Are You on a Diet?

Are you on a diet to lose weight, or are you on a program to get you healthy and keep you healthy for the rest of your life?

It may sound like a redundant question, but it's an important one, and your answer may, in part, determine whether or not you're successful on this program.

Most of us have been on one diet or another for years - perhaps as long as a couple of decades, or even longer.  None of them worked for very long, if they worked at all, because if they had worked, you wouldn't be on Take Shape for Life/Medifast now.  There are a lot of different reasons why diets don't work (and they don't), but I want to focus on one important reason this morning.

Diets bring with them a "diet mentality" - a mentality filled with deprivation and denial, and the final goal of a diet, and the measure of success, is reaching your goal.  All fine and good, if you get there.  But then what?  Diets are designed to help someone lose weight, but they are completely inadequate for helping people figure out how to maintain their weight loss.  That's why over 85% of people who lose weight gain it all back, and often more, within two years.

Take Shape for Life/Medifast is NOT a diet.  This is a program designed to help people get to a healthy weight and teaches them how to stay there for the rest of their lives by developing what Dr. Andersen calls the habits of health.  Embracing the habits of health means we move from a diet mentality focused on deprivation and denial to a focus on getting healthy and staying healthy.  We learn to shift our focus to all that we are gaining instead of looking at what we're giving up.

A diet mentality says "it's a holiday, my birthday, the weekend, I'm tired, I'm upset, I'm celebrating, I'm busy . . . so it's OK if I cheat because I'll get back on my diet on Monday, or after the stress is over, or after vacation, or ??"  A diet mentality views cheating as "rewarding" ourselves, views the very foods that got us unhealthy in the first place as "treats" that we "deserve."  And after one too many "rewards" and one too many "weekends or holidays", we realize that it's been weeks since we've been on plan and our head is completely out of the game.  How do I know this?  Because I just described how I approached every other weight loss plan I ever went on, the plans that brought me to 260 pounds (yes, I "dieted" my way there!).

Take Shape for Life/Medifast is designed to get us to a healthy weight and then teach us how to stay there for the rest of our lives.  When we view the goal as an ongoing pursuit of optimal health, when we view reaching our weight loss goal as the beginning of a healthy new life instead of the end of a diet, we begin to view things a bit differently.  Those off-plan foods aren't "treats" anymore - they are obstacles that will get in the way of what we really want - a long and healthy life, with the energy we need to do the things we want to do.

So I'm asking you today - are you on a diet or are you on a journey towards a healthy body and a longer, more vibrant life?  Once you answer this question, and once you identify what it is that you really want, you'll be able to choose wisely :-)