I love to talk with other people that have taken off a lot of weight and kept it off. Not all of these people use the same method of weight loss; most of them don’t! They have all taken parts from different weight loss camps and created their own plan designed specifically for them. That may sound like an easy thing to do, but it involves a serious commitment to the education component of lifestyle modification. The education component of lifestyle modification involves learning about food, cooking, and nutrition as well as some basic physiology, but most importantly, it involves learning about yourself and your own body and what you can and cannot do. Elegantly designed weight-loss plans are wonderful, but if they don’t work for you, they are absolutely worthless!
Lifestyle modification is what we are talking about when we see someone that has lost a significant amount of weight and kept it off. Nobody just diets and successfully keeps the weight off for an extended time. You need to change the way that you live or modify your lifestyle to do that!
I write a whole lot about lifestyle modification, but you will never see a list of “what to do to lose weight.” A list of what I did is not going to help you. If you take someone else’s plan and try to apply it to yourself, you will fail. You may take some weight off, but it will be short-term. If everybody reading this right now were all in a room together, I would see heads nodding in agreement. I might even be able to get an “amen” to that!
A few weeks ago, in the Healthy Eating Tip entitled “Keep It Fresh,” I once again described the process of creating a lifestyle modification plan.
I wrote that for your lifestyle modification plan to be successful, it has to be comprehensive, realistic, and actionable.
But to even start thinking about a comprehensive, realistic, and actionable plan, you first need to know yourself!
In the February 26, 2020, Healthy Eating Tip titled “Take Responsibility for Your Own Health,” I wrote about self-empowerment, self-efficacy, self-awareness, and self-determination.
As a society, Americans place a tremendously unfair burden on our doctors and other healthcare professionals when we expect them to immediately have all the answers to our health concerns. Responsibility for our health is not something we can rely on any other person for. I didn’t used to think that was the case, but after going to school at age 45 as a medical dietetics student at OSU and seeing firsthand some of what future doctors go through, I know it is so.
I used to get angry with doctors when they did not present the plant-based whole foods diet as an alternative to every newly diagnosed diabetes or heart disease patient they saw. The reality of our healthcare system is that providers get a very small amount of time with each patient. During that time, patients ask, “what do I do now, doc?” Doctors then have to guess what your commitment level is, assess your willingness and ability to change, and select an appropriate diet and exercise regime for you. That’s just not a realistic expectation, and given what we in the healthcare industry know about the very low percentage of people that have the ability to be successful with a plant-based whole foods diet; it is also not responsible on a doctor’s part to waste valuable patient contact time suggesting it. For most people, medication and medical procedures are just better alternatives. If that is not the case with you, then you need to step up and say so!
In medicine, self-determination is called “patient autonomy.” That’s a phrase that makes some healthcare professionals cringe. Patient Autonomy doesn’t mean that you just have a right to know about treatment options and can deny certain treatments. It means that you and your doctor or healthcare provider are partners and need to collaborate and develop a treatment plan that best fits you. That’s what owning your health is all about! With you as an active partner, your healthcare provider is an invaluable resource! Otherwise, you are both just spinning your wheels!
Nobody else is responsible for your health! You need to take control and not allow anything, anyone, or any situation to derail your lifestyle modification plan. When I was just starting my personal lifestyle modification journey, one of the things that confused and frustrated me was all the controversy surrounding the details of nutrition. Some doctors and scientists thought one thing and argued with others that thought something different. Some of those doctors had suggestions that were great for me, and others didn’t. Not any one of them provided a lifestyle modification blueprint that was 100% suitable for me, and you will not find anybody to provide you with a lifestyle modification blueprint that is 100% suitable for you, so as Bruce suggests: take what you can use, discard what you can’t, and add your own ideas. Make it your own, and then OWN it!
“Absorb what is useful,
discard what is useless,
and add what is specifically your own”
― Bruce Lee
A conversation I had recently with a person who took off way more weight than me was about low carbohydrate diets. This person has an in-depth knowledge of physiology and also in-depth knowledge about themselves. They came to the table with a reasonable amount of knowledge and ability regarding food, cooking, and nutrition. They went through the lifestyle modification learning process thoroughly. I LOVE to talk with people like that because I always walk away with a description of a lifestyle modification plan completely different from my own that works!
I am sorry, but this is going to be a cliff-hanger. Discussing the details of low-carbohydrate diets and the details of this person’s lifestyle modification plan is enough for a healthy eating tip all on its own. We’ll pick that up next week. Come armed with all the refresher info we discussed again today so you can see if any of the low-carbohydrate diet info applies to you and your lifestyle modification plan.
See you next week!