“If you do not change direction, you might end up where you are heading.”
-Lao Tzu
When I was working as a primary care nurse practitioner it was very common for people to come to me and ask for help with weight loss. My first question was usually, “what have you tried so far?” The people who had moved past thinking about losing weight and were starting to take action would usually say, “I joined a gym and I’m eating salad.” Eat less, move more runs DEEP.
Those who were still contemplating weight loss would look at me blankly.
“Have you changed what you are eating?” 🍽️
“No.”
“Have you done any exercise?”
“No.”
“Have you thought about what foods may be part of the problem?”
“No.”
“Have you stopped eating out?”
“No.”
Fair enough, let’s start where you are.
“Which of those things do you want to start changing first?”
Crickets.
Then, without fail, they’d ask my least favorite question: “Can’t you just prescribe me something?”
I didn’t hate that question because it is an unreasonable request. The medical field has trained people to ask for a pill or a shot to solve everything. Also, weight loss medications have had a recent surge in popularity.
It broke my heart because many people fail to recognize their own agency, their own power to change their circumstances, if you will. Even if someone might benefit from taking weight loss medications, if they depend on that tool as the only thing they need to do to lose weight it is oftentimes why they don’t. Or why they end up gaining it all back.
There are no changed results without changed behavior. It doesn’t happen.
In the case of weight loss, that changed behavior must be how you eat. If the weight loss injections make you less hungry but you still eat what you always did, your weight loss will be unimpressive at best.
I’m sure you know someone who has had weight loss surgery who lost the weight only to gain it all back because they never changed their diet. Same thing happens with the meds. Same thing happens with my preferred weight loss tool: intermittent fasting. It is inescapable regardless what tool you use.
There is no sustained weight loss without sustained dietary changes because if you eat what caused you to gain the weight in the first place, there is no logical result but for all the weight to come back.
Too many people have a mindset that they will lose the weight then “go back to eating normal”. When I hear that, my immediate thought is: so you plan to spend a year struggling through weight loss, see the scale hit a magic number, then put all the weight back on? Why bother?
Going back to “normal” is going back to where you didn’t want to be.
If the change isn’t permanent, you’ve effectively changed nothing no matter what size you get down to. Fat regain is squatting in your old dietary patterns, just ready to slide on back around your midsection.
There is no going back.
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