Achieving personal weight-loss and maintenance of that weight loss is a problem for many people, including me. I tend to work off the premise that a solution exists for most problems.

General problem solving skills apply here. When I can’t find any solution for a personal problem, then I try to more clearly identify the problem, or even re-define it. Sometimes I find that my best action plan for a solution to a problem is the simple Acceptance of the Reality that an ongoing problem is likely to remain in existence throughout my lifetime.

To come up with a new approach to an old problem, it often helps to look at the problem differently. If we do the same things, we will get the same results. In my experience, when a new solution is required, one of the best things I can do is to change my perspective on the problem.

Sometimes this means looking at different graphics, or reading about new diets, or asking myself new questions. When I explore new angles of a problem, I often see something new, which will give me an idea of a new way to approach it.

How does this mental process work?

When faced with a puzzle, we solve it by first running through all of our usual obvious solutions.

First we engage our left brain by recalling the obvious tried and true solutions. Sometimes these ideas work, sometimes they don’t. As soon as our left brain has exhausted all ideas that don’t work, we get frustrated and hit the wall. The wall is the inability of our left brain to create new connections from our old ideas. We are unable to connect the old ideas with fresh ones, to find different solutions with the same methods. The only way to get unstuck is to try to see the problem in a new way.

At the point of total frustration, our right brain engages. Our right brain solves problems with images. Once the left brain has gotten out of the way in total frustration, our right brain is able to freely associate in the language that it knows: pictures. Then, it hits — the connection is made, and all of a sudden, we have a glimmer of a new idea, our mind goes off in a different direction, and things start falling into place. What we have just done is literally created a new connection in our brain.

Sometimes we don’t get an answer to our problem because we aren’t asking the right question. If we ask the same question over and over, we will most likely get the same answer. So, we need to figure out how to rephrase the question or ask a new question. Sometimes changing the wording we use is helpful, sometimes it helps to look at a different graphic.

When working with data like weight or calorie numbers, I think about how I can display or visualize that data in a new way. Looking at the same data in different formats enables me to see new things. I see different things when I look at different charts and graphics even when they reflect the same basic numbers.

Looking at the big picture often leads to a new way of seeing the problem. Sometimes zooming out, helps me realize that I’m asking the wrong question.

DietHobby, under RESOURCES, Links, Tools, contains links to some online sites which use different methods of graphing weight. I find a consistent use of these different visual aides helpful to motivate me, and these visuals often provide me with insight about my own behavior.

In my own case, one personal solution for the weight-loss and maintenance problem has become my choice to make Dieting into an ongoing, enjoyable hobby for myself. For more on this, see "Dieting Is My Hobby. Another part of the solution for me, is to ACCEPT certain personal Realities as Truth. For example:

• I will never achieve perfection in any aspect of my life;
  
• Eating the way my own body is naturally programmed to eat will cause me to be morbidly obese,
  
• At this point …and probably forever, maintaining my weight-loss requires constant, consistent monitoring of my own personal food intake;
  
• People are different, there is more than only One “Right Way”.
  

What’s the Difference between a Diet “Cheat” and a Life “Choice?

  What do you mean when you say you cheated on your diet?

Do you mean you ate a food that was high in calories?
Do you mean you used food for a role other than fuel?
Do you mean you veered from a path of food restriction paved by an “expert”?

It’s important that we make informed choices in our lives,
and if our weight is a consideration,
the amount of food, and the calories of food, can be important.

 But if a person can’t decide to have food as a pleasure in one’s life,
then that person is probably not living a realistic life.

It seems to me that the choice to embrace a such a Fantasy,
will more likely lead to overall failure in one’s weight-loss or maintenance
than any independent choice concerning a particular food.

                                                 
In the video located at the bottom of this article, USTV anchor, Jennifer Livingston, delivers a well-thought out response to an attack on her physical appearance by an e-mail bully, who declared that Jennifer was a bad model for viewers because of her obesity, and that “Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain“.

The statement that obesity is a "choice", implies that the opposite is also true. It is a widely held notion that  anyone can simply "choose" not to be fat, despite the fact, that the vast majority of people who "choose"  to lose  weight, actually end up putting it back on (and more). The belief that anyone can lose weight and keep it off if only they "choose"  to do so, is  widely accepted. Even people who have been battling their weight all their lives tend to take the concept as TRUTH.

Most obese people blame themselves for their excess weight, and blame themselves for not trying hard enough or for failing again. It is one thing for the non-obese public to think of obesity as a self-inflicted matter of choice, but it is something entirely different, for a person who has spent an enormous amount of time and effort on losing weight, over and over again, to blame themselves for failing to make the right “choice”.

I know about the difficulty of losing weight and maintaining weight loss from my own personal lifetime experience.  Managing weight is not easy, and the truth is, that....despite the current hype ... weight has never actually been a good measure of health or of a healthy life style anyway.

