In my teens, twenties, and early thirties I tried to purchase weight loss.
I bought diet plans, gym memberships, personal trainer packages, and I would’ve bought stomach surgery if I didn’t need the money for rent.
On whatever diet, I’d lose for the moment, and gain it all back when I resumed eating “normally” again.
We’ve Been Sold An Idea that Doesn’t Exist
We’ve been sold the notion that buying a ten-, twenty-, or fifty-pound weight loss is like buying a stunning new dress. Drive to Nordstrom, locate dress, slip credit card into thingy and — voila — drive home with your incredible purchase.
But losing weight — for the long haul — is nothing like buying a dress.
Once we accept that weight loss can’t be bought, we begin the hard work of rewiring our brains from, “What’s a plate of nachos with a marg going to hurt?” to, “I need to get smart food into this hungry stomach now.”
The King Has No Clothes
Selling the idea that weight loss requires a full-on brain change would never test well in market surveys.
Those selling weight loss think you and I only pay for easy. Nobody wants to become transparent and say that maintaining the loss is super (duper) hard.
I’m telling you: the loss is very difficult.
Sweat Equity?
Turns out, to lose and maintain for the long run we don’t pay in sweat, instead we pay in developing new brain synapses.
Think of it this way: pretend that new brain synapses are like orange Hot Wheel tracks being laid down in your brain. Each orange track is a new thought. The more we practice our new thought, the deeper the orange tracks are embedded.
When we first try a brand new behavior the tracks are lightweight. The more we use a new behavior – like not eating after six o’clock — the orange tracks entrench deeper and deeper into our psyche and are eventually called habits.
Take brushing our teeth. The synapse-path for brushing our teeth was installed into our brains when we were young. Decades later: try going to sleep without brushing your teeth. Can’t be done.
This is Exactly How I Do It
The exciting news is that new brain neurons can be installed at any age. That means that you and I can add new synapses into our brain into our 90s..
Take a few moments to journal-write answers to the following:
One
What change would you LOVE to make in your day-to-day eating? (Keep your change small and manageable.) Let’s use me as an example: I want to stop eating sugar in the evening.
Two
What are five things I can do to help myself in giving up nighttime sugar raids? Remember that to establish a new habit I’ll need to give up evening sugar for sixty-six days (time it takes to establish a habit according to my favorite ’09 study out of England).
I address the craving head-on, I don’t try to squash it merely to distract it. After a small dinner:
- I’ll brush my teeth and go to bed early with a particularly good book (the word “good” being key).
- I’ll listen to an inspiring podcast on how we establish good habits. If I still want cookies, I’ll listen to two.
- I’ll listen to really great music like Linda Ronstadt, the Eagles, Tom Petty, and Prince (music reliably takes me to a better place).
- I’ll watch Netflix upstairs on my phone if sitting a few feet away from the cookies is too tempting for me.
Note: I do all four of the above one at a time if a craving is really bad.
You get the idea. As I list ways that I can support my “no evening sugar” idea, it’s important that I only list ways that are fun or really important to me.
For example, Atlanta is hot in the summer. I would never write “walk the dog” after dinner because, for sure, I’ll attack the ice cream flavor I don’t even like if I’m hot, bored, and irritated.
Three
How will you record your daily results? Peter Drucker brilliantly said, “What gets measured, improves.” I keep myself on track by measuring lots and lots of things: like my food (with measuring cups), my daily weight, my money-diet and so forth.
Goodbye Sugar!
I keep notes in OneNote on my laptop (others rave about Evernote); these were my entries when I started the no-sugar habit:
- Wed. — 1-13-21 — Day 2 — no evening eating of any kind. Going to bed early with my One Thousand Splendid Suns book.
- Thurs. — 1-14-21 — Day 3 – no evening sugar! Early bed with One Thousand Suns.
I began using OneNote to record my weight and workout progress daily in August 2019. So I can tell you how long I worked out on my bike, what I ate, and what I weighed on August 8, 2019.
Creating new, solid behaviors around food is no walk in the park. It’s tempting to wish that we could buy a surgery and our problems would disappear.
I’ll be honest, the first couple of weeks of no-sugar were hard. I read a lot of good books and got a lot of sleep lol. But by week three the sugar cravings disappeared. I’m on Day 128 of no-sugar, the cravings are gone, and I’m treating this hard-won habit like the jewel that it is.
Update on 9-26-21: I’ve been sugar-free after dinner for nine months now. After the first two weeks of no evening sugar giving up sugar at night just got easier and easier. Today I won’t risk the successful months I’ve accumulated by eating ice cream at night.
Always remember it’s not just you, health is hard.
♥, Wendy
P.S. Are you new to the Inspired Eater? Welcome!! This blog won’t make much sense until you first read the Aunt Bea post (and you’ll find Aunt Bea on this page to the right under my short bio). On your cell you’ll see it immediately following the first post. After you enter your email address, the Aunt Bea article will be sent to your email’s inbox. If it’s not there, you might check the spam folder. And always feel free to email me at Wendy@TheInspiredEater.com and I’ll get Aunt Bea right to you!
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17 Comments
Interesting and I so get this. I wonder if forming a habit takes as long as breaking a habit…
Lise,
I hope you’ll read the two habit books: Atomic Habits and The Power of Habit. They’re both fun to read and so, so informative re: breaking habits and creating new habits. Somebody said, “We’re not human beings, we’re habit beings.”
Wendy
Thanks, Wendu, I really need to get down to business.
Thank you Michele!
Going to try this journaling exercise.
The key I’m finding is to write, and write, and write, but then skim through the pages daily to keep yourself on track. Thanks! You just gave me an idea for my next post. Thank you, Lauren!
Hi Wendy, this is the first time I have connected with your blog. You offer good practical advice here and having been through this myself, I echo the practical and helpful nature of your words. Will look for more. My blog is not about weight loss but there is a part of my blog that is dedicated to my journey to be #strongerthanthecookie. My most recent post is included in this link party, if you have time to get to it. I have never written a comment to someone and said “read mine!” Apologies. But there is a connection. Blessings and thanks again, Michele
Hi Michele! I read your excellent post. We are on the same page. Very cool.
Nightime snacking is my #1 problem right now, for sure #anythinggoes
I’m right there with you. Or, I was. I had a terrible time after dinner. I finally extinguished the sugar-urge. I wrote about it in a former post. Let me know if you want me to send that link! :_
I got into a bad habit of having 2 chocolate biscuits (cookies) after lunch. The only way I stamped it out was not bringing them into the house. Two weeks in now, and the cravings have eased! Thanks for linking.
All of these are excellent and important ideas, but I think the one that’s most important is realizing that weight loss is hard. So many weight loss promoters behave as if anyone would just do X, Y, Z they will lose weight. And of course we all try to do X, Y, Z and when we don’t lose weight we feel like failures. And even worse if when a health professional accuses someone of lying about their efforts, because if they just did it, they’d have loss weight. (Happened to a couple of friends.) When in fact weight loss is hard and takes more than just X, Y, and Z
Michelle
https://mybijoulifeonline.com
Weight loss is really hard. More so after 50. That is awful that health care staff got on your friends.
It’s super hard because we’re over 50. But also because our porn-food culture that’s everywhere.
W.
Great post and tips. It’s encouraging to think that we can continue to add new synapses into our brain into our 90s. xxx #Blogtober2021
You said it!
W.
The only way I can lose weight is to keep a food diary and measure everything – it’s boring but it works, and once I get into the habit it makes me think about everything I eat and drink. Thanks for linking up!
Emma xxx
http://www.style-splash.com
Thank you, Emma, your site is awesome!
W.