultivate the knowledge and good feelings that you're treating yourself lovingly by doing what's healthiest for you, not what tickles your taste buds for a few seconds.
8. To Succeed, You MUST Involve Your Body, Mind, and Spirit
Although this can be a tough concept for us Westerners, we are not just body, but body, mind, and spirit. In fact, the physical aspect of self is actually the least powerful of the three, in terms of how we create our experience of life. In reality, the part of you that you can see and touch is only an end product of the parts you can't see or touch. This is well understood in the East, but we don't seem to grasp it in the West.
The truth is that both mind and spirit exert greater influence of our physical reality than our bodies do. And, alien as it may be to our thinking, the spiritual aspect of our existence is actually the most potent of the three, and the true source of our power to make change. Unless all three aspects of your being are involved and aligned toward your goal, lasting weight loss will almost certainly elude you.
9. Set A Realistic Time Frame
Please hear this: Those wild claims about rapid results you see on TV and in magazines articles are lies, plain and simple. Spare yourself yet another round of pain and disappointment, and allow the time required.
It's neither healthy nor realistic to lose more than a pound or two a week. You didn't gain it overnight, and you can't healthfully lose it that way, either.
10. All Major Life Goals -- Including Weight Loss -- Are Better Achieved With A Personal Coach
If you're serious about success, why not do what winning sports figures and Olympic athletes do: Get yourself a coach. The right coach can make all the difference in the world, by bringing you a powerful combination of experience, resources, and unconditional support.
I will work with you personally to make sure your reach your goals. I have helped many others, and I can do the same for you. To set up a free 30-minute consultation, simply send me an e mail or call me at the number below.
Yours in total health,
Dr. Frank
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