My first day of 7th grade was not a pleasant one. A boy that I knew from Little League Baseball, Eddie Steele, picked on me repeatedly throughout the entire school day. I remember not responding and wanting Eddie to just leave me alone, but he wouldn't. He picked and picked until we agreed to meet after school to settle things. Eddie showed up at the appointed time with three friends. I made the mistake of showing up alone. We squared off. I immediately went for Eddie, tackled him, sat up and started punching him. I was quickly finishing the deal. His friends, however, had a different idea. They pulled me off of him saying that we weren’t fighting the right way.
The latter most outcome was less in my favor. That fight is like the current weight loss, diet and weight control terrain today. I was doing fine until his friends got between us. My clients do Extremely well, but only after they stop dieting only after we get the diet industry out of the space between them and food. Let me explain what I mean by get the diet industry out of the space between them and food. Diets have rules. While you are on a diet, your work is to follow the rules of that diet. Someone created the rules to that diet. At that point, that someone is between you and food. You are abdicating your freedom to choose in favor of what the diet expert is belief. In effect, the diet expert is now between you and food. Every food related decision you make is run through the diet filter affected by what you are supposed to be doing. Workaday weight loss counseling or diet counseling is built in this manner with a set of do's and don’ts. The diet has become you go between with food. Further, most overweight individuals take multiple whacks at the diet counseling thing. The individual becomes more and more reliant on diet advice and more disconnected from food. The dieter eats a food or does not eat a food because it is on the diet or not on the diet not because it works or does not work for me as an individual right now.
I ask you this. What is a more reliable guide with regard to what you eat?
- Diet advice that comes down from an ivory tower?
- Foods that work or don’t work based on how your body responds and what works for you in the grand context of your life?
Who is more qualified to make this soundness, you or someone sitting behind a desk at the diet center? The point is this. In almost twenty years of specialty experience as a psychotherapist with individuals wanting to lose weight, (and all of the issues that can be involved psychologically, nutritionally, and physiologically), I have found this clearing of the space between you and food to be of critical importance. Perhaps what is most astonishing is how responsible, capable and competent individuals are once they are empowered with the right information and trusted to make the choices that work best for them. you have to go one on one with food. You have to ascertain what works and what does not work for you. You are forcible of doing this. You are competent. No one is in a better position to know what work and what does not work for you. Like my little run in with Eddie Steele on that fateful first day of seventh grade, your quest for lasting weight management will be infinitely easier if you void whoever is between you and food. Go one on one with food. You can do this!
