KEEP THE WEIGHT OFF

KEEP THE WEIGHT OFF. Everyone is always so concerned about things external to us when it comes to losing weight and reducing body fat. What workout do I do? How many carbs should I eat? What’s the best diet plan? How many days per week should I work out? What are the best exercises to build abs? These are all external variables that are important but before we could solve the external we have to first deal with the internal.

So what do I mean by internal, I mean who you are or I should say who you think you are impacts your results when it comes to losing weight in a huge way. What I’m talking about here is your identity. What or who do you identify with? Let’s pretend that you’ve put on a bunch of weight, you go to the doctor and he tells you that you are now considered obese according to your BMI. Do you believe that you are an obese person looking to lose weight or do you believe that you are a fit healthy person that gained a bunch of weight and now needs to lose it. This thought process is critical because it will impact all those other external variables that we just talked about.

Now I’m not going to stand here and tell you some bs like you can use your mind to think the weight away. But, without taking care of the internal thoughts your external efforts will be much less effective, and even if you are successful as the obese person that lost weight if you don’t change your identity in that process, on the inside you will still be that obese person and will probably regain that weight. What you identify with has a strange way of pulling you right back to that same place. So if you’re thinking “I’m obese but I’m trying to lose the weight” or “I am big boned but I’m gonna try to slim down” you’re identity is gonna fight you at every turn due to self preservation. Even if you lose the weight you’re going to be that naturally obese person that has to always fight and struggle with the weight to keep it off. That is so draining to your willpower, which is by the way a finite resource. Identifying yourself as a fit person makes it so much easier to workout, eat healthy, and take care of yourself. It makes it so much more likely that you will reach and achieve your fitness goals.

When you are the fit person you say I don’t eat junk food, I don’t miss my workouts, and I don’t quit when I feel the burn. On the other hand if you identify yourself as the Out of shape unhealthy person you’re going to say I can’t eat junk food, I can’t miss my workout, and I can’t quit when I feel the burn. Are you guy starting to see the difference here? The person that identifies with being fit says “I don’t” and shuts off every possibility of doing something that would threaten his or her identity. It makes it simple, do you want this candy, I don’t eat candy, Done! No willpower drained, my identity is not aligned with damn candy. On contrary if you say you can’t eat candy by saying can’t you’re initiating a battle. What you’re saying is the inner fatty wants to eat that candy, but I can’t because I’m trying to lose weight. That is a huge drain on your willpower and there will likely be a point in time where you cave.

There was a study done on hotel maids where 84 maids were divided into two groups. A maids job as I’m sure many of you can imagine is pretty physically demanding. The researchers divided the maids into two groups, and had a separate meeting with each group. Both groups were told that this was going to be a study to improve the health and happiness of hotel maids. The control group was simply informed of the benefits of exercise, but were NOT told how many calories they were burning doing their work, and also were NOT told that their work actually constituted a good form of exercise. The other group was informed about the benefits of exercise and told how many calories they were burning while doing their hotel cleaning work each day. They were specifically told how many calories activities such as changing sheets, vacuuming, and scrubbing bathrooms were burning each hour. They were reminded of this with handouts and posters so it stuck in their minds.

It turned out that the group of maids that was informed daily about the calorie-burning effects of their normal work routines ended up losing a significant amount of weight, lowered their waist-to-hip ratio, and decreased their blood pressure.

The control group of hotel attendants that was not told about the calories they burned while doing their work showed NONE of these improvements.