Keep Working!

“Okay, really, what’s the secret to weight loss?”  I’ve probably been asked this question in some form over a 100 times in the last 20 years.  When I was 18 years old and I had just lost 80 pounds I would tell people that perseverance and discipline are the keys and that’s absolutely true.  However, as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to realize that people don’t realize that habit change is a process of trial and error.  You have to keep working your way through a series of failures in order to get to success.

Often when we are frustrated with the lack of progress in a situation we start looking for new information or a new strategy.  Recently, I had to explain to some of my coworkers that someone could give you new information but the issue will still be struggling to implement that information.  So I’m always trying to get people to understand that with either direction there is pain and frustration involved:  You can bounce from one strategy to the next without ever reaching full follow through and be frustrated that you’re not losing any weight.  Or, you can stick to one strategy and work through the frustrations of implementing it but then reach follow through and actually lose some weight.Both paths have frustration but only one yields an eventual result. 

Today I’ve decided to implement a new strategy when answering that ‘what’s the secret’ question.  My intuition is that most people have a pretty solid idea of what healthy food is, they’re just frustrated that they haven’t been able to change their habits.  Now my answer to the question is another question, “Tell me what healthy food and healthy eating look like?”  In the times that I’ve done this, people generally say things like low sugar, real unprocessed food, fruits, vegetables, etc.  What I’ll point out to them is that they already know what good food is, they just have to keep working to change their habits.

A friend and former owner of a gym that I worked at in Washington State, once told me that starting a business is always going to cost more and take more time than you expect.  I think changing our personal health habits is very similar in the sense that shifting our behavior to a new norm is going to be harder and take longer than we think.  I’m not telling anyone that they shouldn’t learn new things but sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees.  No amount of new information will help you unless you show up and do the work.