Need to perk up your weight-loss efforts?
Note: Don’t read a book
Last week, one of my readers told me, “I’ve been having a hard time staying on my weight-loss plan. I guess I need to pull your books out and read them again.”
If she did that, it would be great. But I know the odds are that it won’t happen. She might dig one of them back out, put it on a table or her bedside stand, but not pick it back up.
Or she will read the introduction and the first chapter. But then life will get busy, and she won’t go back to the book for a few months.
Does this sound familiar? If so, here is my response:
Don’t read a book!
At least not right now.
As the author of numerous books related to weight loss, I would be delighted if you read one of my books. But in many cases, books have problems.
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- They take too long to read, so you buy one but never get around to reading it.
- You read the first part, then stop and put the book on your shelf.
- Because you don’t read the entire book, you don’t take action.
- Not finishing the book means you miss out on the best advice.
Instead of being frustrated because you never read my weight-loss books, I have a new solution.
Buy the workbooks
My book, Life is Hard, Food is Easy, is an excellent resource for conquering emotional eating. It’s filled with lots of great stores and creative ideas. But today, I don’t want you to read it.
Instead, buy the workbook and use it to help you get back on track. Because there’s so little reading involved, you can make progress quickly.
You can read one chapter or lesson each day, or once a week, and write your answers in the blank spaces. Then watch your motivation for managing your weight climb back up.
All of the workbooks include a summary of each chapter and the key concepts. Then it asks a few simple questions and provides space to write your answers.
Here is an example from Chapter Five in the workbook for Life is Hard, Food is Easy.
What Do I Feel?
Think about how emotions were handled during your growing-up years. Most families operate with unspoken but definite rules about how to feel and express emotions. These “family rules” help you determine what is acceptable as well as which feelings you can’t ever show.
What were some of your childhood rules or messages about showing or expressing emotions? (Write answers)
Do you still follow your old family rules, or have you left them behind and adopted new ways of expressing your feelings? If so, which rules? Write them here.
Emotional box
In the emotional box, you build an invisible wall to keep your feelings inside. However, if you ignore uncomfortable emotions such as anger, sadness or loneliness, you also numb your positive feelings of love, happiness and peace.
Over the years, what are some uncomfortable emotions that you’ve stopped feeling or showing? (Write answers)
(End of excerpt)
See how writing answers to those questions is easier than reading the entire book? But as you do that, you will have been reminded about some important guidelines for managing your weight.
Why it works
Writing things down makes them more real. It’s harder to pretend that everything is fine when you just wrote a few reasons why it’s not.
As many of you know, I often struggle with my weight and have to work on it at intervals. After a very hot and stressful summer, I was feeling ready to be more focused and consistent again. I was also ready to get back on track with my own eating and exercise.
So I pulled out my workbooks and started with the “Life is Hard” one.
As I wrote about all the situations where I’ve been doing emotional eating, I realized I had slid into some old patterns. And I knew I wanted to change that.
When I read the question about what keeps you going back to food for emotional needs, I noticed that my list is similar to those from years in the past.
The first chapter, Food is My Best Friend, asks us to create a list of our most common emotional eating situations, then look at the cost of emotional eating. The final question says, “Think about ways food has power in your life. What keeps you going back to food for emotional needs?”
Here’s what I wrote:
Food takes care of things that are missing right now: friendships, money, church, fun, entertainment, and closeness to family members.
Food is easy — it’s a lot easier than thinking about feeling sad and lonely in life. I can’t figure out how to fix this. Food fills my empty spaces!
Wow I hadn’t realized I was having those thoughts and feelings! As I continued through that chapter, I found some great ideas for letting go of my negative patterns and doing some healthy ones instead.
Do the workbook again
Over time, it’s easy to forget many of the key concepts that helped you in the past. When you revisit them, you’ll remember your favorite ideas as well as discover new ones that connect with where you are now.
If you’ve already completed the workbook for any of my books, pull it back out. You can simply read the answers you’ve written in the past. Or get a journal or notebook, and write your answers again. Some of them might be a lot different now, and that will give you new insight and motivation.
Both of the 100 Days of Weight Loss of Weight Loss books ask you to read one lesson a day and fill in the answers to three questions at the end of the lesson.
Again, using the workbook will be a lot faster and more efficient than reading the book again. It provides a summary of each lesson, followed by space for you to write your answers.
When I reviewed my 100 Days answers, I was amazed at how many things I had forgotten or stopped doing. Here’s one from the first 100 Days book, 100 Days of Weight Loss:
Day 20 Half-off special
For an easy way to manage your serving sizes on an ongoing basis, use a concept called the half-off special. That means eat half as much as you usually would, or take half of the amount you actually want.
Today:
Divide several of your food items in half, then eat only that much. Write down the foods you do this with.
Do this half-off special with at least five foods. List them below.
Over the next few days, record any foods that you eat half of, as well as how it felt to leave half of the food behind.
Reviewing this lesson helped me realize I’ve totally stopped using the half-off special. As I read my answers to the questions, it reminded me that I love this concept, and I’ve started doing it consistently again.
Use any or all the workbooks
Get started today. Buy one of the workbooks, or get them all, and use them over the next few months. You’ll find it a lot easier than reading a book. And I’m confident you will discover how easily your motivation and commitment return.
Of course, I would love for you to read one of my books as well. But for now, I really want to see you make progress, and using a workbook will help you achieve this more quickly than reading a book.
Here are links to each of the workbooks.
Life is Hard, Food is Easy Workbook and Journal