What's Your Brilliant Stay-Fat Strategy?

by Janice Taylor

I was on the phone with one of my star permanent-fat-removal (a.k.a. weight-loss) clients.

Jo was pretty much in the dumps, feeling defeated, telling me how she couldn’t resist this or that. She was convinced she had to get in her car and head straight to the closest supermarket to buy stuff that she shouldn’t. She said she was “trying really hard.” She finally indicated that she felt like a failure. “Why can’t I lose weight? I really want to.”

This is for all who have ever felt like Jo on one occasion or another or fear that this place of “couldn’t-shouldn’t-had-to-tried-to-and-failed” could be looming in your future.

I listened to what Jo had to say, and then it hit me.

“Jo, you know you really are a major success.”

“Huh?” she replied.

“That’s right. You are quite successful at NOT losing weight. You have put a brilliant strategy in place.”

We all have strategies to navigate our worlds. Most of these strategies were formed long ago and operate on an unconscious level, but nevertheless, we have figured out a well-formed strategy for everything, including NOT losing weight.

I asked Jo to make a fun list (fun being part of the plan to catapult her out of the “I can’t” rut) called Top Ten Strategies for Not Losing Weight. Jo laughed. We agreed that she would send me the list within 24 hours, but she was so into it, she wrote out the following for me within 10 minutes of our conversation.

Here’s Jo’s list, just as she wrote it:

1. Beat yourself up … daily, or even more often.
2. Hate fat and fat people and make every effort to dislike yourself. Call yourself names, such as “you fat pig“ or “oinker.” This goes along with method #1, beating yourself up.
3. Sit around a lot playing computer games, such as Scrabble or casino games while thinking about what constructive things you should be doing; have snacks while doing this to maximize the results.
4. Make lots of lists of things to do—diets to follow, exercises to do. Then sit back confident that you’ve done the right thing. Kick back and reward yourself with some TV watching or more computer games.
5. Buy only low-calorie foods, such as sugar-free ice cream and 100-calorie packs of cookies or chips or candy. Then eat it all, secure in the knowledge that it’s lo-cal and can’t be that bad for you.
6. Go shopping—preferably before lunch or dinner when you’re at your hungriest—to buy the one or two things you need. Then browse through the store, picking up cake, ice cream, sourdough bread, peanut butter, and other necessities. Then go home and eat what you bought, but be sure and throw any leftovers away so you can start out your diet fresh in the morning.
7. Use food as entertainment. Take yourself out to lunch at a Mexican restaurant, preferably one with huge baskets of chips as appetizers. Take a good book along and relax and eat and read and eat and read. What fun.
8. Tell yourself that you absolutely HAVE to go on a diet and stay on a diet. Then rebel and eat whatever you want.
9. Have convenient lapses of memory, forgetting that you’re supposed to be eating right, and pig out before remembering your eating plan. Start again tomorrow.
10. Cut your exercise times short. Maybe just do 15 minutes on the treadmill or bike, thinking that you certainly don’t want to injure yourself. Skip a couple of the weight machines at the gym because someone is already on them and you certainly don’t want to sit there and wait till they’re done.

Note from Jo: If you do all of the above, you will most certainly not lose weight. And with perseverance, you might even manage to gain a few pounds.

Now there’s some food for thought.

Thought-Provoking Mental-Cise (something for YOU to do NOW)

What’s your strategy to succeed in NOT losing weight?

This is an opportunity to look at this process from an entirely different place—to have fun and realize how talented you truly are.

Fat-Melting Mantra

To be repeated internally and externally as often as possible:
Success is mine, in any form I desire.

Today’s Mind-Twisting New Point of View

I am a brilliant strategist.

Spread the word (not the icing!).

Read more about Janice Taylor.

© 2008 Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health. All rights reserved. To request permission to reprint, please e-mail editor@kripalu.org.