I have found that the best way to begin to put control back into the things you do is to just do it. I know that sounds like I am making a joke of it, making it sound easy to do, but I am not. What I am saying is that it is often our own fault that we don’t make changes and allow the circumstances we are in to become our prison and to hold and control us.
I think the first thing to do is determine exactly what the problem is. Sometimes it isn’t so straight forward as it seems. You might say … “Well, I want to lose weight.” That’s it. Nothing more, but that is not really the problem itself, it is more like a solution to some other problem. Some other underlying thing that has you upset or depressed enough to start looking for solutions that may or may not solve the problem.
There are reasons to lose weight. Reasons that are serious and shouldn’t be ignored. As a nation we are overweight, we all know that, read or hear about it almost daily in social and news media. Heart Disease, Diabetes and a host of other medical problems are waiting to kick the crap out of our bodies if we don’t get them into shape. And if the reason you are going to lose weight is right there then you need to start reinforcing it in your head. You need to remind yourself daily that being overweight could kill you. Take you away from those that you love. That should be a strong motivator, but it isn’t always. And it isn’t always because very often the reasons behind wanting to lose weight have nothing at all to do with needing to lose weight.
Where does it come from: Weight gain is genetic to a degree, and evolutionary and biological on the other side. Social pressure also comes into play.
Genetics: Sometimes, for some people, there is a gap between what they eat and someone else eats and how that weight ends up on their body and doesn’t seem to on the other person. But maybe that simply isn’t true. In other words, for men and women, self worth is tied up in the way we view ourselves. Maybe to you I don’t look bad at all, but to me I’m a mess. Too heavy. Unattractive, and the list begins and goes from there.
The problem is that all of those pronouncements we make on ourselves and our bodies gets tied up in the judgments we are making about ourselves, our self worth. It isn’t necessarily true at all. It may be you could weigh yourself and that other person, who seems to be having an easier time than you are, and find there is no difference, maybe you would find there is. Whatever you do find, there are ways to deal with it. For some genetics may play a role. For some it is a simple matter of firing up their metabolism, eating less, being more active, but the fact that we tie it all up with our self worth makes it nearly impossible to get to the truth of it.
Evolution: I will say first that I am a christian, I am not knocking God or anything else, and I realize that evolution doesn’t exist for some people. Something some scientific types made up. So, possibly you may want to take a different view of it. Let’s call it pre-history. When you read the old testament you read about people living in caves. Being nomadic. They certainly didn’t have a 7 11 down the road or a supermarket. We lived a different kind of life. And because of that our bodies developed the ability to store fat for long periods of time and then release it when we need it. That worked pretty well. There were no super models or social pressures working at us to be skinny. I can not imagine a Cave Woman getting up and saying … “Dam, Trog! Does my butt look too big?” I’m sure she could have cared less and I’m sure Trog could have cared less. So we have this evolutionary thing. We store fat because our bodies think we may need it. Maybe in a few thousand years, if the human race lasts that long, we will breed that right out of ourselves. Of course if we did and then some world wide catastrophe occurred we would be done for. So, maybe we won’t lose that ability. Either way it is there. It’s a biological fact, and we have to acknowledge it as such.
Social: This is where it gets tricky. Are you fat? Or is someone making you feel like you are fat? Good question. Sometimes people make us feel that way because they want to put us in a little perfect mold that they created for us. It has nothing at all to do with us, it has to do with their own unhappiness. Unfortunately for us, that makes little difference. It hurts us and we react by saying we will get with the program and make ourselves into that person that this other person wants us to be. Never mind what we think. That isn’t important. Look at TV, the internet. Look at all of the skinny women and muscled men! That must be the way it is supposed to be.
Bull. It is something we tell ourselves and we even get to a place where we believe it is our own idea to look a certain way, and completely forget we are being manipulated by society or even our own loved ones. You are the only one that can look at this critically and make a decision about what you are doing or why. I would just say be honest with yourselves.
The problem with this societal pressure is that it gets completely tied up with our self worth, and that is also evolutionary. I suppose that the first person with blue eyes must have been looked at strangely. Or blonde hair. But if you turn on your television and look at a movie from the seventies, or sixties you will see women that had little bellies. What? My God! How could they! And, the men were not all cut up and heavily muscled either. That is what society was given as the model for man and woman. And that was that. Now you have Super Models who have about a 4 percent body fat content and therefore no belly, no hips, no too large butt, and they look great in those designer jeans and pretty soon the youth of society decides that is the look right there.
And that’s great when you are 15 or 19 or even into your very early 20’s but there comes a time where your body changes and in order to keep that look you will either have to become a gym rat or slip into some bad stuff to maintain that look. Bulimia, Anorexia, drug use, or maybe you will just sink into a deep depression and stay there. To Hell with the world I can’t be what they want so I quit.
And of course that is the problem. The real problem. Are you fat? Or, are you trying to be what you think societies idea of what you should be is?
Losing weight: The fact is that if you eat less calories than what you burn you will lose weight. If you do some sort of exercise everyday that will burn calories. Those two things are absolutes and do not change or bend to social pressure. So make sure you are doing this for the right reasons and then go from there. Set up a daily exercise routine. It doesn’t have to be complicated, or long, it only needs to be something you do on a daily basis. I would aim for a half hour at first just to get you started. What that will do is two things. First, it will kick start your metabolism. That is a big deal because that will determine what your body needs for calories, and you want that number to be high. The second thing this will do is what all physical exercise does, release endorphins. Stay tuned for part two, AA