It isn’t just the Boy Scouts who need to be prepared. To achieve weight loss success then we must be prepared mentally and emotionally, as well as making preparations for our meals and exercise.
This doesn’t mean you can never have spontaneity in your life, but in the beginning of your journey being spontaneous can be a challenge and impediment for weight loss success. Often being spontaneous and “in the moment” means that we fall back on old habits and do things without thinking because they feel good at that time. That is not the way to make new healthy habits and develop a pattern that will lead to your weight loss success.
It takes time to change habits. Deepak Chopra in his 21 Day Meditation Challenge* says it takes 21 days, hence the length of his program. Other researchers claim it takes 6 weeks or even longer. Your weight loss journey may require longer because not only are we dealing with habits, many of which we have embraced our entire lives, but we may also be dealing with addictions—or physical dependencies because what we eat and do affects our body and brain chemistry.
My experience is that by starting with discipline and then easing up later, which is often touted as THE solution, works for some people and is disastrous for others. This method is basically going on a diet, something that you stop at some point. By now you realize that doesn’t work for me and I do not believe that is the path to weight loss success for most of us who have struggled with our weight for a long time.
Diets don’t work. I prefer setting up a plan that I can live with, pretty much forever. Sure, things get tweaked now and then, but the basic plan is always there. It is like an outline that I can build on depending on the season—both what is IN season at the market, and what the season is in terms of activities and events that I’ll be experiencing, including holidays.
The outline format lets me know that my basic HEALTH is addressed. This is the most important part of weight loss success. Being healthy requires that we are able to maintain a healthy weight, not yo-yo diet our way around the scale.
Don’t succumb to March Madness—be prepared, and you will have weight loss success!
*The 21 Day Meditation Challenge is over, but if you are interested, visit the Chopra Center site (no affiliate link) for more information about the Chopra Center and how you can use meditation in your life.
