Weight loss is hard. If it was easy everyone would be thin.
Take it from someone who is currently sitting 36kg lighter than her peak weight. I’ve been every weight from 60kg to 117kg in my adult life. The principals behind it are simple. Input less calories than you output and you’ll lose weight. 2 months ago, I was 6kg lighter than I am now. So why the backwards step? Why can’t we all just eat a bit less, move a bit more and keep doing that till we get to where we want to be and stay there?
It isn’t our bodies holding us back, it’s our minds. Your brain still thinks you are a 14th century peasant trying to escape your enemies or a caveperson running away from sabre-tooth tigers. Every time you eat a surplus of calories and don’t burn them off through movement, your brain tells your body to hold onto them. It’s stockpiling for the next famine, to get you through your next bout of disease or to fuel you running away from your enemies.
Except it’s not BC and it’s not the 1400’s. It’s 2026: the closest we get to famine is a shit selection of veg in Tesco on a Friday night, the last “disease” I had was a mild flu and my “enemies” consist of the driver who drives the wrong way round the one way system at a local car park, the judgemental PTA parents at my child’s school and the ever escaping sheep in a field near my house. Our environment is pretty simple. Food is abundant and there is unlikely any situation which will change that in the near future.
Yet our simple environment is also so much more complex than our neolithic ancestors. We’ve got full time jobs, we’re raising children, we’re trying to make our relationships work, spend time with our families, see our friends, we’re trying to fit in, to not look too old, to be slim but strong, to make home cooked food, to keep our houses tidy, to be successful, to have savings, to be interesting, to build new skills, to relax and to have time for ourselves (hahaha). Not to sound too Taylor Swift but “This is exhausting”. All our ancestors had to do was survive: find water & food, build shelter. That’s it.
Enter: the brain. In so many ways, It’s so useful. I’m reasonably smart; I have a good memory and my pattern recognition is insane. However, sometimes (frequently) my brain is a dick. And so is yours! Our brains can only focus on 3 things at a time, which is super useful when I have 7 different to do lists, each one with between 7 and 348 tasks long (yes, really). Everything except these 3 things is perceived by our brains as stressors. So, for me that’s 348+ 54+96+7+12+55+18 = 590 daily background stressors. That doesn’t include stressors that don’t go on your list like: annoying people you want to punch in the face, work meetings that could have been an email, your partner not completing the only simple, solitary task you gave him to do, your kids being arseholes for no reason (this one’s my fault really, I gave her the wrong coloured cup. It was the right coloured cup on Monday. I foolishly assumed it would still be the right coloured cup on Tuesday. It was not. 72 minutes of pure chaos ensued. I’ve still not recovered fully, thanks for asking.), people that drive in the middle lane of the motorway at 57, temporary traffic lights (WLC, I’m looking at you.) and the world is going to end soon in a war or super volcano or maybe the sea animals will get fed up, grow legs and rise up against the humans and devour us all for polluting their ocean (Which is fair. I’m not even mad about that one). Is it any wonder that we are stressed, anxious and overweight?
Anyway, that last paragraph of pure psychosis was not only an insight into 10 seconds of my daily thoughts, it was a long-winded way of saying we have more stressors than ever before, which trick our brains into thinking that we really are in a famine or running away from enemies. I’m so sorry but evolution is not going to solve this particular dilemma for you. As we are still using this functionality, it’s here to stay. (PS even if evolution was going to solve it, you’d be dead by the time it did, so you’re going to have to sort this one yourself).
So how do we get round this? How do we succeed in losing weight. How have I managed to lose 31 (was 40) kg? There’s no easy answer, sorry that you’ve had to read 805 words to find that out. What’s worked for me so far is to do better than I did before. Not perfection, just better. (This is really hard for me, I’m shit at moderation.) I’ve always known that if I track my calories, get in enough steps, hydrate, sleep well etc that the weight will come off relatively easily, but life gets in the way.
Here’s my typical “bad day” from a few years ago. I end up being woken 3 times in the night because my 4-year-old has bad dreams. I’m late to pick up the kids because a work meeting ran over, so I feel guilty, and I get them McDonalds on the way home. I’m starving because I didn’t have time for lunch, so I eat their leftover food. I didn’t order myself a McDonalds (yay me) but the chicken nuggets have awoken my appetite. There is a growing pit of hunger in my stomach, and it will not wait until the kids go to sleep and I cook dinner to be satisfied. Think oh well, I’ve fucked it anyway so order a Dominos pizza. The day has been tough, so I have some gin. Craving something sweet so I fire into some chocolate. Then I sleep like shit because look at everything I ate (btw I did about 3,000 steps and skipped the gym, so that doesn’t help). I wake up the next day feeling shit again. Sound familiar?
So, what do I do differently now? Do I think well I’ve ruined this week, might as well just eat whatever and start again on Monday? Not today, but I have done this so many times before. If that’s the choice you made recently, there’s no judgement here. Or do I accept I made a bad choice and make one single good one? Doesn’t really matter what it is, could choose to get myself a healthy breakfast, could put on my gym stuff so that I’ll go to the gym later, could even look up a healthy dinner to cook for everyone later. It doesn’t matter what you do, you only need one good decision to turn the tide. 1 good decision is the difference between me losing weight the same as one bad decision means I start to gain weight. Because once you make 1 bad decision, it’s really easy to make another. However, one good decision usually leads to another too.
Then, I try to do a little bit better next time. Eat 1 slice of pizza less, make your husband eat some of the Pringles, leave your kids a bit of chocolate for tomorrow, get some steps in at lunchtime. Whatever works, just do a little bit better. Don’t give things up, don’t try to have a personality transplant overnight (I’m on 43 failed ones and counting), don’t try to do everything all at once (Also known as the “all sugar or all shite” paradox), just make 1 thing slightly better. Then next week keep doing it and make something else slightly better. Sounds like nothing, right? But it is something. And it’s something everyone can do. Something you can do! Something you can stick to. So go be free to make one less shitty choice and be smug knowing that you are a better you than you were less week. If you keep doing this, you’ll be much better than you were last year. Although I’m up 6 kilos in 2 months, I’m 12kg down on this time last year, and that’s major progress.
I’m still slowly getting to my goal, 1 good decision and 1 slightly less shitty choice at a time. Hope you can too, and I’ll see you when we both get there.
Kerry
KerryRelf.com 