What Do you Fear About Being More Healthy?

How many people want to lose weight and just cannot begin and take the first step? I am a former couch potato, at one time weighing over 80 pounds my present weight. Actually this is not at all the significant part of this blog. Let me assure you that the significant part is that I am actually keeping it off. That is another story.

But let's assume that the losing part is what you need to do right now. Perhaps you have health problems that are motivating you to lose pounds. Maybe you want to improve your marriage(and it WILL improve your marriage!). Maybe you just want to run around with your kids or grandkids and you are not able to do this with your present weight and fitness. I have been in your shoes!  What I am going to write is not a quick, easy fix to losing weight. But I am going to be tell you some secrets that you need to understand deep in your heart for  you to do this and maintain this weight loss.

Yoda is 100% correct…you must "train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose." What I had to do and still have to continue to do is to not have a fear that I will starve or ever feel a hunger pain. Many of us a real fear of getting hungry. The thought of getting a little hungry scares us and we want to eat to get rid of that feeling. People in third world countries deal with a more than a little hunger every day of their short lives. We will not starve! I think that if I had visited India when I was 80 pounds overweight, I would have had such a feeling of remorse over my fixation with food when I saw how little the kids had to eat.

We have way too much food to eat in America. We have a fast food restaurant on every corner. We have grocery  stores full of every known food. But I think that is exactly our problem. We fear that a healthy eating plan will starve us and make us do without the stuffed feeling of overeating. We fear that we may have to do without our favorite food and feel cheated. We fear that we will not have enough variety in our food; that our diet may be plain from now on.

Try this experiment for one week. Write down every single food that you eat or would like to eat if it was available. Now at the end of this week, take every single item that you wrote down and ask yourself,"Is this item of food more important to me than my health, my marriage, my children?" Be honest with yourself. Which food item is worth more than these things? If the answer to every single item on your list is "no, they are not more important than these things," then it is time to face your fears.

Are you afraid to face the idea that you may not need to eat a bag of chips or the amount of cookies that you must have to feel full?  I made a box and put inside this box the food items that I felt like would be good for me to eat. I put things like vegetables, fruit, lean meats, healthy protein shake, yogurt, etc. I left off things like cookies, chips, french fries and even my favorite thing in the world…cheesecake! I had to grieve over the loss of each one but I decided that there were things in life more important than these items of food.

I think someday I will write a blog about naming your "why" that you want to commit to something. But for now, write down your "why" for wanting to lose weight and beginning to exercise. If your "why" is powerful enough, you will get over your fear of becoming more healthy.