“Weight loss” is a magic phrase.
Everyone wants it, but so few of us find it.
Or maybe we find it for a little bit, but then we inevitably lose it. I’m sure you want to eat better because… well you want to lose weight. If we’re being really honest… we’d love to be able to eat donuts, fries, and chocolate and not gain a single pound. So our desire to eat well is really driven by the desire to lose weight.
And working out?
I haven’t met many people that love to sweat, get out of breath, and push themselves beyond their normal physical limits… unless they are dedicated to losing weight.
In other words, most people work out because they want to lose weight not because they love to work out.
So what if we turned this around a little?
Here’s what I mean…
So many of us want weight loss… but what if we changed the goal to another “W” word instead?
That word is “wellness”.
Don’t roll your eyes at me.
Hear me out.
One of the biggest reasons people yo-yo diet or start/stop their workout routine is because it’s not easily integrated into their lifestyle. Who has time to cook a healthy meal that takes an hour every night? And add to that another 3 – 5 hours per week to workout.
Weight doesn’t come off easily, and we get discouraged that the ‘plan’ (if you can call it that) isn’t working.
But if we focus on wellness instead of weight loss, a very subtle shift starts to occur.
Suddenly the intensity of changing our lifestyle doesn’t feel like it needs to be so dramatic.
I’ve been doing this a long time and I can promise you, in order to achieve permanent weight loss there has to be an element of understanding the process of taking care of ourselves – and that is what wellness means.
Weight loss is more than just eating a lot of cardboard-tasting rice cakes. It’s more than just spending an hour on the treadmill. In fact, the longer I do this the more I see that for most people, their fitness or weight problem is actually a priority problem.
Permanent weight loss is the result of prioritizing taking care of ourselves.
It’s about drinking water, limiting sugars, getting enough sleep, smiling and laughing more, moving more, de-stressing, and feeling positive.
If weight loss was as simple as eating a salad every day or doing 3 sets of 10 sit-ups… well, I think our society would be healthy.
That’s easy enough to do, right?
Anyone could do it.
But weight loss is about wellness. It’s about taking each component of our lives and making better, consistent, and healthier decisions. We know we don’t have time to do everything for everyone. That’s why sometimes we need to sit down, make a list and figure out what things matter most. Then, figure out how to spend more time on those things and less on everything else.
Most importantly of all, don’t forget to put your own wellness at the top of the list.
Need a hand with setting goals and figuring out your priorities? Get in touch and we’d be happy to see how we can help.
