When I decided to lose weight, my wife did too. We talked together about why we wanted to be slimmer and what we actually wanted in life. Our aspirations turned out to be quite straightforward. Vitality was the top of Katie’s list, especially when the children are around. Equally, she aspired to feeling good about being un-dressed when we’re intimate together.
My main wish was to be able to purchase clothes that fit properly! Also, as our home is on 3 levels, I just longed to be able to reach the top floor and not feel my heart pounding violently!
We also learnt that it’s not just about how we appear on the outside – our inner self-worth is also crucial. Those of us who are obese tend to have a very low self-image. It’s a popular assumption that reducing weight will make everything in life good again. As overweight people ourselves, we completely identified with that. However, this is what we found -
Psychologists understand that we have a subconscious mind, which doesn’t recognise the difference between a real thing and an imaginary thing. This means it ‘tells’ our conscious mind anything that pre-dominates. Process that thought repeatedly, it emerges as its prevailing concept and thus it’s actual truth.
Consider your own prevailing thoughts – are you ruining your hopes of being slimmer by holding on to an ‘overweight’ self-image? Our subconscious needs to be fed a diet of what we actually want to be real.
We must always be focused on the prizes of losing weight, not the price. First off we wrote down the things we could start to enjoy when the excess weight had gone. We came up with – Going for walks in the country, flirting, great sex, going for a swim without embarrassment, playing with the kids, fun on the beach, dancing, cycling and greater happiness.
We thought next about the holidays – summer at the beach feeling good in our swimwear. Our confidence grew massively as others looked on with admiration. We brought the dream to life.
And so we went through the motions and the pounds came off. Though we’re not what you’d call thin, we’re a heck of a lot slimmer than we were. We look at each other every day now and smile – you will too when you see how far you’ve come.
