Trusting weight loss information

By Kelly Clark / Understand

If you want to maintain a healthy weight long term it has to be easy
I always bought magazine that promised weight loss information
Why do you brush your teeth?

Trusting weight loss information isn’t enough. Why? It doesn’t make it easy for you to lose weight.

When you simply trust information you can’t be sure it’s true. It also means that you have to remember to (blindly) follow what you were told.

If you want to lose weight and keep it off, losing weight needs to be easy. Then you can focus on the rest of your life. There’s no point in losing weight if you’re going to struggle to keep it off.

How trusting weight loss information set me up to fail

Shortly after I turned 14, I became obsessed with magazines. At pharmacies, convenience stores and anywhere else that had a magazine rack, I’d scan all the covers promising the latest diet secrets. Each issue I purchased brought new hope. Hope I might find the missing link to why I couldn’t lose weight.

I believed everything published, especially weight loss information found in magazines. Why? Because magazines are:

up-to-date
written by experts
professionally edited
100’s of thousand’s of copies are printed and distributed

My goal was to piece together how to lose weight. I was trying to educate myself. With each magazine I bought, I thought I was gathering good weight loss information; information I trusted simply because it was published.

In hindsight, I was just spending all the money I’d carefully saved, by putting my allowance aside each week, since I was a little kid.

Despite all my efforts, all the weight loss information I collected was disjointed and conflicting. I ended up with hundreds of random and rigid diet rules, tips and tricks. And this made the simple act of eating incredibly complicated.

The bottom line: Trusting weight loss information isn’t enough.

It’s important to understand how to lose weight

When you understand how to lose weight, decisions that set you up for success make sense. And when things make sense, they’re easier to do. For example, when you understand that brushing your teeth prevents cavities, it’s easier to make brushing your teeth a priority when you’re in a rush or tired. Likewise, when you know why balanced meals help you lose weight and more importantly keep it off, it’s easier to want to eat balanced meals.

Understanding also allows you to know where new weight loss information fits in with all the other weight loss information you know. Then you can build a comprehensive approach to losing weight. When all your choices are working together, it’s easier to reach your goals.

Understanding is the most important building block in reaching any goal, whether you’re learning to sail, make coffee or reach a healthy weight you can maintain.

As Bob Seger says: