The key to my success in weight loss (82 lbs. / 37 kg. lost in 6 months)

During the time I have been loosing weight, I have wondered how do I do it? How am I able to stick with the portions of food I am supposed to eat? Why am I able to avoid eating sweets now? Why have I gained such control over my appetite and cravings for foods? How am I able to persist in every aspect of the diet? Why can I achieve this now, when I couldn’t gain any control of my diet before? I think the reasons are many, and some aren’t very obvious but have had a major affect on my success. I think that the least of it are physical factors, and I am certain that most of it lies in my mind. My experience tells me that weight loss is not solely a physical thing. To be able to achieve goal weight and keep it has much more to do with the mentality and values towards food that you have or evolve during the weight loss process.

The thing that was crucial for me in the beginning of my emotional success in life, is that I acknowledged that it was my responsibility to do something about the things that were negative in my life. Before I started the weight loss process I had fought many demons, especially the addictions I had evolved towards many things. I had mental problems that I also won over so the weight was/is the only major thing left in my life make-over. The reason for my very serious obesity (400+ lbs / 183 kg, - I am 5’5 / 165 cm) was that very early in life, in my childhood, I had evolved addiction to food and in fact that addiction got to be very similar to my later-in-life substance abuse. Whenever I felt bad or depressed I used to eat and eat and eat, that caused me to gain more weight that made me feel worse and depressed and so on and so forth. I simply got stuck in a habit, a vicious circle I couldn’t get out of, even when I started to feel better emotionally, my out of control food habits continued, making me gaining all that excess weight. Finally I got fed up with this situation. I was so overweight that people close to me feared for my life. In fact I think I was only 25-50 lbs from getting to the point where I couldn’t live a normal life. I was sick and tired of my eating habits, I even didn’t like the junk-food anymore but I kept stuffing it in my mouth. Luckily I met the right people at the right time saying all the right things, so I got into a food-program that I have been on ever since (I have lost 82 lbs / 37 kg in 6 months).

What I realized very early on in my weight loss process was that I had to change my attitude to food. I had to train my mind to like the healthy food. I had to stop linking sweets and junk food to emotions. I think many of you recognize this; you see f. ex. a chocolate bar and automatically you think "Wow, if I eat that chocolate, it will make me feel so good, the taste of chocolate will make me feel nice all over". When you think like that, you are linking happy emotions to a chocolate, so in fact you are training your mind to crave chocolate, because it links happiness to the experience of eating chocolate. The fact is: Food is food, taste is taste and food really doesn’t have small molecules of "happy-atoms" lodged in it, it is all in your mind. And believe it or not, you are able to control your own mind and feelings!

What I started to do to stop this pattern of thought towards junk food was to be grateful for every piece of healthy food that I ate. I simply repeated to myself every time I ate my meals "mmm, I am so lucky to be able to eat this great tasting food, it makes me feel so much better, it makes me loose weight, it makes me reach all my goals, it makes me feel so good about myself, it gives me self confidence etc.". Then every time I had cravings for sweets and junk food, I started a thought process where I debated with myself why it would hurt me to give in for the craving. An example of this thinking could be something like this: "Is it really worth it to throw away everything I have worked for, to lose the belief in myself, to feel out of control, guilty, a loser, failure, just to have the taste of ice cream in my mouth for few minutes? Is the taste of ice cream more important then my success in life? Is the taste of ice cream more important then my health? Is the taste of ice cream more important then feeling good in my own skin? Is the taste of ice cream worth having people stare at my fat ass every time I go out in public? Is the taste of ice cream in my mouth for a few minutes worth having people point at me and making fun of me? Is the taste of ice cream more important then gaining confidence and gratification with every pound I lose? Is the taste of ice cream good enough to risk my own health and ultimately my own life? Wouldn’t it be better to have a piece of fruit instead, they taste just as great and they don’t ruin my life either".

After some time this mentality had become automatic and it really worked! Now I love my healthy food, and believe or not, sweets, cakes and junk food don’t move me a bit any more. I can look over a whole table filled with sweets and cakes and the feeling it gives me is similar to look at a flower decoration, it simply doesn’t move me at all, because I have cut off the emotion connection. Before that kind of food would have screamed at me from the table "eat me, eat me" but no more, because it all lies in my mind. Now it is just food that I don’t eat, I know how it tastes but I have no craving to eat it, because taste is taste, food is food, no more no less. I simply don’t feel it’s worth it to eat this food. To ruin my success, my goals and happiness just to taste some certain flavor. I would rather taste the healthy food and keep on feeling so darn good.

I have heard criticism towards this method of mine. That food, such as chocolate, really made us feel good through chemicals it triggered in the brain and therefore this method wouldn’t work. I know that food can have an effect on our body, that they can release chemicals that make us feel good. But if that was the whole issue why aren’t everyone overweight? Why doesn’t everybody have a food addiction? The answer is that when you are addicted to food then you are in the same situation as a drunk. You have linked your food to a range of emotions and gratifications; you subconsciously think that certain food will make you happy, even when it is in fact making you fall into a misery. Your emotions that you link with certain food when you eat it to feel emotionally better, condition you to feel that by eating this certain food is the same as feeling good. As the drunk you just can’t have one bite of that candy, you have to have the whole box and some more, because your craving is to feel better. As certain food, alcohol has huge effect on the chemicals in the brain, but not everyone becomes addicted to it, the same way as some people can handle eating in moderation, and never have any problem with their weight, probably because they haven’t been eating (or drinking in that matter) to feel emotionally better.

To fight against all my addictions I have used this method and have found it extremely helpful, and in fact I think it is the essence of my success. When I had cut out the links that alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and food had to my own emotions, it got so much easier to control them. It is a fact that it is so much easier to deal with facts then your own emotions. Your emotions can make you do so many stupid things because it is so hard to ignore them. They are the essence of your soul and heart, so we all tend to fall for their reasoning’s, even when it means the loss of everything we have achieved. When you set your emotions aside, then the only thing left is reasoning, and it isn’t hard at all, when the consequences are obviously misery and failure, to deny yourself of that ice cream cone, or whatever food you deny yourself from having.