Wednesday, June 08, 2016

Real Life Weight Loss: Are You Up 2, Or Down 30?

It's something I see all the time. Someone's done an incredible job at cultivating a new lifestyle and has also lost weight.

Then life throws them a kick of some sort (illness, injury, mood disturbance, holiday, birthday, vacation, promotion, etc.) and things go a bit awry and those new behaviours slide and some weight is regained.

Really, that's real life. Our efforts, our motivation, our stressors, our responsibilities - they're not straight lines.

And with most areas of our life, we're cool with that. We appreciate that our best efforts will vary.

But not so much with weight management.

Often times with weight management, slight, real-life related slides in behaviours and rises in weight, lead people to quit altogether. Suddenly they're up two pounds, frustrated, and worse, considering themselves failure and their efforts impossible.

It's times like these that I tend to remind people, like I did yesterday in my office with the patient whose chart is up above, who has lost over 30lbs over the past 16 months and recently regained 2, that it's their choice whether they want to perceive their outcome as being up 2, or down 30.

If things aren't going your way, if you're unhappy with what you've been doing or not doing, rather than beat yourself up about it, reframe, respect reality, and them remember that the best question you can ask yourself is, "What can I do right now that will help a little", and then do it.