Do you find yourself getting very upset when you don’t see the number you want on your scale? Can a bad food day leave you feeling so frustrated or helpless that you wonder if this whole weight loss business is really worth all the effort it takes?
That's where Boot Camp comes in.
Boot Camp can help you with a little attitude adjustment to take some of this drama out of your relationship with your scale and your food, before it does you in. It can give you the motivation and accountability you need to get the job done.
This is definitely the case for many of our clients, it can be your solution too if you have many years of weight loss failures and the yo-yo dieting.
I know that an awful lot of the emotional eating can be traced back to this kind of drama. Most of my clients do fine, until the scale started being uncooperative–which, of course, it always did, and not just once in a while. Then they end up feeling extremely frustrated and hopeless, not only about losing weight but about almost everything. All because they gained a pound or didn’t lose as much as they expected.
So, what’s really going on here? How did the number on the scale become so important that it could literally determine someones mood and how they felt about life?
After training my clients for 20 years and looking back now, I can see that they had developed a bad case of weight loss tunnel vision. This is what happens when you start thinking that losing weight is the key to everything that really matters to you.
They were counting on weight loss to solve lots of problems and produce many other benefits. Improving health, looking more attractive, feeling better about themselves and their bodies, being able to do more of the things they wanted to do, living longer, getting a good job, finding a good relationship–in their minds, all of these things depended on getting to their weight loss goals. And, of course, every little set back on the scale made them feel like everything that was important to them was slipping further away, and there wasn't much they could do about it.
Needless to say, it’s pretty hard to stay motivated when you’re dealing with that kind of pressure, stress and frustration. More importantly, focusing most of their attentions on losing weight kept them from doing the things that actually could have helped them achieve the goals that really mattered the most to them. With the Boot Camp Program I developed Most that that stress is taken away.
During more recent and successful weight loss efforts, things were very different. My Clients finally figured out that losing weight can’t do very much except make them weigh less. They realized that, by itself, losing weight wasn't going to make all their other problems go away, or make my other goals happen by themselves, without direct effort on their parts.
So, if you're having problems with your mood and your motivation when you have a bad weigh-in or a less than perfect food day, here's what I suggest.
# First, create your own personal Vision Statement. This can include a verbal and/or pictorial expression of where you want to be in one (or two, or five) years, not only with your weight, but with all important aspects of your life. Your Vision Statement should include several specific long-term goals that will help you get where you want to be. And be sure to ask yourself whether you really need to see a lower number on the scale before you can start working on these goals.
# Second, create some strategies, or short-term and intermediate goals, that will give you specific targets to aim for right now, and help you keep your weight loss efforts in the proper perspective. Start tracking your progress on these goals, as well as your weight loss.
What's your vision for yourself? Has the drama and stress that comes with "weight loss tunnel vision" been causing motivation problems for you? What do you think you can do to change this situation?
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