Am I afraid to lose weight?

I don’t know how you approach losing weight, but I had to tell myself I was not dieting but I was restructuring my life so I could live longer. I knew it could not be a temporary thing, it was a wholesale change in eating habits and in exercise habits.

And I also told myself that I would give myself 6 weeks to get past being uncomfortable. It actually took much less time than that, I felt better within a month. I slept better, I had more energy and didn’t feel I was as much of a burden.

The most difficult stretch for me was that after losing 30 pounds, I started feeling a lot of feelings. And what I realized is that all the protection from emotion that comes from eating too much and having too much weight doesn’t make the feelings and emotions go away; it just means they get addressed in an unhealthy manner. And once you lose weight, you don’t have any other way to address them except to deal with them and process them. But once you do, it is so liberating.

Good luck. I lost 60 pounds last year, and have kept it off for over a year. If I can do it, you can also.

Break your goal into smaller chunks. So you’re not trying to lose 20kgs or 40lbs, you’re trying to lose 1lb this week. If you lose half a pound, be happy for your loss rather than beating yourself up about the half pound you didn’t lose. I’d recommend planning your week’s meals or at the worst, each day’s meals, in advance. Know when you get up in the morning what you’re going to eat. Make sure your portion sizes are realistic. People tend to think they need much more food than they do. Don’t buy crap food. Make sure the food in your home is food you can eat. Keep a food diary. Write down everything you put in your mouth, including what you drink. Ditch soft drink. Drink lots of water.

I totally agree with @zenvelo that you need to change your attitude from seeing yourself as being on a diet to seeing yourself changing your behaviour to being healthy for the rest of your life. Being on a diet feels like you’re depriving yourself. Being healthy and doing things to improve your life feels quite different.

Plan exercise for every day too. It doesn’t have to be much. It can be doing some squats while you make a cup of coffee. Put your treadmill or bike or whatever you use, near the TV and don’t allow yourself to watch your favourite program unless you’re exercising. Try to make sure you’re moving for 180 minutes a week. Resistance exercises and lifting weights will help you lose weight.

If you’re still struggling, talk to your doctor again.

If you feel that therapy did not help, how about finding another therapist? Food and weight is such a complex issue, I have been watching documentaries about people addicted to food. Like any other addiction. There could be many reasons you can’t lose weight.

Find a work out buddy
Decide to make better choices instead of ‘go on a diet’
Learn about food and super foods (it is very interesting)
Make your goals smaller at first
Do an activity you like, I like walking right now
Get active mentally, sometimes food is entertainment or even comfort
Get in touch with what you are feeling and phone a friend (often I eat because I don’t feel loved).
Find healthy foods you adore and stock up on them
Steamed vegetables are so good, you have to taste them to believe them
Invent new smoothies, they are fun tasty and packed with good stuff
Bananas and other sweet fruits can remove sweet cravings
Drink loads of water
Start to act as though you have already lost the weight. You are this person now but really you have moved on intellectually
Join a support site
Focus on your appearance in other ways, your hair, your skin your outfits
Write down the things you have that you like for e.g. caring heart, SOH
Understand if you eat more now, eating less will make you feel hungry a lot
(see the hunger as progress)
Meditate
Try hypnosis
(I am hoping to make some hypno audio’s for smoking and weight loss)
Instead of eating tidy a cupboard, go to the shops or make something
Choose nice clothes to work out in, regardless of your chosen activity
Join a walking group
Hang out with people who inspire you in life in general not just in health.

@LornaLove Has some great ideas. I think a walking group is a great idea or a work out buddy. If you can, join a work out class. When my daughter took a boxing class she lost a ton of weight. I think feeling physically strong for the first time in her life motivated her to keep going and to keep losing the weight. After a while she dropped the class when her work schedule changed and she could not attend. I think the instructors where really great at motivating her.

I would say to work on your relationship with food. Figure out if there are situations and/or foods that trigger you to eat things that aren’t healthy.

Your best chance of a healthy life is NOT weight loss. It’s engaging in healthy eating habits and exercise. If you look to lose weight only for how you look, you have fallen into a huge trap that is foisted upon us by many, many industries. Don’t worry about losing weight. Worry about your health and well-being.

As for your therapist saying that “losing weight should be easy,” she is waaaaaay off base. It’s not only difficult, it is very difficult and rarely sustainable. 95% of people who lose weight do not keep it off for more than 5 years. Weight Watchers won’t release their long-term success rates because they know it will be “too depressing” for their clientele.

Please, decide on health instead of weight loss. For YOU.

Good luck, and as @zenvelo said, don’t think of it as a diet. You go on diets, and I think people have the idea that once they’ve lost the weight they can the go off the diet, and it all comes back.

You just need to change your eating habits for ever.