For many of us we have been trying to lose weight ever since we could remember and, if you are like most women, you have never really ever reached the ideal weight. In fact sometimes when we work hard (exercise five hours a day whilst on the brink of starvation) we manage to get very very very close to our desired weight but two days later we always find ourselves back to our old weight plus a few extra kilos.
With this record of almost successes and failures, isn’t it time to consider changing your strategy? The change of strategy is simply to STOP trying to lose weight (unless you are overweight and unfit or your doctor advises you to lose weight.) Here are some reasons why you should stop trying to lose weight.
- Usually when we decide to lose weight we are doing it out of desperation e.g I have a wedding in two weeks, I am going on holiday in a month. So we usually decide to lose weight as a crash program. The problem with this is that it makes us unable to learn healthy habits as we become caught up in binge-purge cycles in a bid to lose weight. Instead of trying to lose weight, just aim to eat healthy and your weight will eventually settle to a ‘normal’ weight. And this brings us to our next point.
- No one (normal) looks like that! Usually our desire to lose weight is based on the unrealistic images of beauty that the media bombards us with everywhere we turn. But if you take time to do research on what these icons of beauty eat you will be appalled. Another tragedy is that the images of ‘fitness’ that we are being sold is also of skinny-to- death women. We are not saying there are no naturally skinny people but everyone has a different body shape and (this is especially true for black African women) we need to learn to embrace our genetically encoded body shapes and sizes. On the other hand, just because your genes prevent you from ever being a size zero, it doesn’t mean that you should then go ahead and become obese!
- There are more important things in life than being thin. Imagine all the time, energy and money we spend trying to lose weight – counting calories, obsessing about the scale, trying hard to resist that cake, hating our bodies, being depressed when we fail. Imagine if we used all that time, energy and money to live fuller lives, enjoy our relationships, try other hobbies. If we concentrate on living fuller lives we will see that we don’t need to worry about weight loss and as in point number 1 our weight will settle to a normal weight effortlessly. So instead of wasting your life away trying to look skinny, spend it enjoying every aspect of your life because when you die, no one is going to remember (or care) what size dress you were but people will remember the experiences you had with them when you were still alive.
- It takes the fun out of fitness. When we look for exercises, we usually look for exercises that will make us lose weight as opposed to the ones we enjoy. This means that as soon you reach your goal weight, you will stop exercising, resulting in you gaining all that weight back. But if your fitness goal is to enjoy the workout (even when it is painful) then you are more likely to continue doing it. So look for exercises you enjoy e.g. walking, running, dancing, swimming etc. and the weight will ‘fall’ off without any work on your part.
So, stop trying to lose weight and enjoy your (healthy) life!