I’m not here to motivate people to lose weight, or inspire them to, for that matter.  I also don’t turn people down who have weight loss goals. But it is important to ask ‘what’s your motivation’ ?

It’s important to:

  1. Understand why you desire weight loss
  2. Find out if those goals are dependent on weight loss
  3. Learn if weight loss the best approach to achieving them
  4. Decide if your values, time, and energy fit the goal and mean that it is achievable
  5. Reframe your goals with a better understanding.
  6. Hold yourself accountable

Fat loss is something we have been conditioned to want through the media, and society in general.  It’s so insidious that people often talk about it as if everyone is on that quest, and that it’s benefits are obvious and don’t need to be stated.  We have to challenge that, because the mindset however wide ranging just doesn’t cut it.  People often start with the goal of ‘weight loss’ without really thinking about why? As a Personal trainer I very frequently ask a person their goals and they say ‘weight loss’ without batting an eyelid, then when I ask ‘why’ they really have to think.  It shouldn’t be that way- weight loss is a means to an end, maybe the best means, maybe not.

Reasons you might be thinking about losing weight include:

Attractiveness– You think your body would look better smaller, and/or you think people around you would think your body looks better smaller.

Health– you think you would be healthier smaller.

Medical reasons– you think you’d have better health outcomes in surgery or pregnancy, or with an existing medical condition, or in prevention of a hereditary condition that runs in the family

Conforming– Shops would stock your size, you fit in seats, you don’t feel out of place, or other societal reasons

Expressing the desire to lose weight is a starting point for you, but we are now more interested in the prequel- your underlying goal motivating your weight loss.

Wanting to lose weight in order to either find yourself more attractive or for others to find you more attractive is a common narrative reiterated in many highly visible spaces and probably by many people close to you.  The two main actions are:

-You could change your body to fit beauty standards more closely

-or you could try to change your mindset and love your body more how it is now.

Both approaches are absolutely fine from where I’m sitting, or even a little of both, I just urge you to take a deep dive into what’s motivating the desire to lose weight and if you are looking to go about it the right way.  Improved body image and increased confidence can be achieved independent of weight loss.

Did you used to love your body or have you always been at war ?

Let’s talk through a common scenario.  You are now in your 30s and you wish you had the body you had on your early 20s, but how did you feel about your body when you were in your 20s ? Maybe 30 something year old you would really appreciate that body now, maybe you would be happy at that weight.  Or maybe you would always want to be thinner, only now you are hungry too.  For the physical and mental toll weight loss takes, you want to be sure it fixes the ‘problems’ you want to fix right ?

How did I feel when I was last at a lighter weight?

You have yo-yoed in weight over the years, having periods of time at a lower weight than you are now.  You have been at, or very near the kind of weight that you now plan to get down to again.  How did you feel? Why did you go back to your current weight ? Maintaining weight loss can be really hard, especially if you lose a lot of weight vs your body’s natural set point.  Can you maintain the amount of calories you need to to stay at that weight.  Can you manage the hunger, and is it worth it.  Did you enjoy those days/weeks/years you spent at your lighter weights and is it sustainable?

Both common scenarios come back to the original choice.  Do you need to change your body or do you need to change your mindset ? I am much more qualified to help you change your body but I suspect for many people changing their mindset would be much healthier for that person.

Health

I’ve spoken about health and fat loss a lot in previous posts that I’ve written.  I’m strongly against using BMI or weight or even bodyfat percentage as an indicator of health.  I am also against using weight loss mindlessly as a tool for improving health.  Judging the health of a person based on their body size is a poor choice.  Actually come to think of it judging someone’s health at all is probably a bad thing to be doing.

Turning our attention now to the motivators listed under ‘health’ and ‘medical’.  I am not in a position to be taking on specialists in this area.  I read a lot of content from people that are (anti diet dieticians and anti fat phobia medical professionals)and there is often nuance.  But I am not going to claim to know more than a surgeon, your Anti-natal doctor, or any other highly qualified person.  I am always sceptical when weight loss is prescribed but I would also always defer to a specialist and at most seek a second opinion from a similarly qualified professional.

 

‘Overweight’ is statistically the healthiest BMI category and ‘healthy weight’ is the second healthiest weight statistically.  Someone in the obese category could see this or be told this and think that dropping into one of the those categories would gift them the physical health they are looking for.  This is a very simplistic way of looking at it.  Whilst adipose tissue is considered an endocrine organ (the amount of bodyfat you have affects hormones).  The reason that higher BMI categories have worse health outcomes is much more easily explained by their cofactors than blindly accepting that fat is bad.  Cofactors with higher BMI (being in each of these categories is linked with higher BMIs) include: poor physical health, poor mental health, older age, and low income.  All of those things also affect health negatively.  That is going to skew the data and allow industries like the diet industry to wheel out anti obesity statistics to support fairly sketchy reasons to ‘diet’.

If your focus is on health there are so many better ways that you can improve health without focusing on weight loss (although it might happen anyway):

Better sleep (duration or quality), exercise a good amount (though whatever form), reduce stress/anxiety/depression, eat more nutrient dense foods, eat less processed foods, etc

By all means, lose weight too.  But watch out for a few signs that your weight loss might not actually be that ‘healthy’.  If you:

-See an increase in negative thoughts about your body

-You emotionally punish yourself for giving in to hunger, missing a short term weight loss goal, not having the energy to train as hard as you wanted, etc etc

-Your blood pressure doesn’t drop, your heart rate doesn’t come down, your cholesterol doesn’t improve, or more generally the key indicator of health that you are using isn’t showing signs of improvement

-You feel depressed

-You become fixated on food or show any other signs of eating disorder

-You feel hungry all the time and you lose touch with what your body needs

You may want to revisit your original motivation and give everything some more thought.

Conclusion

So you have your motivators, and we are very keen on taking action.  If you have had a careful and deliberate think about it and decided that weight loss is the best idea (either because it is the easiest or because you think it will be the most effective) then let’s do that.  Next up you can look at finding the right weight loss strategy for you.  If you would like my assistance with this then I’d love to chat to you.  Otherwise there are a great many solutions out there from fitness professionals, to dieticians, books, articles, etc etc.  if you decide that one of the other strategies I’ve outlined in this post could be a better solution for you then I’d love to help with that too.

If you want to make peace with your body why not start by taking on an exercise regime designed to enjoy movement.  Have some fun and use your body for its purpose- moving about!

If health is your goal then exercise could be your best friend right now, along with some other key lifestyle factors like sleep and stress management.

If you are still unsure about your motivation and would like to pop in for a consultation I’d love to hear from you.

Access the ‘contact’ page from the drop down menu and leave me a message and your contact details.