I stumbled across a reddit thread that really grabbed my attention.
Somebody asked “What was the ‘one thing’ that finally made weight loss work for you?”
And this question had 5,400 replies (and counting).
Some of the answers involved environmental changes or changing how they prepared their food:
“Pouring snacks into little ramekins to eat them. Suddenly I ate a normal amount of snacks.”
“I meal prepped my typical amount of food and instead of putting it in 2 containers, I spread it evenly in 4 containers. I forced myself to only eat 1 container per meal and tricked my brain into thinking it was my normal amount.”
Others changed what they ate:
“Found a salad I actually really like. Sounds dumb, but I'd never craved a salad before, and having one I actually really liked meant I strung together a solid few weeks of eating a lot of lettuce - it snowballed from there, because I actually felt good and then started craving feeling good.”
Some had a more holistic approach that involved reevaluating their relationship with food, hunger, and discomfort:
“Realizing it's a lifestyle change NOT a diet.”
“Embrace the suffering. Expect that you’ll be breathing hard and uncomfortable when you’re doing cardio, expect that you’ll be sore after you lift, and expect that you’ll be hungry when you’re restricting your intake.”
Others used apps to track their calorie intake, which made them realize just how much they were eating:
“Using an app to track everything I ate. I realized a lot of “healthy” things I was eating, in the quantities I was eating them, were a lot more calories than I thought. Just cutting down on certain foods did the trick.”
And some succeeded thanks to an initial push with medication:
“Saw a doctor about my type 2 diabetes. I weighed over 300 lbs and also had coronary artery disease. I qualified for diabetes medication that also helps control appetite. Started tracking calories and exercising.”
Some prioritized physical activity instead of focusing on food:
“Finding a hobby. I was binge eating because I was bored. Coming home from work to sit on the couch would make it way easier to eat like sh*t… now I just go and do something I like so I won’t find distraction in eating.”
"Walking. Validation that I’d lost 45 lb in 7 months by just walking every night around my neighborhood. It was free and low impact, I walked rain or shine even through snow storms. Now I have a treadmill and walk indoors but the feeling is still as great as it was in the beginning."
As we look through this list, reading thousands of comments of people thinking back on the ‘one thing’ that changed their life, and just how different many of them are, we can draw some fascinating conclusions.
3 Short Lessons We Can Learn
LESSON 1: “Success is moving from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.” -Winston Churchill.
The toughest part of getting healthy is not losing hope when some strategy you try doesn’t work out. I bet for each person who shared their answer above, they tried dozens of different strategies to try and get fit. Hell, I bet they tried most of the things that worked for other people, until they found the one that worked for them.
What we can learn from this: “Hope is the warrior emotion that lays waste to cynicism,” and it’s okay to have hope that each failed attempt means that’s one less strategy to need to try in the future.
For example, if you’ve tried Keto 5 times before and you can’t stick with it, congrats! You found the diet that doesn’t work for you.
If you can keep that ‘beta test’ mentality of “I’m going to see if it works for me,” you might just find the first domino to fall for your journey!
LESSON 2: Beware the Charlatan.
Spend enough time on social media, and you’ll eventually encounter health and wellness charlatans. These are the folks who tell you they alone have the one solution to all your problems. They often have a villain for all of the world’s evil (“its sugar! It’s carbs! It’s X ingredient!”).
And sure enough, once they’ve fear mongered and scared the crap out of you, they provide hope to you with their expensive unregulated supplement or foolproof system.
As you see in the examples above, there’s no “one size fits all” solution to this stuff. Every human is a unique weirdo with different baggage and triggers and traumas and experiences that make certain solutions a homerun and other solutions will be a nonstarter.
You can read more about how to spot and avoid charlatans in my past essay here: “How to not go crazy on the internet.”
Which brings me to my third point!
LESSON THREE: All stories of getting fit have 3 boring commonalities!
Although all of these “one thing” solutions to getting in shape are different, they all do have a few similarities.
The good news? None of these things are revolutionary, proprietary, or fancy.
Getting fit down to literally 3 things:
- Eating the correct number of calories for your goal weight
- Getting some form of physical movement
- Making these two things part of a lifelong lifestyle adjustment.
Weight loss isn’t magic. It’s math and behavior change.
As I cover in my weight loss guide, science is settled on this.
Any diet can work, if it puts us into a caloric deficit. We have coaching clients who are vegan, others who go Keto, some who count calories and others who do intermittent fasting.
Our ability to turn dietary changes into a lifestyle we can live with is how we find success, and that looks different for everybody.
Speaking of lifestyle changes, most of the answers above also involve finding ways to make exercise a regular part of life.
Remember: it’s okay that you don’t LOVE to exercise. We’re not designed to love exercise! Especially if it’s an activity we don’t actually enjoy! We’re designed to survive in times of scarcity, NOT thrive in times of unlimited abundance.
So how do we make exercise part of our lifestyle?
We need to find ways to make exercise fun, beneficial, or necessary:
- Fun: join a walking/running club with friends, try temptation bundling.
- Beneficial: fall in love with getting stronger and more confident and how much better you feel after exercise.
- Necessary: pre-pay for a trainer, park at the end of the parking lot, bike to work.
Remember that hope is the warrior emotion.
We humans are unbelievably adaptable creatures who are capable of change.
Keep trying different strategies, beware the charlatans, and don’t forget the basics!
And pretty soon one day, you too could be sharing the first domino to fall that changed things for you.
-Steve
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