You Don’t Suck At Weight Loss

Let’s get a few things clear…

You don’t suck at weight loss.

There is nothing wrong with you (even if you have a long list of all the times you haven’t been able to stick to a diet, have lost weight and regained or worked hard and didn’t see the scale move at all)

Our medical training does not give us a free pass to shed weight easier than other people just because we understand how the human body works.

But it can be SO easy to believe the opposite.  Many physicians spend large parts of their life thinking that they suck at weight loss.  If you have ever thought the same, this week’s Thriving As A Physician Podcast episode is dedicated to you.

I was one of those physicians.  I couldn’t understand why it felt so hard for me to stick to the salad that I “should” be eating when I so desperately wanted to order pizza and collapse on the sofa at the end of a long day.

What I know now is that the whole idea of “failure” in weight loss is where we have it wrong.  Perfectionistic ideals of either succeeding (ie – following a diet perfectly and seeing the scale rocket downwards) or failing (anything else) have been deeply ingrained in all of us.

It’s a crappy set of ideals that we have been handed from diet culture. They don’t work. 

You don’t suck at weight loss. Diets do.

Think of something you do at work that you feel very confident with. One of your “bread and butter” procedures.

The very first time you did it, how awkward did you feel? How badly did you suck?

Imagine if you had stopped there?

Instead you tried it again and again.  You’ve practiced it so many times that now you can do it without a lot of effort.

Sustainable weight loss is exactly like that.  It is a series of skills that you need to learn and then practice over and over again, building efficiency and confidence.

Start thinking about every area of weight loss that is challenging for you.  What is the skill you need to learn? 

Learn more about how to do this IRL on this week’s podcast episode.  Click below to listen or check it out on your favourite podcast player.