I’m reading Thin for Life by Anne M. Fletcher. It’s from 1994, so hardly the latest word in weight loss. But her method makes a whole bunch of sense and I’m finding it very helpful. She went out and interviewed some 160 people who had lost weight and kept it off to see how they did it.
One of the things that I’m finding most interesting is that everyone did it differently. There are some things that are similar among a lot of people, but the precise things that each person does is completely unique.
One reason for the uniqueness is that most people make more than one change to get the weight loss. “Indeed, the more I talked with the masters [that’s what she calls her interview subjects, masters of weight loss] and the more I studied other researchers’ findings, it became clear that many masters made multiple changes in their lives either before or while they were losing weight.” (p. 46) And she’s not just talking about behavior modifications in eating and exercise, she’s also talking about more structural things in life—quitting a job in a donut shop, for example, or finally figuring out a way to make time for oneself in a hectic schedule.
I’m finding this uniqueness of weight loss very helpful at the moment. For one thing, it means I’m not doing it wrong just because I’m not doing it the way one book or one program says to do it. Also, it means that I can call on my creativity for this project just as I might for any other project. And I can take a certain pride in doing it my way (cue Frank Sinatra). Weight loss as self expression!