The Weight Management Secret No One Has Told You
Source: DepositPhotos/VIA Institute
When people tell me about their new diet or ask for weight management tips, I ask them one question (the same question I ask myself when I feel I need to shed a couple pounds):
What are you willing to do for the rest of your life?
Low carb diets, fasting diets, cleansing diets, low fat diets. All will work in the short-run. But what people who want to lose weight need to think about is the long-run. Being healthy is what matters. And, health is a long-run issue. You don't stick with a health habit for a week, month, or year.
What are you willing to keep up with? Are you really going to eat that many vegetables the rest of your life? Avoid desserts forever? Exercise rigorously day after day? The reality is people eventually wear their muscles of self-control (link is external) thin and return to their previous patterns.
This is why the biggest challenge in losing weight is, by far, maintenance. The elephant in the room is not – “How can I lose weight?” but “How will I keep the weight off years down the road?” But, weight loss maintenance doesn’t “sell” as well as pills, diet supplements, surgery, exercise equipment, and health club memberships.
Shifting to Your Internal Resources
All the strategies just mentioned are external strategies – resources outside of yourself to turn to or people who will “do something” to you. Far less attention in weight management is given to what is actually needed to maintain weight loss – your inner resources.
People forget, or at best, grossly underplay, their inner strengths (link is external) – their capacity to persevere, to create, to be curious, to be brave.
These 24 character strengths (link is external) within you are the ingredients of success. They are what can make the other treatments work.
For example:
- How are you going to start an exercise program in your busy schedule without your strength of prudence (link is external)? And how will you get the exercise plan going without your strength of zest (link is external)?
- How will you do your grocery shopping without using your strengths of self-regulation (link is external) and perspective (link is external)? And, how will you learn about ingredients and healthy recipes without your strengths of curiosity (link is external)and love of learning (link is external)?
- How will you take care of your body without using self-kindness (link is external)toward it?
I use to run a weight management program and worked with professionals engaged in the struggle to lose weight. It was not uncommon for my clients to take the VIA Survey (link is external) that assesses these strengths and discover that their strengths of perseverance, self-regulation, and prudence were toward the bottom of their strengths profile. This helped them immediately understand part of the explanation for their struggles in weight loss maintenance. And equally important, it offered them a “strength-based” pathway forward.
To be sure, it is unlikely a person will succeed in maintaining weight loss without perseverance (link is external)– the strength involved with overcoming obstacles and hindrances. Setbacks are inevitable when it comes to trying to regularly eat nutritious foods, avoid unhealthy foods and increase exercise. Likewise, without the strengths of prudence (link is external)and self-regulation (link is external) – careful planning and management of impulses/appetites – success is unlikely to occur.
Engage a Virtuous Circle with Character Strengths
There’s no doubt that one character strength can lead to another helping to create a virtuous circle of positive benefit. This is especially important in creating healthy habits for weight management. For example, your keeping a regular food log in which you monitor and write down all the food/drink you put in your body (self-regulation) can lead you to consciously plan your meals and exercise (prudence), which can then lead to an increase in confidence to push passed the lethargy and negative thinking surrounding exercise (perseverance).
While this virtuous circle of one strength leading to or supporting another strength is particularly powerful, another “circle” is always nearby, lurking - the vicious circle. For example, you might forget to set a strategy for managing your emotions/stress (underuse of prudence) and you face a stressor that makes you feel angry or sad and then you act upon these emotions by overeating (underuse of self-regulation). Then, feeling disappointed in yourself you might think “why should I go take that long walk, I’ve already relapsed” (underuse of perseverance).
These processes are subtle and can happen in an infinite number of ways. Your triggers, character strength manifestations, and virtuous/vicious circles are unique.
Takeaway tips
- Pay particular attention to these three aforementioned strengths and their influence on one another. How might you consciously deploy more prudence, self-regulation, or perseverance in your diet or exercising?
- Another strength that is important to attend to is kindness (link is external), particularly kindness-turned-inward. Often, this is called self-compassion or self-kindness. Many people who struggle with weight management do not take a caring and gentle approach to themselves. Their inner critic becomes fierce. This is very common and was true for most clients I saw. When you make a mistake or “slip” from your diet or exercise plan, treat yourself with compassion.
- Take the VIA Survey (link is external) to learn more about your 24 character strengths (link is external). The expression of one might be the catalyst for a virtuous circle during a difficult time.
- Remember: Building and maintaining a new lifestyle is a challenge, however, if you ignore your internal resources, you might as well be trying to roll a massive stone up a steep hill.
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