187.8 Giving Up More Than Calories

I have been thinking a lot about why weight loss and maintaining that loss is so difficult, no matter how much you want to lose weight. Here's what I've come up with. When you embark on weight loss, you have to know on a very deep level that you can never go back to old food behaviors, even though you have to have food every day.

A smoker can quit and never be tempted on a regular basis to smoke, and this goes for alcoholics and drinking, as well. They don't have to have a cigarette or a drink everyday in order to survive. But we have to eat. Also, there's a food for every season, for every reason, for every problem and for every joy. So you give up more than just calories when you embark on weight loss. You have to give up the emotional connections you have established with food. So many of us who have struggled with weight seem not to get that and think that we can eventually return to the familiar.

The most important question to answer before you start on a weight loss journey, and it is a journey, is what are you going to get out of it and how much do you want that. Then leave the notes and pictures (of you at a heavy weight) in the refrigerator and/or food cupboards to remind yourself that that is why you are not going to take that whatever...because you want something more than you want that item of food that you are reaching for. This has to be the overriding element that determines success or failure.

If you have ideas about what makes it so difficult please share them with me either through a direct email (smbmiller@cox.net) or as a comment. What do you think?