After 25 years of failed diets, I lost 140 pounds and have kept it off 30 years. You can succeed too

WilliamAndersonLMHC

After years of dieting failure, I had become convinced I was born to be fat. But none of us was made to be fat. Not me. Not you. We were made to be healthy and fit. We can change.

In my early 30’s I had been trying to get control of my weight on and off for 25 years, with my first doctors diet at 7 years old. After 25 years of yo-yo dieting, I became convinced I was born to be fat. It was in my genes, my DNA, I thought, and no matter what I did, I’d be severely overweight. The problem was, it was killing me. If I was not able to change it, I was possibly near the end of my life, at 33, with young kids and a whole life to be lived if I were not obese.
When I was 33, all my years of learning bore fruit. I lost 140 pounds and have maintained an ideal 180 lbs. for over 30 years. Here’s what happened.

In all those years of failed dieting and exercise attempts, I learned a lot. I learned about the sciences of nutrition and physiology, and that an obesity problem is really a lifestyle problem. If you habitually eat more calories than you burn, you’ll become chronically overweight, and the solution is in controlling your habits, developing habits where you eat fewer calories than you burn. The problem was, self-control and will power were beyond me. I could not get control of my habits. They controlled me.

More important than learning about nutrition and physiology, was learning about behaviorism.
By good fortune, I gravitated to the study of psychology when I was older. I learned that rather than choose our habits, we get unknowingly programmed by a process of conditioning and “hypnosis” that we really aren’t aware of. I became interested in addictions, sensing my habits were like them, and went into the work of helping people get control of their addictions and addictive behavior.

By applying the principles of science and behavior therapy, I succeeded with methods that help people change their habits and themselves. It helped me to permanently solve my weight problem.

Here’s what you need to know:

1) Your weight is the result of your energy balance. Eat more calories than you burn and you’ll gain weight. Eat fewer calories than you burn and you’ll lose weight.

2) To lose and manage weight, it requires more than just learning about the calories in food and what your body uses. You need to permanently acquire the habits of eating the right balance, so that weight management becomes automatic and natural.

3) Acquiring the right habits is not a matter of intellect and will power. It is a result of training and conditioning in technique from the behavioral sciences. It is a matter of learning how to program yourself and master that part of yourself that manufactures your desires, urges, habits and feelings.

4) Diets and exercise crusades don’t work. Doing something for a while, even if you lose weight, and then going back to “normal”, will make you worse, not better.

5) Success comes not from denying yourself pleasure and good food, but by forming habits that are more pleasurable, with food that you really like that causes you to become healthy and fit instead of overweight.

With study and effort, in time, you can become successful at permanent weight loss too.

I used methods known to work if you are able to apply them. It’s not easy, just like learning to play an instrument, earn a degree or master a sport is not easy. But it very doable.

I learned my most important lessons from B.F. Skinner, Carl Rogers, Milton Erickson, Albert Ellis, Denis Waitley, Robert Schuller, Earl Nightengale, the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Jesus Christ, Yogananda, Bob Moab, Paul Meyer and many others, as well as my own experience. You can too.

kjurassic

Well done! Nice to know you can be successful long term.

Unknown

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debtay123

Thanks for the encouraging words- You are great!

STLBADGIRL

This is really great stuff...because this is what I have been reading too. Your daily habits and behavior plays a part in this long term.

I know plenty of people that do not count calories....but they also have good healthy habits and have a good relationship with food. Me on the other hand - not. I need to be more conscious and track my calories to lose weight.

vkmango4

Thank you for sharing!

sobiakhatoon

Wow! You're an inspiration!!! Thanks for sharing your story.

MidModJenn

Thank you so much for sharing! After a lifetime of failed diets, I just recently started tackling my problem from the psychology approach -- looking into the science of habit change. It's completely changed the way I see my situation, and I feel like I finally have the tools I need to be successful. Yay!