I've seen people make incredible strides in turning their lives around physically, and applauded the impact that it has had on nearly every other area of their lives. Grandparents get up and kick the soccer ball with the kids rather than watching from the sidelines. Couples begin to share active hobbies together instead of being sedentary, and discover newfound appreciation for each other. We all probably know someone who has been imprisoned by obesity, only to make a 180-degree turnaround and eventually run a marathon or take on some other feat of endurance requiring months of dedication and delayed gratification.
But for many people who are hoping for a miraculous change, fear and hope often collide. Hope is a ship made of balsa wood and fear is a stormy sea. You may have heard that 98% of all weight loss attempts fail in the end. Not the strategic, planned, accountability-based and research-backed methods, but the flailing-about-in frustration-until-you-throw-in-the-towel attempts do. More recently, ridiculous television shows about weight loss have warped our expectations about realistic results. Now I'm not suggesting anyone lower the bar on what they want to achieve, but think about this: When TV shows and infomercials introduce time-warped results as if they happened in real-time, people think they should be able to do a few workouts (and stop eating crap) and lose 12 pounds in a week! Wait a minute....how long did it take you to put that weight on?
So you've been creeping up in weight for a long, long time and now you want it gone overnight? 2 pounds a week is not what you saw on TV, so it's not good enough for you? Well before we melt off all the extra accumulated body fat, don't we at least need to stop the continued accumulation, i.e. bring the weight gain to a screeching halt? Wouldn't that be noteworthy all by itself?
If you've put on extra body fat over the last 20 years, how fast should it come off?
How patient are you willing to be?
How long will you eat cleaner than the way you ate to get into this predicament?
What if we simply made the changes in diet and exercise to stop gaining weight first?
If you don't even do that, do you think the weight gain will stop?
So it took you 20 years to put on 50, 75, or even 100 pounds. If we could lose that in 1/10th of the time it took to gain it, that would still take 2 years. How many people give lip-service to "lifestyle change" or "in it for the long haul" but balk when they hear it will take 2 years to get to their goal? Wait another minute! That's losing 50-100 pounds of life-shortening body fat, and losing it 10x faster than you put it on, and it's still not good enough? Fine....read on.
What if you lost that same extra body fat over the course of 1 year? That would mean losing in 1 year what it took 20 years to put on. Think about that: Lose that weight you gained 20 times faster than you put it on! Isn't that pretty fantastic? Yet when people really contemplate the hard work, dedication, and patience it will take to make that happen, so many balk. So many decide they must be genetic freaks from Mars or Venus, with metabolisms that just don't work...
...a glandular problem
...our toxic food
...allergies....etc, etc, etc
Carbs are the enemy!
Fat is the enemy!
It's the gluten!
I'm not eating like a Paleo man.
I'm not eating right for my blood type.
I don't have the time.
Really? You have a choice. What if you simply made the changes in diet and exercise to stop gaining weight first? Then added a little more. And a little more. Wash...rinse....and repeat. Soon, you have a 180-Degree Turnaround.
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