Are you sick and tired of the yo-yo dieting and of trying every new fad out there and getting NOWHERE?
Do you have health goals you want to achieve but are overwhelmed with the newest shake, pills, supplements and research data that is thrown at us?Good! You’re in the right place.
In May, new literature was released by The New York Times regarding Biggest Loser contestants and “where are they now”. It reported on how 19 of the 20 contestants followed up on had gained all of their weight back and then some (for some of them). Why? Their focus was all on losing weight. The received extensive attention and support, all for the show and perhaps for money. But when the hype was gone, the underlying structure was still there, nothing had really changed for them. The lifestyle change for many was missing. Diets don’t work. In 2003, a study noted that 85% of dieters fail within 2 years. In 2007, UCLA research reported that people on diets were more likely to be obese than those who haven’t been on a diet.
So WHY Don’t they work?
1) Diets are formulated to problem solve. It gets rid of what you don’t want for a short time but it does nothing to create what you do want.
2) It’s also a restrictive period of time where people do what they don’t want to do, use their willpower, use whatever the idea of the week is and then when they’re done with it, go back to the way they were before and it just doesn’t work that way!
3) What happens is we don’t change the underlying environment, the underlying structure or the behaviors and that’s why they gain the weight back.
Should we just do nothing?! Absolutely not!
We are born, on the whole “optimally healthy” but because of all the forces against us in the modern world: chaotic life, too much food, sedentary lifestyle because we’re sitting at our computers and not doing enough movement, high stress. These are all leading us down an accelerating path of non-sick and then right on to the sick category.
Our society is 5% of the world’s population, but we consume 50% of the world’s pharmaceuticals. We are using drugs to treat the symptoms when our body is telling us to change our ways, change our behaviors. Medicines are crutches. The business of medicine is to treat symptoms, not to help create health.
Can we create Optimal Health and Wellbeing? YES!
Stop problem solving and begin to create Optimal health, create a micro-environment, create a structure, a scaffolding of support to create health! Here we move through learning how to balance calories in/calories out, movement, sleep, stress management, staying connected to and supported by your scaffolding, maintaining forward movement for the process. We need to prepare for future, and realize we need to take responsibility for ourselves. If you want to create health, it’s going to require work, and raising your hand to say you want to do it!
Willpower is not ever going to help anyone make changes to support health. Participants of the Biggest Loser probably had wellbeing in the beginning as their physical health got better, they were celebrated on tv, that season of life felt great. But when cameras went off back to real world, they hadn’t changed the underlying structure that got them there to begin with.
Stop thinking about losing weight and begin to focus on how to create health! Begin to surround your lives around what matters most. We have a comprehensive approach. When you are ready to take responsibility for your health, message us! We can help!