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Your worst week is really your best one!
We all have such a distorted idea of what weight loss really is. We have all thought at one time or another that weight loss or a successful week is one in that we actually lose weight, and while that is true it isn’t entirely so. Let me explain. Often when I have a client come in they are ready to get started, whatever the motivation happened to be that week or day doesn’t really matter the point is they have arrived and they are going to get started. Usually with pen in hand and their journal all crisp and new ready to get started on the first day of losing weight, again. Something inside of us actually believes that we can do it, that this is finally that time, that we have learned and grown enough that we are ready. Or perhaps the motivating factor was that your health has finally started to break down with the types of foods you have been eating and you are feeling it in your joints from the extra weight you carry or your heart, lungs, thyroid, blood sugars, depression, apathy, cholesterol, triglycerides, all of the above? So, now is the day and you are ready!!! So you start off all gung ho, you know the routine of a new eating regime, you have done this a million times before, right? So we get started, now I actually do not have any expectations that first week, none at all. You may go down or not, you may even go up, and you know what? I don’t care! I mean I care, but I don’t care. This is why... I know the journey that you have begun, and begun, and begun. I want this one to be different, and if you hang in there it will be. But that first week is an experiment, for me, kind of to get to know you and for you to get to know me. You must trust me. Now, let's say for fun that you have an awesome week, you listen and understand everything that I told you and it all works, well that’s great right? That’s the way it's suppose to work, you listen to me and your weight drops off, great. So, week after week your weight keeps coming off, say between 1 and 3 pounds a week! And it appears you are doing everything right. You come in and we chat and laugh about life in general, you hop on the scale, and yay another 2 pounds. So, why come to me? You got it right? Well, like I have said before, you are strong until you are not.
Then it happens, as it almost always will. I am not being pessimistic, on the contrary, I know how this goes and anticipate it. It's you that is living a lie, a lie that for some reason all of the stars are now aligned and your weight will miraculously drop off. It will but it isn’t a miracle. So, that day or that week that you have now fallen on your face, and you will, that is the best week you will have had so far. I know, crazy right? Well, the weeks or months before that when you were rocking it, and now you're on your face, it's actually inevitable because weight loss is hard! If it were easy we would all be thin! So, finally, you need me again, well you kind of needed me the whole time but you just didn’t need me as much as now. Because while you are on your face and ready to give up again, I am going to tell you that it’s the best week you have had so far.
Let's say that for the last month you have consistently lost 2 pounds a week and have gone down 8 pounds! Actually, let's say 10 since most people lose more than a few the first week or two, so let's say you lost an even 10lbs in the first month and now here you start the second month and you don’t lose anything the first week (or fifth) and the next week you go up 2 pounds. You are tired, it's hard to go from being so high to dropping so low.This is not the first time this has happened, it's happened many times before and you can't do it anymore. Here is the thing, the first month you listened to me and lost weight, but like I have told you before weight loss is easy but doing it is hard. So, when life got in the way you tripped. OK, great, let's learn what happened together and try to find a way around it, lets's figure this out since it probably has been happening to you every time. In the first weeks you didn’t really learn a thing, but now that you are down you will learn that first, it's normal, and second you will learn why it happened and you will learn how to avoid it and you will become wiser for it and perhaps stop it the next time around. If not stop it, at least you will know that it's not the end, it's just what weight loss looks like. It's not a straight shot down, you will mostly go down but often go up. In the end, you will be further down than up and hopefully much wiser and stronger. That’s why it was a great week, I look forward to them because they tend to be the aha moments but you have to hang in there and anticipate them not beating yourself up about it, just brush yourself off, and let's keep moving on.
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