A good reason to kick the excuses and get back into shape

If you’re sick and tired of being overweight but continue to excuse yourself with the same old reasons, it’s time to realize that excuses keep you stuck where you are and cause you to believe that you lack control. And while old habits die hard, if you’ve been making excuse after excuse about why you can’t shed the weight, it’s time to recognize that you can do something about it and take action to regain control over your life.

 

Edit Steps

1. 1

   Determine if your weight problem is due to a medical condition. Sometimes the reason why you’ve either gained weight or can’t seem to lose the weight is due to an underlying medical problem. However, simply assuming this to be the case and not having your doctor confirm it is an excuse. And even if you do have a medical condition, your doctor’s advice may be able to help you manage around it instead of giving in to it. So, before you delve into other reasons surrounding your weight battle, see your doctor to check that you’re not struggling with an issue that could be remedied by medical intervention. Medical issues that can make it difficult to lose weight include:

   
   

   Ads by Google

   WeightWatchers®

   Our most flexible and liveable plan is here. Start ProPoints® Today!
   www.WeightWatchers.co.uk

• Underactive thyroid: An underactive thyroid means that your body may not produce enough thyroid hormone to effectively burn stored fat.
• Hormonal changes: Different stages in life may produce a shift in hormones, which can lead to weight gain. Examples include menopause, pregnancy and puberty. However, some of these changes are temporary and most require a new approach rather than assuming things can stay as they always have done.
• Chronic stress: If you’re in a constant state of stress and anxiety, your body may produce a chemical called cortisol. This stress hormone causes your body to store excess fat, just in case you need it for hiking over the mountains to safer territory. The only thing is, we’re not living like cavemen running from danger anymore and daily stress that doesn’t get relieved can wind up as unhelpful weight gain.
• Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS): More than 5 million women in the U.S. suffer from PCOS, which is a result of a hormonal imbalance.^[1]Symptoms include irregular menstrual bleeding, acne, weight gain and difficulty getting pregnant.
• Cushing’s syndrome: People who have Cushing’s syndrome have adrenal glands that produce too much cortisol, which causes your body to store excess fat.
• Other condition: Your doctor may identify other relevant medical condition that are contributing to your weight gain.

• 2

  Identify the culprits. Excuses get made as a way of sweeping the real causes under the carpet. Unexamined, the weight-gain culprits get off free of charge while your body continues ballooning. That’s willful blindness and it’s harmful to you. Some of the sneaky, yet obvious-when-you-think-about-them, culprits that bring about weight gain include:

  • Watching a lot of TV, sitting down snacking and not moving.
  • “Just a tiny, little chocky bar/cookie/bag of chips” each time you’re feeling peckish.
  • Large portion sizes of food at each meal. If you don’t know what’s too large in terms of a portion, that’s already telling you a lot.
  • No or low exercise, driving everywhere, never taking a moment to walk somewhere instead.
  • Drinking a lot of alcohol––hidden and useless calories are the trademark of booze.
  • Eating take-out food more than once a week.
  • A diet high in processed foods, low in natural, whole and unprocessed food.
• 3

  Accept that habit, rather than lack of time, is holding you back. Many of us complain that there is never enough time to do anything, losing weight included. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy, for the more we preach it, the more it becomes our reality and we form habits that keep us stuck in this race of busyness. From harried mothers to busy executives, many folks find that they’re dashing from place to place from the minute they wake up in the morning to the second their head hits the pillow at night and then blame this rush for all other ills in their lives. However, you control what you do with your time––it is not time controlling you. Resolve to stop using your lifestyle as a reason for your weight gain and instead find ways to integrate weight loss into your jam-packed schedule.

  • Make a decision to re-prioritize your lifestyle to help you start losing the weight. If you’re tired of hearing yourself say that you’re “too busy” to lose weight, you’ll need to meet your schedule head on to overcome this objection.
  • Take a close look at every aspect of your schedule. Is there 30 minutes or one hour that you can substitute for exercise? As unattractive as this may sound, consider swapping lunch out with the girls every day for 45 minutes in the gym instead. Make time on Sunday night to prepare healthy pre-packed (and possibly frozen) meals for the rest of the week. That way you can still grab and go but instead of processed unhealthy foods, you can pick up something healthy and low calorie.
  • Instead of complaining that you’re too busy, own your time. If there really is nothing you can do about your schedule, stop complaining and reverting to it as a weight loss crutch because you’re only hurting yourself.
• 4

  Stop excusing yourself with lots of “just this once” lines and make weight loss your priority. If you truly want to lose weight, you must make it a priority––not only when it’s convenient or easy. The goal of weight loss must become as important and daily as brushing your teeth in the morning or being on time for meetings. “Just this once” soon adds up to “just too many times” you’ve excused yourself for bad dietary habits, until the healthy eating becomes the exception rather than the rule. Throw out “just this once” from your vocabulary; notice yourself saying it and say “stop” to yourself and reconsider your eating choice.
• 5

  Acknowledge any tendency in yourself to adopt the “I can’t do it” attitude. If you continue to tell yourself you “just can’t lose weight”, you will start to believe it. Once you believe it, you will start to live up to it. You can do it. Giving up is an option for dead people only. Accompanying the “I can’t do it” is a raft of very sneaky, tricky and ultimately self-tripping excuses. Here are some common ones:

  • “I can’t lose weight. I’m just too tired.”: Your tiredness is sourced in those cookies, chocolates, fast foods and processed meals. Your tiredness is sourced in being sedentary all the time, from the office to the couch. Your tiredness is sugar-filled. And your tiredness as a result of these things is a bit of a vicious circle––too tired to plan healthier food, too tired to plan a diet program, too tired to get up and exercise, and on and on it goes. Wake up to the reality that bad food and little movement create the fatigue.
  • “I can’t lose weight. It’s too boring to go without food.”: Do your eyes glaze over every time you see the word diet or read a fitness schedule? Does “nutrition” mean “something dull people care about” to you? Are you stuck with visions of eating “rabbit food” for the rest of your life? If you see weight loss as a dent in an otherwise fun and exciting life, you’ve fallen into an excuse that losing weight will make life boring. This is an unfortunate excuse that blinds you to seeing the good things about weight loss (more energy equals more fun) and the fun and innovative things you can do with diets and fitness.
  • “I can’t lose weight. I don’t do deprivation; it’s just not pretty. Anyway, who cares, I’d rather die young and happy than old and deprived.”This excuse is fallacious; nobody wants to die in agony from disease and nutritional deficiencies. It’s a short-sighted attitude that sounds hip now but will definitely land all around your hips later. Lifestyle dieting is not about deprivation; it’s about managing food and exercise to ensure you lead a happier and more energetic lifestyle overall.
  • “I can’t lose weight. I tried before and look, it all came back again.” Sadly, most diets do this because fad diets and a diet frame of mind are destructive rather than helpful. What is important is to eat healthily for the long-term and to find a diet program in discussion with your health professional that is attuned to your lifestyle, not a temporary fix that you can only see an end for in a few months. Yo-yo dieting teaches little and actually ingrains bad habits by assuming that when the set diet time is up, the junk food can move on back in. It doesn’t work like that––changing your eating habits is for life and moderation in all things becomes your new mantra, not “a little diet now, a lot of stuffing later”….More at How to Stop Making Excuses for Your Weight

More Reading  Banish the Bags Under Your Eyes