“Why do you want to lose weight?”
“I want to lose 15 pounds because I’m worried my husband is looking at other women. If he looks at other women, then he may leave me.”
“I totally understand! I can totally help you lose that 15 pounds and your husband will stop looking at other women and then he won’t leave you because you’ll be smoking hot. Yeah you will”
This is honestly what I think when I hear these types of examples being given or when I see “trainers” saying such things to clients.
There is SO MUCH that is fundamentally wrong with that above example and sad to say I heard it come up MORE THAN ONCE in ONE DAY by some of my colleagues in the industry.
Now truth be told, one of the men who did use that example did disavow that weight gain is NOT a reason to stop loving your wife. Good Answer.
This must stop.
In fact research shows that the insecure spouse is more likely to have an affair. Often weight is used as the scapegoat for much deeper issues and instead of feeding insecurities we need to be teaching people to go deeper and work on developing better mindsets.
During my research on Women and Fat Loss this past year, I have come to the conclusion that sustainable weight loss has little to do with nutrition plans and exercise plans. Yep you read that right. Those are all TOOLS in sustainable fat loss but the missing piece is Personal Development.
Personal Development, Mindset, Empowerment…whatever you want to call it. That’s what missing.
An empowered woman would know that weight gain is NOT a reason for a man to stop loving her. She would also know that she was ENOUGH whether she gained 15 pounds or lost 35 pounds.
I want to take a look at 3 points of why this needs to stop and we need to say something different.
- Any change you make that’s only surface level will not last
- If you don’t love yourself before you lose weight, then you won’t after
- The solution isn’t another starvation diet/exercise program that doesn’t work. It’s Personal Development
Any change you make that’s only surface level will not last.
I remember when I was at my leanest you would think that I would be at my happiest. I wasn’t because physically I felt terrible and mentally I was anxious about food and I just never felt like it was enough.
The same is true for the woman who thinks that if she just lost 15 pounds her problems would be solved. It’s only a surface level change. Has she gone deep into her message?
- Has she talked to her husband about intimacy?
- Is something going on with him?
- Have they worked ON their marriage?
- Are they even on the same page?
The weight is symptom of a bigger issue within her relationship. When we reduce complex problems into surface level problems and offer shallow solutions we will not achieve sustainable results.
In her Book Women and Emotional Eating, Geneen Roth cites several examples of this behavior.
Ashley’s husband withholds his affection from her because he says she is too fat. However when Ashley went deeper into their issues during one of Ms. Roth’s Breaking Free workshops, it turns out Ashley’s husband didn’t want to be monogamous, he didn’t want to get married, and he didn’t want kids. Ashley’s husband has had this same pattern with thinner women in his life.
Ashley’s weight is not the sole cause of their marital distress. The deeper issue is her husband’s intimacy issues. However if Ashley did not go to the Breaking Free workshop she may have believed the diet pushers that her marital issues are all about her weight and that her marriage will magically change if she loses weight.
Patti’s husband told her that he doesn’t like fat women and that their sex life would be better if she lost weight. So Patti lost 35 pounds and her husband didn’t like it and they ended up sleeping in separate rooms.
You see where I’m going with this????
If you don’t love yourself before, then you won’t love yourself when you lose weight.
I have also thought that if only I was leaner, then my whole life would change.
About two years ago, I believed that if I trained to get onstage for a Figure Competition, that would change my life. I thought that my business would boom and everything else would fall into place. Even though I was the leanest that I had ever been as an adult, my business did not boom and everything did not fall into place. In fact, just the opposite happened.
From that experience I learned that I was enough no matter what I looked like or how much I weighed. None of that mattered and I could no longer use my weight as a scapegoat for my problems.
My problem was in between the years.
The answer is not another diet. It’s Personal Development
In order for someone to succeed at Fat Loss (I define success as sustainable fat loss), then they have to get their mind right. They have got to get their personal development together. If not, then they will lose weight and it won’t be long before they regain the weight because they did not build habits and confidence to succeed.
I look at it like this: What would you say if I told you that I could train you to get to the Olympics in 12 weeks. I’ll give you the nutrition plans and training protocols straight from the Olympic Training center and you’ll be ready for the Olympics. You would look at me just like this.
Why? It takes more than nutrition plans and exercise plans to become an elite level athlete. It takes a certain level of skill, toughness, and confidence to get to that level and you would not have that after 12 weeks.
“Yeah but I’m not trying to go to the Olympics. I’m just trying to lose 15,20,30,50 pounds”
“How long have you been trying to do that?” If it’s more than 6 months to a year, then it’s like trying to train for the Olympics. You’ve most likely had the nutrition plans, the workouts, and everything else but it hasn’t been lasting. It may work for a little while but we know that diets don’t work.
So what does work? Getting Your Mind Right!
What does that mean? The First thing you will need to do is understand this concept: You are enough. It doesn’t matter what the scale says, what your husband says, what your mama said, what your daddy said, what your first grade teacher said…none of that. What matters is that you know that you are enough.
Personal Development is a process and may include but not limited to:
- Therapy
- Counseling
- Reading Empowerment Books
- Getting Spiritual guidance
- Going to Conferences and Seminars that focus on self improvement
- Changing your environment and getting away from people who are on the way down
- Joining a Support Group/Accountability Group
If you are on the journey of personal development along with nutrition and exercise, then there is a much better chance that you will be compliant because you will realize you are enough and deserve your success. You will not self sabotage because you have built confidence and habits that support your success.
During this past year I have changed my coaching philosophy to help people work on LIFESTYLE Transformation. That’s different from just Physical Transformation programs which follow the old starve/overexercise model. We know from a biological point of view that is not sustainable but it also does nothing to work on their most important tool for weight loss: What’s in between your ears.
What does Lifestyle Transformation Include?
- Accountability
- habit change
- empowerment
- Setting Goals with a Roadmap
- Discovering the why and working from there
Otherwise it is the same old story of unsustainable dieting and exercise which leaves you more miserable and depressed.
It’s Time To Say something
I am tired of hearing stories about how women feel like they need to fix themselves before they are worthy of love. A woman who may be 100 pounds overweight should not feel like the reason she needs to lose weight so others will love her. She should not feel as though if only she lost weight, then she would be enough.
She needs to love herself enough to say, “I am ready to embrace the journey of improving myself. I am ready to get my mind right and I understand that it is a process and journey to get where I need to go. It’s an every day journey not a 21 day, 28 day, 6 week, or 12 week quick fix program.
She doesn’t need another diet and she doesn’t need another exercise routine.
It’s hard because we are inundated with so many images and advertisements of how losing weight is Life’s Golden Ticket but the picture below is the reality of what happens to many folks. All those voids that we thought would be filled by losing weight did not happen. All those dreams we thought would come true if only we lost weight do not happen. We realize that maybe it wasn’t the weight after all.
People who have been overweight for a very long time and lose weight do lose their identity because maybe they’ve always been, “fat funny one who made self deprecating jokes before anyone else had the chance” or they were used to hiding in the background and now they are receiving more attention. This can cause a lot of anxiety with people and it’s to get be too much so they self sabotage and regain the weight because it’s what they know and it’s more comfortable .
This is why personal development and working on shifting the mindset is CRITICAL.
Life’s Golden Ticket is learning, growing, and evolving through our experiences. It’s showing up every day and being consistent on our journey to improving ourselves. It’s learning to love ourselves in the NOW rather than waiting for when we think we’ve arrived.
I couldn’t say it any better than RuPaul here.
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