Weight Loss: Week One

Coming To Know Yourself. You know it all, have read it all, done it all, possibly spent thousands of dollars on weight loss products, programs, and books. You’ve read every magazine article memorizing each tip telling you how to shed those massive love handles and become the slim child of your youth. Did they work and were you able to maintain the weight loss? Are you willing to try again? Over the next six weeks, I will be presenting some tried and true methods of shedding your corpulent self, and perhaps a few new tidbits that science has discovered.

To begin it might be worth noting the genetics of your ancestors, the shapes and sizes of grandma, grandpa, aunts and uncles for a sense of where your body shape came from. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents came from Ireland. The females of the family were predisposed to heavy thighs and buttocks and the men to early baldness (my brothers would gladly have exchanged the one for the other). I am convinced that the Irish women who survived the potato famine had the most cellulite to burn (yes, those thighs and buttocks), and passed the gene onto future generations.

Consequently, I spent my youth bemoaning the size of my inherited thighs and buttocks, but now consider my body my best friend. Looked at in this way you might wonder if you would abuse a friend the way you do your body. This physical form has its own intelligence that is brilliant in how it can handle the day to day internal machinations, stress levels, feedings, movements or lack of, a constant barrage of thoughts and the swell and crash of emotions; all the while with me, somewhat conscious, along for the ride. In this passage through time the body is vehicle, home, some say literally a temple or source of the Divine.

OK, so make a decision to come along for the ride. I mean, it’s only six weeks and you might be surprised at what will happen. Use your computer, grab a scrap of paper, pull out the journal you got for Christmas or on the back of your grocery list jot this down: I commit to coming to know my body over the course of the next six weeks. That’s it. Now, make a note of how much weight you would like to lose, and be reasonable. Set a goal that you can live with comfortably, one your body can accept and you will still look fabulous in a pair of jeans. Plan for a weight loss of two pounds per week, and determine how much time you will need to reach your goal, allowing for that plateau period where your weight stabilizes long enough for your budget to catch up with buying a new wardrobe. So considerate of your body, wouldn’t you say?

So, your homework (oh, dear!) for this next week is to write down everything you eat and drink, the amounts and time of day, with no critical self-judgments (that’s part of the work), as you finish off the Christmas cookies. This is a great exercise to do whether you want to lose weight or not, as it allows you to see what is going into your mouth and being turned into fuel and nutrients. Be mindful to chew slowly, at least fifty times for each bite (now there’s a challenge). Then meet me back here, journal in hand, in one week’s time.

Looking forward to your comments and sharing.