Most people who are trying to lose weight fall into a bad habit. What makes this habit particularly damaging is that almost no one has any idea they're doing it. This fundamental flaw in thinking is destructive and is usually at the heart of most weight loss failures. The bad habit I'm referring to is this; we want our circumstances to change while keeping everything the same.
In other words, we want our lives to be different but at the same time, we don't want to change anything. Some examples...
"I want to lose weight but I don't want to have to change how I eat."
"I want to be healthy but I don't want to have to change my lifestyle."
"I want to get the benefits of exercise but I don't want to have to actually exercise."
"I want my life to get better but I don't want to have to do anything that makes me uncomfortable."
"I want, I want, I want but I don't want to have to change anything."
Do you see the trap? We want our lives to be different, yet at the same time, we want them to be exactly the same. The impossible dream! This leads to a lifetime of looking for shortcuts, looking for tricks, looking for angles, and looking for quick fixes. There are a lot of companies that love this about us. We line up to buy so much junk, even things that will hurt us, all in the name of the easy, quick fix don't we?
In the context of weight loss, this means that we're all running around frantically trying to find the secret to being able to reap all the rewards of losing weight while not having to change anything we do. Here's what it looks like...
Let's say your favorite food is Ding Dongs. You love sugary, white carbohydrates and to you, Ding Dongs are #1. Let's also say that you want to lose a significant amount of weight so you can enjoy all the wonderful benefits of being healthy and fit. Since we want things to change but also stay the same, what you'll most likely do is ask yourself, "How can I lose the weight and have a great life while at the same time still eat Ding Dongs?" In other words, "How can I change my life while not having to change anything?"
So you start looking. The first thing you discover is that one of the diet food companies has come up with a sugar-free Ding Dong. Halleluiah! Now you can possibly eat Ding Dongs and still lose weight because you're not getting the sugar! The problem is that sugar-free Ding Dongs are loaded up with artificial sweeteners that will harm you more than the sugar. Then a diet company comes out with a low-fat, low-sugar, frozen Ding Dong dinner entree that you can conveniently pop in the microwave and have ready 15 seconds after coming home from work. Great! The only problem is that the frozen dinner entree has about 15,000 milligrams of sodium and contains a list of chemicals that closely resembles fireworks. And finally, an off-shore "nutrition" company has come up with a pill that will block absorption of the Ding Dongs in your small intestine. A side effect of the pill may be chronic explosive diarrhea but hey, at least you still get to eat your Ding Dongs!
So you're in diet heaven because you're eating sugar-free, guilt-free Ding Dongs all day, you get frozen Ding Dong dinners every night, and you pop your "supplements" which blocks absorption of the Ding Dongs in your gut. Congratulations! You've achieved that for which we all strive. You just might get all the benefits of being a healthy and fit person while not having to change a darn thing in your life. You support an entire industry built around tweaking your Ding Dongs instead of simply looking inside and growing past the point that you even want the Ding Dongs in the first place.
Too many dieters primary objective is to figure out how to remain a slave to their "tastes" and "comforts" while still trying to reap the benefits of "radically changing their life by losing a ton of weight." Again, it's the trap of trying to change while remaining the same.
Becoming something new requires letting go of the old ways. In order to change your life and permanently lose weight, you must be willing to stop trying to change the outside world to make it adapt to your tastes and weaknesses. The change that needs to take place is inside. The habits that created your weight problem must be let go so that new habits can be adopted that will create the opposite. You can only do this by being willing to change.
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