As a Personal Development Coach who focuses on weight loss and mind/body health and wellness, many people come to see me with the desire to lose weight and keep it off. Most of them have lost weight before, but have difficulty keeping it off for good. Quite often, within 6 months or so they have put back on all the weight they initially lost. This is typically, and understandably, referred to as “yo-yo dieting”.
The reasons for this “yo-yo” dieting are many. People lose their focus, can’t sustain their motivation, get overwhelmed by stress or succumb to temptation.
As I get further into the conversation with them about their hopes and struggles, I often become aware of a much deeper belief they have that ultimately prevents their success. I have noticed a common theme amongst the people who come to see me wanting to lose weight but who are struggling to keep it off, and it’s this:
They don’t truly believe permanent weight loss is possible in their lives.
Think about that for a second, because the ramifications of that belief are profound. If you don’t truly believe that permanent weight loss is possible, in spite of your dieting, exercise and other life change efforts, more likely than not you will end up where you began.
So one of the first questions I have begun to ask my clients is the following:
“On a scale of 1-10, where 1 means you don’t believe that permanent weight loss is possible at all, and 10 means you couldn’t believe it any more, where would you put yourself today?”
Getting an honest answer to that question is a crucial place to start, because if their belief “score” is low, we first have to begin working on that. This ends up being much more important that discussing diet or exercise programs, and it allows me to help them build a solid foundation that will help them get to their ultimate goal- permanent weight loss, and finally the end to their “yo-yo dieting”
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