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Mykal McEldowney

Lee Anne R. Hagan, M.S. - Health & Lifestyle Educator - Weight Loss Counselor - OMH Wellness Center

Reaching your weight loss goals is determined by your ability to stay on track with your diet plan and to continue to build weight loss momentum. Last week’s article addressed how to overcome weight loss fatigue. When you allow yourself to be put into a position of having to make a decision to stay on your diet or go off of it, you are creating decision anxiety, and increasing the likelihood of failing on your diet. Therefore, controlling your environment and planning ahead are two of your best strategies to keep you from having to make a decision on whether to eat off your diet or not. Remember there are only two alternatives in participating in a weight loss program: You are either doing the diet or you are not doing the diet. Practicing all of the components of the diet is “doing the diet.” “Not doing the diet” is anything less, including “sampling” the diet where you choose only the components you want to do.

What happens when you do find yourself having to make a decision to stay on your diet or eat off your diet? Most people would respond by saying that they would use their “will power.” Will power is used by most people to keep them on their diet. However, this is why most diets fail! We have all used will power to keep us on a diet plan and sometimes we may have been successful, but most of the time will power let us down and we consumed those “off the diet” foods and drinks anyway. So what works? Skill power is what we teach our patients to use to stay on their diet and meet their goals.

Practicing the successful skills of weight loss should reduce the number of incidents of decision anxiety and almost guarantee that you will make the right decision to stay on track. For example, if you have a plan for the day of everything that you are going to eat and drink and have the items you need with you, you are more likely to turn down the offering of a chocolate chip cookie. When you have an apple with you and have been eating all morning so that you are not hungry it is easier to make the decision to eat your apple instead. Another skill power for this same situation would be knowing the calories in that cookie. Since cookies have 125 calories per ounce and most small cookies are 1.5 ounces and the extra large cookies are 4 ounces, that means that the smaller cookie has approximately 200 calories and the extra large cookie has 500 calories. Therefore, choosing to stay on your diet and eat the apple because the cookie is 500 calories with very little to no nutritional value and your maintenance calories for one day are only 1500 calories, is a more successful approach than just telling yourself that “cookies are bad.” There really are no bad foods just better and healthier options and choices.

Let’s look at another example of using skill power versus will power. You are at a restaurant and you ordered steamed vegetables and a plain baked potato with a side salad. When your food arrives you notice that they already put dressing on your salad and the vegetables look like they might have been prepared with oil. You notice that your baked potato has been topped off with butter and sour cream. Do you decide to eat them anyway, because you hate to make a scene and they’re still vegetables? Most people would probably choose to eat them anyway having no clue as to the calorie consequences. Knowing the calories in condiments will be an excellent skill power to have. If your food had come the way you ordered, it would have been only 250 calories; the way they have prepared your meal you would be consuming over 1100 calories! That is almost 5 times the amount of calories without condiments! Knowing that the 250 calorie meal that you ordered is now at least 1100 calories will make it a lot easier to politely refuse this meal and have them bring you your vegetables the way you want and need, without the high calorie condiments.

These kind of skills do not happen overnight or within the first week of doing a weight loss program. But as you continue to practice and over practice the successful skills of weight management and increase your levels of environmental control, you are insuring your chance of reaching your weight loss goals and improving your chances of keeping the weight off. Weight loss is temporary, weight management is forever!