The best way to lose weight fast

The best way to lose weight quickly is... to give yourself more time! Losing weight is difficult enough, without adding the element of pressure.

It helps to shift your attitude: Instead of obsessing about the weight itself, think of it as a journey of personal growth and self-discovery. Along the way, little by little, you will be losing weight (with some ups and downs) as a side benefit.

I’d like to share with you something that a client wrote to me about his experience: 
“I feel like I am beginning the process of kicking an addiction—you get increasingly beat up as you get closer to kicking (or understanding) something (such as fear), but the beatings become less painful. And eventually, hopefully, they remain just a part of what makes you tick, and what helps you move forward, and grow.”

Very nicely said, isn’t it?

I just want to add a few comments, to put this paragraph within the context of what habits are, and what it means to change them. This applies to overeating as well as other habits.

It helps to think of a habit as having two sides:
- An external side: This is what we normally describe as the habit, the material things that you do (for instance, smoking);
- An internal side: The thoughts and emotions that are associated with this habit, and the neural pathways which connect these theses thoughts and emotions together, and connect those with the actions.

If there’s not too much of a charge on the "internal" side, it’s relatively easy to kick a habit by just dealing with the “external”  side. In other words, you “just do it”, as Nike’s slogan says.

What if it doesn’t work? What about the situations that seems to keep defeating you? You try to “just do it”. It works for a while, then it doesn’t. You try again, then stop again... and you feel like a failure.

If your expectation is that “just doing it” will always work, then you’ll feel like a failure when it doesn’t.

On the other hand, if your roadmap includes a recognition of how difficult some changes may be, then you will have a different reaction to your inability to “just do it”. Instead of despairing (or blaming yourself), you will see it as an indication that you need to pay more attention to those internal factors.

This is especially true of overeating: You can't just remove the temptation by stop to eat anything at all, so you're always confronted to the temptation. And eating is intertwined with many emotional factors (including soothing you in periods of stress... so imagine the vicious circle that is created when you stress out about overeating!)

Once you include "failure" in your roadmap, you’ll expect the "beatings" my client describes, so you’ll be more prepared to not cave in. You’ll feel the fears, but you’ll be more prepared to stay the course.

In other words: be prepared to change the way you change.

I hope you’re inspired by these words:

I feel like I am beginning the process
of kicking an addiction:

You get increasingly beat up as you get closer
to kicking (or understanding) something
(such as fear).

But the beatings become less painful
and eventually, hopefully,
they remain just a part of what makes you tick,
and what helps you move forward,
and grow.

Resolutions That Work