Changing Your Thinking

If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard these encouraging words, “Don’t diet. Change your lifestyle instead,” I’d be rich. In fact, wasn’t my blog from yesterday called Change Your Lifestyle? I know, in my heart, that small, subtle changes in lifestyle can lead to profound changes in our bodies.

But before we can ever change our lifestyle, we must change our thinking.

Before we can ever change our behavior, we must change what we think about our selves and say to ourselves.

Before we can ever change our bodies, we must change what goes on in our heads!

Diets fail us because they fail to address the root cause of the problem. They address food and exercise, but many diets do not address the emotional component of our relationship to food. Most diets don’t ask us to examine how we think about ourselves and our bodies, and so consequently, because we haven’t made profound internal changes, the external changes are, in many cases, short-lived. Diets fail us because they lead us into a cycle of deprivation and bingeing but they do not teach us how to change our view of our bodies.

And when we change how we view our bodies, then everything changes. Our food choices change. Our activity level changes. But first, we need to change our thinking.

Up Next: Emergency Interventions, or What to Do When You Feel Fat