I'm not trying to put you off but if you do intend to lose weight you will need to acknowledge that the effort will come from you. I recommend the Dukan Diet and as I have said previously, it is remarkably easy to follow and is effective. It nevertheless requires some commitment.
A word about Willpower
I considered the language of fat earlier. I explained why I avoid the word obese, how I believe it is part of the reason why so many people resign themselves to staying overweight or expect solutions to their body fat to come from health systems or social services. It is always reassuring to be able to put the blame somewhere else and reassure yourself that any bad outcome is not your fault.
There are certainly medical conditions which can cause weight gain. There are also some drugs that have a side effect of causing weight to rise. I am not a doctor and I would recommend that if you have any reason to believe that you are over your desired weight because of a health issue, or due to the side-effect of a medication, then you should speak to your doctor and have your concerns thoroughly investigated.
It is a good idea to see your doctor when considering losing a lot of weight in case there may be unforeseen issues with major changes in diet. I suspect that your doctor will be enthusiastic that you have decided to tackle your weight problem. Mine was. The long term advantages of maintaining a healthy body weight will be more important than other health concerns and in the longer run will make you healthier and fitter than you are as a fat person.
The most likely reason that you became fat is that you ate more than you needed. To change this you will need to eat less than you need so that your body will draw on those excess fat reserves to make up the difference. This is something you will have to do. You may need support. If you do not live entirely in isolation, you will have people around you who will encourage you. I will discuss support later on. You need to understand that other people can support you, but it will be you that has to make the effort to shed the extra pounds, kilos, stones or whatever other units you choose to use to measure your body weight.
In order to commit to making the changes in your diet, and ultimately in your life to slim down and stay slim, you need to recognise that you have become fat by eating too much.
Overeating could have become ingrained during your childhood when your parents were in charge of your eating. I told you earlier I am forty-seven years old. I was born in the early sixties. My parents were young children during the war, who lived with rationing until their late teens. My grandparents came from working class families who knew genuine hardship the like of which I find hard to even imagine. They lived through the early part of the twentieth century, knew what it was like to live at near subsistence level and survived through periods when the main breadwinner of the family had no work and there was no money coming in.
The working class has been the biggest group of society ever since Britain and the developed world industrialised and the bulk of the population moved off the land. The growth of the service sector has changed definitions of working class – in my mind at least – and rising general wealth means that the distinctions are less important now. Nevertheless the majority of people in the developed world, whatever social class they may see themselves in today, are descended from the working classes of the last century. My family experience is therefore common and people of my generation will have parents and grandparents of similar ages to mine who lived through the same things. This shaped attitudes to food.
As we moved into the second half of the twentieth century, food scarcity changed to abundance. Nevertheless, parents and grandparents who had been brought up never daring to waste a scrap, encouraged the youngsters of my generation to clear their plates, to eat all the main course or not get any pudding. At the same time they were very pleased they could easily afford to keep the biscuit barrel full and enjoyed watching the young children eat half a dozen chocolate treats instead of just one. This represented progress. The table was always fully stocked for Sunday tea.
All of this came about at the same time as industrial and economic progress filled our homes with labour-saving appliances and the physical effort of our grandparents’ youth was replaced by easier, warmer, safer lifestyles. Our lifestyles required less energy.
I started this section discussing taking responsibility. I am not blaming my family for this culture. It is all part of the background in which I and many others grew up. If you have approached the raising of your family in a similar way then you will need to think about all this as you take on your weight problem. Do you become uneasy if your own children do not clear their plates? Do you eat whatever they leave? Do you take second portions? Are you guilty of taking the last slice of cake, even if you are already full, rather than letting it go to waste? If you have answered yes to these questions or any similar versions, then you will need to change.
Successful weight loss requires will power and staying slim means changing the habits that have become ingrained over a lifetime. It is not that difficult. You need to think about what is on your plate and not what is on the table in front of your wife or husband. You need to leave your children to eat what they want. (As a parent, you need to make sure they eat properly and with young children this can be about finding ways to encourage them to eat a balanced range of foods that they may not always find appealing. Do not force them to over eat.)
I recommend you take these decisions in stages.
· Acknowledge that you are responsible for your weight
· Decide what you want to achieve
· Decide how you will achieve this
· Stick to your plan
· Find the help you will need to do this
Along with this you need to take note of the opposites.
· No-one else is responsible for the weight I gained
· No-one else can decide what I need to do
· No-one else can make me lose weight if I don’t want to
· I may need encouragement and help, but my own willpower is the most important
Listing the decisions like this can sound daunting but it will encourage you to achieve your objective. Do not be put off by this. Consider other achievements in your life. What have you already done? Maybe you have learnt a foreign language, or studied for a qualification. How did you get your job, or your promotion? Have you already overcome something very difficult? Did you give up smoking? Did you recover from a divorce or from bereavement? All of these things are difficult and challenging. You may have had support to do this, but ultimately you had to make an effort in yourself to achieve the goal.
Life is about change. It is not usually easy to change things or to live with changes but the fact is nothing stays the same. If you go back over your life, you will see there have been all kinds of changes. You moved from education into work, perhaps from being single into a relationship, even marriage. Statistically a reasonable number of those who married have divorced and remarried. Unfortunately there will be those who have lost a loved one and have had to recover from that. You may have had children, who have gone through the same phases. You may have changed jobs or been promoted. Even if you have not, it is likely your working life has changed and you job has adapted as the economy has moved on. You could have moved house.
These things are all changes which you have gone through. You may have led change, developed it, brought it about. You may have had to cope with change brought to your life by others. You could have seen those changes as positive, but it is very likely you were apprehensive at first. Change brings stress and uncertainty and forces us out of ways of living which are known and comfortable and into the unknown.
If you have gone through change in the workplace it is likely you have been through change training, either as a manager or as an employee. There has been considerable study of how to lead an organisation through changes and restructuring to keep the business running smoothly and the employees reassured and ideally positive about the adaptations they are having to bring to their work. It is a pity that we do not always have the chance to consider change management when we decide to start a family or move house because we will be subjected to the same stresses that our employers accept they need to manage.
Go back over those changes, and identify those that had the most positive outcomes. Think about how you took on the challenges and how you adapted to the change in your life. Losing weight will be one of the better ones. You will see later on my account of my experiences of life at the correct weight. It is harder to think about it than it is to actually do it. Once you embark on the diet you will find it easy to stick to the plan. The biggest motivation is the steady loss of weight you will see on the scales as you check your progress. It's a new year - a new decade - what better time to make a big positive change? No one can do this for you.
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