The Life You Want: Get Motivated, Lose Weight, and Be Happy - Hardcover

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BARRIERS TO
WEIGHT LOSS
SUCCESS

By Bob Greene

ON SOME DAYS, MOTIVATION comes easily. You just feel tired of your old life and ready to make a new one for yourself. Bring on the challenge, you say to yourself, I’m ready to go. Then the next day . . . you aren’t. That inspired feeling, that drive to do things differently, has slipped through your fingers like grains of sand. Where did it go? Why do you feel a strong incentive to change one day and so unmotivated the next?

We all have barriers that can get in the way of our success. It’s part of the human condition, where nothing is simple and everything is interconnected. Messy thoughts and emotions, complex relationships, deeply imprinted habits, disquieting memories, the demands of a very complicated world—these things all conspire to set up roadblocks that make it difficult to achieve our goals. And when one of those goals is to achieve a healthier weight, our human physiological wiring also gets thrown into the mix, adding another obstacle to success. Once you get fired up about something and want to change, it should be easy to sustain that drive and enthusiasm. It should be easy, but there are many, many reasons why it’s not.

Those reasons—barriers, as I call them—are at the heart of this book. The following chapters are going to discuss them in detail and, most important, give you direction on how to overcome them. First, though, I’d like to talk about eight of those barriers that I think are particularly significant. Professionals who work in the field of weight loss find that these eight barriers are especially prevalent among people who are on the diet and exercise roller coaster. When someone continually goes on and off weight loss programs, always gaining back the weight that was lost, it’s almost certain that one or more of these obstacles are standing in his or her way. And not only do these obstacles derail healthy eating and exercise, they also erode motivation. So even if you start out gung ho for change, it’s hard to stay motivated when you are constantly hitting the equivalent of a cement wall.

While we’ll be dealing with these eight barriers in considerable depth throughout the book, I want to introduce you to them now to get you thinking about what might be the biggest challenges to your own success, and to prepare you to examine yourself on an even deeper level in the chapters to come. You may find that one or more of these eight barriers apply to you, while some of them do not. At the very least, though, reading through them may help you better grasp the concept of why losing weight isn’t just a matter of finding the right diet and exercise plan. A lot of people are quick to blame failure on the diets or exercise programs they’ve tried, believing that if they could only discover an absolutely spectacular plan, their motivation would never flag and they would achieve long-term weight loss. The truth is, that kind of thinking only distracts you from discovering what’s really preventing you from achieving a healthier weight, and it keeps you from doing the work you need to do to be successful. Taking an honest look at what you want in life and figuring out what you need to do to get there is a much better way to spend your time—and a much greater predictor of success.

Are you aware of any of the barriers that might have prevented you from losing weight in the past? Some people can accurately name the barriers they face; however, many are completely unaware of their existence. Or they’re focusing on the wrong ones. This book is all about helping you find the right ones—the barriers that are affecting you personally. Sometimes you just need someone to hold up a mirror so that you can see yourself better, and that’s our aim here. Becoming aware of what’s standing in your way is the first step toward surmounting those hurdles.

Almost everyone who has achieved something meaningful has overcome some kind of barrier. It’s a powerful experience that changes your life in profound ways. One of the critical differences between people who are successful and those who aren’t is that successful people view obstacles as a challenge. Think of basketball great Michael Jordan, who, if you can believe it, was actually cut from his high school basketball team. Albert Einstein was harshly criticized when he first presented some of his ideas, and one of America’s most beloved poets, Emily Dickinson, published little in her lifetime and was reviewed unfavorably by critics, but she kept writing nonetheless. There are countless examples of people who have not let setbacks stand in their way.

When you take action to improve your situation and overcome whatever is preventing you from losing weight, you won’t end up with just a slimmer body. You will end up with a newfound confidence and drive, an ability to take control of your life and make the things that you want in all areas of your life happen. Losing weight, while important, is the least of it. Identifying and overcoming your barriers helps you become not just a physically healthier person but also a psychologically and emotionally healthier person. That’s when you’re going to be living a much richer and more fulfilling life.

EIGHT SIGNIFICANT BARRIERS TO SUCCESS

Barrier 1: An Aversion to Discomfort and Pain

Like all creatures, we are programmed to move toward pleasure and to avoid pain. It’s part of our survival instincts. Let’s forget the pleasure half of the equation for a moment and talk about pain—or, really, its somewhat lesser cousin, discomfort. The most obvious things that cause discomfort and make it hard for people to change their eating and exercise habits are (1) the anxiety and dissatisfaction they feel when they are denied foods that their bodies crave with every inch of their being, and (2) the unpleasant (and slightly panicky) feeling that arises during exercise when their breathing accelerates and their muscles begin to throb. I want the instant gratification of my chocolate muffin. My stomach rumbles if I don’t have something to eat before bed. I don’t want to feel sweaty or my heart beating against my chest. Anyone who hates deprivation and physical exertion—and a large number of people do—is going to find it hard to stick to a plan that requires coping with both things regularly.

Everybody, though, experiences discomfort differently, and many people have a higher threshold for discomfort than others. That’s one thing that may separate those who are eventually able to lose weight and keep it off from those who can’t seem to get it right. But success—or failure—as it relates to discomfort is not quite as simple as that. Eating unhealthfully and avoiding physical activity not only lets people evade unpleasant things like chocolate withdrawal and sweaty gym clothes, it allows them to dodge dealing with uncomfortable emotional pain. For those people, especially if they’re emotional overeaters, the biggest barrier to weight loss is an aversion to the pain or discomfort of confronting personal issues.

And yet here is an odd little twist to the whole idea of how an aversion to discomfort and pain can get in the way of long-term weight loss. Angela Taylor, LCSW, a licensed psychotherapist in Los Angeles who specializes in eating disorders and weight management, points out that some people also use something they find painful—say, a feeling of self-loathing and embarrassment about being fat—to motivate them to change their eating and exercise habits. That might sound like a good thing, and it can be a good way to jump-start a program, but ultimately it may be impossible to stick with a way of life that is solely driven by such negative feelings. “In most things in life, we use pleasure to motivate us,” observes Taylor. “We reward kids with gold stars to motivate them, we give ourselves vacations for a job well done. But somehow, when it comes to weight loss, people seem to be more motivated in the beginning by things that trigger their pain center. And it’s typically not sustainable. You burn out because the natural inclination is to run away from pain.”

One exception to this viewpoint is the fear of becoming ill—or actually becoming ill. For example, suffering a heart attack (or being told by your doctor that you might if you don’t lose weight) or learning that you are prediabetic can be powerful motivators. I’ve seen many people, roused by illness or a fear of illness, suddenly adopt regular healthy behaviors after years of inconsistency. It can be the most influential motivator there is. Yet in cases where these threats don’t exist, pleasure is often a stronger motivator for changing habits. “If you can find a way to introduce pleasure into the experience, it shifts your mind-set,” says Taylor.

As it is, many people’s minds are closed to the idea that they may find some pleasure in changing old habits, and that’s often due to the “stories” they tell themselves about healthy eating and exercise: They expect it to be unpleasant, and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Say, for instance, that you start a new job, and your coworkers gossip to you about Gary in the mailroom. “Oh, Gary is so awful.” “He has a bad temper.” “You’re going to hate Gary.” By the time you do finally meet Gary, you’re going to have him pegged because of all the stories you’ve heard about him. The poor guy isn’t going to have a chance with you.

In the same way, people often tell themselves stories about the gym and nutritious meals, dashing any hope that they’re going to find something to like about either. “The brain likes to take shortcuts. It an...