Why Should I Lose Weight?

• I recently had the pleasure of discussing my thoughts on the television programme The Biggest Loser which is returning to UK TV next year some time on ITV. Just sitting down and thinking about this subject, I started to wonder, why do people want to lose weight?

  I’ve never been overweight so I asked my Facebook Friends what they thought. I only got a couple of responses but they certainly made me think – they didn’t once mention aesthetics or the way a person looks. The closest we got to that was a person’s self-image or what they think of themselves. The other responses included being healthy, not wanting to be unhappy, unloved or alone, and of course that ‘no one wants to be fat’.

  But back to the comment on self-image. This can be seen in a variety of ways: I personally don’t think that it just comes down to wanting to look better.

  In 1980 Robert Plutchik developed the wheel of emotions and four of these emotions were fear, sadness, disgust and anger. It would be my suggestion that these emotions are far more powerful at motivating you to lose weight, or the other goals that you may have, than simply wanting to change what you see in the mirror.

  The other goals you may have could indeed be to gain weight, become stronger, get out of pain, or in fact anything else. So my advice would be to move from a negative, destructive and disempowering place to what Plutchik called the opposite emotions of acceptance and joy. Not only feeling these emotions as often as possible but to also use them as your goal of where you want to get to.

  Of course, if you are overweight then it is important to normalise your weight to a healthy level. However, not many people know this but except in the obese there are actually higher mortality rates in the underweight than the overweight. This prompts me to suggest that you forget about the scales and begin motivating yourself away from unhealth emotions and toward acceptance and joy. This will then give you the staying power to eat real food not junk food, drink water not fizzy drinks, exercise regularly and manage the stress levels in your life.

  This way you can lose weight, stay on the place and keep the weight off forever – but only once you know why you want to do it!

  
  
  November 15th, 2008 | Brett Sanders | No Comments | Tags: Happiness, health, joy, lose weight, overweight, the biggest loser, underweight, Weight Loss

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