Time to Rewrite Your Weight-Loss Story

Every dieter has a weight loss story – the time you tried the grapefruit diet, or the South Beach diet, or even your last go on HMR. We tell our story in ways that reinforce the way we think about ourselves, and this thinking can undermine our long-term success. If you are working on your weight and health again, and you want a happy and healthy ending, you have to rewrite your story. Put the words on paper. Then get your red pen ready… it’s time to edit for success.

Why does the story you tell about yourself matter? Well, human beings love stories. As children we delight in the words “Once Upon a Time.” Stories help us organize and make sense of our world, guide us through life’s challenges, and give us a way to embrace meaning in our lives.

But as we become familiar with a story, we gather evidence through the telling that supports the ending we believe in. Once we know Cinderella will be happily ever after, we become enchanted in the ordinary before it is transformed. A pumpkin is only a pumpkin, unless we perceive it as a chariot. We invest meaning in the mundane.

Here’s how the weight-loss story usually goes, “I lost weight on the blah blah blah diet, then I got married (went on vacation, changed jobs, ate a brownie), I got off track and I gained it all back.”

Here are other stories, all with the same ending: weight-loss failure…

“I am an all or nothing person.”
“I do fine during the day and things fall apart for me at night.”
“I can get a diet or exercise going, but not both at the same time.”
“I always fall off a diet after three months.”
“I am not a vegetable person.”

These statements sound like facts – “I know this about myself” – but actually belong in the realm of fiction. The marriage did not cause your weight regain any more than the vacation or the job or the single brownie. This is your “Once Upon a Time.”

Take a careful look at how you tell your story. If statements like these are part of it, you will find new evidence to support them. If you believe you are an all or nothing person, you will collect anecdotes to prove that. The story remains the same with the same unhealthy ending. You’re stuck in your own fairy tale.

But you have the power to change your story. You have the opportunity to write your own healthfully ever after by thoughtfully editing your story. Question your theories and have some fun rewriting your story... perhaps you can become a vegetable person, or a morning exerciser, or someone who manages to exercise every day, even if it’s just for 10 minutes. The ending to these stories usually goes something like this: “…and they lived healthfully ever after!”

 

by luv2run on 08/20/2012 | Share Story With a Friend

tags: Weight-Loss, HMR, motivation, mood