Just As I Am

Taken from Public Safety Communications Magazine, October 2009
Written by Brigid Blaschak

This is not a recipe, but something I felt need to be remembered when trying to lose weight and/or eat healthy.

There's a TV commercial that makes me cringe every time I see it. It's for a weight-loss program that provides pre-packaged foods and that's endorsed by retired football players, a has-been 1970s pop idol and a buxom blonde who likes sports and tosses a football. The latest ad includes the aforementioned 1970s has-been pop star and a "normal" person. This "average Jane" proclaims to have lost 60 pounds on the program. She says her goal was to lose 40 pounds, but that it was "so effortless," she lost 20 pounds more. Yeah - I bet. I also have some swampland...

Fine, I'll give Plain Jane kudos for the weight loss. Maybe it was effortless for her, but take notice of the fine print at the bottom of the screen that appears for two milliseconds: "Results not typical." It begs the question. What is typical?

Most people can lose 10-20 pounds in the first few weeks of a diet. It's a great boost, but as your body adapts to the new conditions, weight loss begins to taper and often stops altogether. Then you get sick of the bananas and/or Acai berries and you slip slowly back into your old habits and the weight creeps right back. I don't need to look up statistics on this. I've lived it more times than I can count. In the end, about 5% of people who lose weight keep it off.

I'm fortunate to finally be in the rare 5%, and I can tell you it wasn't "effortless." To tell the truth, I'm glad it wasn't. I've found that things don't mean much if you don't work for them.

The hardest thing I've dealth with was accepting myself as I was, right at the moment. It's difficult to make the small changes, knowing that it won't result in anything noticeable for weeks, maybe months. In this day and age when instant gratification is king, we want things done yesterday. It's this attitude that spawns the demand for "get thin quick" schemes that often put you in a worse state than when you started.

So it's essential to accept yourself just the way you are. You don't need to love the way you look (who does?), but at least be grateful for the body you have. It's not perfect, but on one's is. Even supermodels need to be airbrushed. The simple fact that you can get up every morning and make a living says your body works. Maybe it doesn't work as efficiently as it should, but it works and you have a base upon which to build.

Accepting yourself takes the desperation out of your actions, makes you less susceptible to fad diets and makes it easier to take those sustainable baby steps to lasting change. So think about those little steps you can take right now, like taking the stairs or drinking water instead of a soda. When you only have to worry about small changes, you can concentrate on the much harder task of accepting yourself. You are who you are and it's essential to honor your uniqueness which is completely separate from your size, shape and level of fitness. This is the road to acceptance and breaking the get-thin-quick cycle.