After so many years of working with clients, you see there are recurrent conversations and points of struggle that everyone experiences.
Here are 5 of them,
1. Until you get Serious, you are staying fat
When an overweight relative dies, when you have a heart attack, when your doctor tells you've got stage 1 liver failure, when your life falls apart enough for you to give a shit, thats when people decided they need to get serious.
Normalcy bias is always working against us unfortunately. It takes a crisis to force people to change.
What will be that factor that makes you get serious? Only you can answer that.
2. You are going to be hungry at times, more than you'd like
You must face reality on this one. Even if you follow high protein diet, even if you eat a whole foods diet, increase food volume with vegetables, drink diet soda,
You are still going to deal with HUNGER at some point. Hunger is unavoidable. And the leaner you become, the hungrier you will feel. There is nothing you can truly do to stop hunger. You learn to ignore it. It wont last forever, and diets are not permanent.
3. 80% of everyone you know is going to be upset youre no longer the fat friend
Or fat family member, or coworker, or husband, or wife, or brother, sister, and whoever else. Being fat is an identity, and when you get rid of it, people will react adversely. Almost everyone starts out encouraging, but as soon as you disrupt the dynamic and become a mirror for them realizing all their own bullshit and insecurities, they'll try to sabotage you, be mean, be nasty, and insinuate there is something wrong with you for doing this.
Fuck everyone. You're probably going to have to cull some people from your life. Don't be hesitant in doing this. They never wanted the best for you anyways, they liked that you were fat, because it made them feel good about everything they'd ever settled and compromised on.
4. You cannot use food as a psychological coping mechanism for stress
Its common for overweight and obese individuals to rely on food as psychological coping mechanism for trauma, insecurity, depression, anxiety, and stress.
You will need to find a better way to handle your emotions than trying to eat your way through them. You should also reexamine your relationships and sources of stress in your life, and consider what needs to change.
I would suggest exercise as a superior stress handling mechanism.
5. Unfatting" yourself is a mental game ultimately.
My friend Alex Feinberg calls fat loss “an IQ test”, which is true. There is a learning curve to nutrition, exercise, habit formation, and if you cannot bluntforce the process. It takes as long as it takes, and it is never perfectly linear.
Your mind will want to change faster than your body will. You must accept this situation as is.
Great writing- appreciate your no bullshit advice...
I find it crazy that so many are afraid of a little discomfort (hunger)... especially in the pursuit of looking/feeling good.
All five points are well stated. Nearly all humans before 1950 lived with hunger at least some of the time and knew it well. The feeling of hunger is used often in literature and we should embrace the feeling in order to be more fully human. Not kidding.