Is obesity a choice?  The term “choice” implies that one has the freedom to choose from different options which are available to them, and the power to make that option a reality.

We make many different choices during our Lifetime, both small and large. We choose what Results we would prefer to see in our lives. Married or Single? Children? Education? Career? Our small daily Behavior choices have a great deal with determining our lifetime Results… but not everything.

I chose to get up and get dressed today. I chose to blog here. I chose to get married. I chose to get an doctorate. I chose to become a lawyer. I chose to spend 25 years practicing law. I chose to be a homeowner. I chose to become financially secure. It turned out that I had the power, through my actions, to make these choices into reality for myself. Some choices don’t carry that power with them.

I have the freedom to choose to fly like a bird, but I don’t have the ability to make it happen. I can follow through with my choice by jumping from a high-rise building, but the physical law of gravity will interfere to keep me from attaining success.

Most people “choose” to be healthy. Few people “choose” to have cancer, or heart disease, but it happens…to people of all ages ... even to non-smoking, marathon-running, normal-weight, organic-eaters.

Obesity belongs in the Health category. The condition of obesity involves genetic predisposition, an environment of stress, sleep deprivation, sedentary employment, abundant and omnipresent energy dense foods, unhealthy body-image promoting media, and one’s individual physiological and psychological makeup.

Some people have bodies that can overcome their health environment, and some don’t.
After surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, some people with cancer go into remission. Most don’t.
After dieting, and even surgery, some obese people become normal weight and maintain there.
Most don’t.

Much of the 25 years I spent as a lawyer, my personal appearance and attitude was similar to what we see of Jennifer Livingston in the video below, except that often I was even heavier. Although 20 years of Therapy didn’t make me thin, it did teach me to love and respect myself fat. I am pleased to see the self-respect that Jennifer portrays here.

I spent a great deal of my life being Obese. At present, I am fortunate enough to be normal weight. I didn’t “chose” to be fat, and then change my mind and “choose” to be normal weight. Always, being normal weight was my personal “choice”. From age 9 to here in my 60s, I’ve worked for my entire life ... through dieting, therapy, exercise, and even surgery and more dieting  … to make that option into a personal reality. The weight I am now is a Result of everything I’ve experienced, and all of my lifetime actions linked together. Before this present time, I was obese, not because I "chose" the option of obesity, but because I did not have the power to make the option of normal-weight a reality.

Beauty is Not Age Related
This morning I saw an anti-aging ad for a moisturizer
which told me that I need to fight aging on 3 different levels.
I don’t think so.

What does a beautiful old woman look like?
  See Mother Teresa.
The wrinkles of character that Time gives to a woman are Beautiful.

                                                     
DietHobby is a place for me to express myself and my personal dieting philosophies.
I write articles and make videos about the things that are of daily interest to me.
Sometimes I post articles or videos by others that I've found helpful or amusing to me.
I've posted links to many interesting online sites at RESOURCES, Links,
and many videos of interest at RESOURCES, Videos.

I do NOT believe in a one-size-fits-all-world, and I don't believe that all diets are right for everyone, but I do believe that every diet works for someone.  Part of my Diet Hobby is to read diet books, and to experiment with a variety of diets that interest  me.  Sometimes my diet experiments are with fad diets, and sometimes they are with conventional diets.  What is consistent for me within EVERY ONE of my diet experiments is that I record all foods eaten every day into my software food journal, DietPower, and I work to keep my calories at, or below, my own body's calorie burn.

Occasionally,  I'll write a review of a diet book that I've found interesting, or a review of a diet that I've experimented with.  I don't have to find a diet personally successful to review it.  At present I'm working on three different articles that combine diet book reviews with my own reviews of those diets.  For those interested, the specific three that I'll  be discussing in these upcoming articles are the "5 Bite Diet";  "Dr. Siegel's Cookie Diet"; and "The Simple Diet". 

It's important to keep in mind that I don't necessarily recommend ANY diet to ANYONE else.  I believe that each person is an experiment-of-one. We are different sizes, different ages, different sexes, different activity levels, with different genetics, and different histories, backgrounds, and experiences. 

My own style, as I work to maintain my large weight-loss, is to engage in a sort of "serial diet monogamy" while I search for a way-of-eating that is enjoyable enough for me to sustain long-term.  I do not take "breaks" between these diet experiments, in that I stay on some type of diet plan, recording my food, and counting my calories every day.... even those days between specific diets.

As I engage in this activity, I do not discount the possibility that in fact "serial diet monogamy"  might be the only way of eating that I can ever sustain long-term. My ongoing success might require a continual ongoing search, and if that proves to be the case, I think I can live with that. 

  I agree with Dr. Yoni Freedhoff when he says "Remember, it's the healthiest life you can enjoy, not the healthiest life you can tolerate."