Control Your Weight

The fact that you are researching weight control is a wonderful sign of serious effort. Losing and controlling your weight is not easy; in fact, it is very hard. However, it is not as hard as having a big heart attack or stroke so plug into whatever motivates you and go after this goal ambitiously but patiently.

I would like to offer some ideas that may help you get started on this long-term project:

1. Get yourself weighed - let's say you weigh X pounds. Say to yourself: "I eat like a person whom weighs X pounds." These two facts are indisputable - you do eat and you do weigh X pounds. If you want to weigh less, you'll have to eat less. Please don't make the mistake of telling yourself you can tell what you weigh based on the way your clothes fit - you can't. Don't count on others to tell you that you are gaining weight - they won't. Get a scale and use it! This is very important.

2. Your weight has nothing to do with the eating habits of your spouse, friends, neighbors, family, relatives, children, physician or Oprah. You have sole responsibility for your weight.

3. Temporary diets are temporary. If you temporarily change your eating habits, you will temporarily lose weight. But just as soon as you get back to your old eating habits, your will return to your pre-diet weight. You want to make a permanent change to your eating habits if you want to have permanent weight reduction.

4. Diets don't succeed or fail - you do. Many patients will tell me "Oh, that diet didn't work! I tried it." They may take offense when I point out that the diet didn't fail. Nobody likes to be told that they failed, not the diet, but that is the case. I want you to confront any obstacle to success, which frequently is ourselves.

5. Don't beat yourself up for being human. We all like to eat. Fortunately, your future health is not limited by your past choices and you can start making healthier choices today.

6. If you find yourself right at this instant rejecting the ideas outlined above, you may want to have a serious conversation with yourself about just how serious you are about losing weight. Your defense mechanisms may be rejecting these ideas because you are now realizing the very important fact that you are responsible!

There are many websites that deal with weight reduction. Many of them are commercial and many of them are just pure feces. If, and only if, you are serious about getting to a healthier weight, check out these sites extensively and incorporate the life-style modifications into your life:

This is an excellent websit to learn about counting calories: http://www.calorie-count.com/calories/item/18064.html
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/obesity/lose_wt/risk.htm http://hin.nhlbi.nih.gov/oei_ss/PDII/download/pdf/PD2.pdf

My hope is that you will approach the decision to change your eating habits just as you would any other important decision in your life: get all the information that you need, weigh the benefits and risks and make a decision and pursue your goal. You can do it!