5 Ways to Stay Fat and Unhappy

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A blog by Luke Iorio, Want To Stay Unhappy? Keep Doing These 5 Things, struck me with one of those “aha” moments. Every one of his five points on how to stay unhappy, as relates to personal and professional development, is applicable to my business and to the clients we see every day. He listed five unproductive behaviors and gave tips to assist in letting go of them. I’m going to use those same five unproductive behaviors as relates to weight loss.

Behavior #1 – Withholding

Too often a client will withhold telling a spouse how much it bothers them when they bring home trigger foods they’re trying desperately to avoid. Whether out of fear of starting an argument, or not wanting to ask for support (again . . . because they’ve tried so often in the past and their spouse doesn’t even believe their current attempt is legit), a client will, instead, keep their feelings to themselves and just try to ‘tough it’ out. Unfortunately, this often leads to difficult and stressful times at home. 

Behavior #2 – Live According to Others’ Expectations

Obesity thrives in social circles. Too often, a clients’ best friends . . . aren’t. Unfortunately, with ‘serial dieters’ especially, their fat friends do expect them to fail again and don’t go out of their way to support them. They’ll entice them with invitations to the very restaurants or food establishments that a client must stay away from, for example. Or, fat friends will have no healthy offerings at their home when inviting a client over. They expect them to eat as they do when in their homes.

Similarly, the same spouse or partner who brings the triggers home, is just as unsympathetic and uncooperative when dining out. (A) They expect the number of times they dine out will not change; and (B) that the usual ‘trigger’ eating establishments—their favorites—won’t change either. 

Behavior #3 – Always Make Superficial Changes

In my world, almost everyone I meet has lived a lifetime of superficial quick-fixes and sometimes dangerous diets. In their minds, they’re victims. They perpetually play the “no matter what I try nothing works, nothing changes” card when, in fact, they don’t want do ‘the work’ of long-term change. 

Behavior #4 – Seek to Be Right

There are those clients who are (in their minds) just always right. For example, “I know my body and I can’t get below 175 lbs” says the client who is 240 pounds and needs to be 140. They can’t ever answer the questions: How is it that your body won’t let you get below a certain number but WILL allow you to get as high as 240 and beyond? So, in other words, your low is finite, but your high is from here to infinity and beyond?

Behavior #5 – Never Let Go of Anything

Many overweight and obese people perpetually hang on not only to the bad habits that got them overweight or obese but the ‘bad’ influences within their social circles as well. They opt to be stuck in the comfortableness of the known. They fear the unknown: Can they learn new habits and sustain them? Can they make new friends who will inspire and support them?

As Luke writes in his blog, everyone becomes stuck once in a while, change is hard and it doesn’t happen all at once. If you’re fat and unhappy, just continue the unproductive behavior that got you there. But, if you want to make the dietary and lifestyle changes that will result in healthy, consistent weight loss so you can be slim and happy, here are the five productive behaviors you have to adopt. 

1. Don’t continue to withhold.  When you need support at home, you have to ask for it . . . like you mean it. You have to sit your partner down (and, depending on the age of your kids, them as well) and tell them your weight bothers you, you want to feel better about yourself, and you want to do everything you can to assure good health. You know that eating healthier, learning about portion control and going for help, if necessary, will allow you to get on a good path and you hope you can count on their support. You realize they might not have the same issues as you, but you’d really appreciate if they wouldn’t bring certain food items home, if they’d save their cake, candy, alcohol, etc., for when they’re out of the house. This won’t have to be a forever-thing but, for now, as you begin to change ingrained habits, it’s important to you that they do so.
2. Don’t continue to live according to others’ expectations.  You have to live up to your own expectations of what you want, and not what others expect of you. When it comes to food at home or dining out, as I wrote in a previous blog, never allow anyone to make your food their business. When it comes to wanting to be slim and comfortable in your own skin, if you have a spouse or partner who is fat and feels threatened by what you want for yourself, that’s his/her problem. If the actions you begin to take for yourself can’t inspire them to expect more of themselves, let them be fat and unhappy.
3. Don’t continue the attempts at superficial changes.  The years spent on perpetual quick-fixes and superficial changes haven’t worked. All you’ve lost is time and money. To continue to do so will bring you no different result. It’s time to do the work of long-term change.
4. Don’t continue to believe you’re always right.  You’re not always right. As a matter of fact, if you’re very overweight and obese, and if you’re in my office, you’re not right at all. You are in your current condition because you were WRONG in making the choices you did. You came into my office because I know how to get slim and stay slim (emphasis on ‘stay’), and you don’t.
5. Don’t continue holding onto bad habits and bad influences.  You have to let go of everything (and sometimes that includes people) that’s toxic to your physical and emotional well-being. Anyone who encourages, inspires, supports and condones that which makes you fat, unhappy, and unhealthy doesn’t have your best interest at heart, doesn’t respect you and is showing you a sick kind of love, quite frankly. Find people, programs, tools and resources that inspire you, that you can look up to and will encourage and support you.

The moral of the story is this:

You have to give up unproductive behaviors for productive behaviors to work.

Productive behaviors result in positive results!