Start Managing Your Weight

By Anne M. Rensberger, LICSW

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you contemplate taking control of your weight.
1. Are you ready to find other ways to self-sooth, self-comfort and relax if you use food to react to stress, depression, happiness and other strong emotions?
2. Are you willing to keep a daily diary that tracks what you eat, your exercise, and your issues, problems, impulses, or successes?
3. Do you have a strategy for eating out so you can adhere to your eating plan?
4. Are you willing to use healthy self-evaluation when you have problems rather than putting yourself down and giving up when you cant be perfect?
5. Are you willing to attend to your hydration and to the nutritional needs of your body?
6. Are you willing to work movement into your every day life? Can you develop an exercise plan and adhere to it?
7. Are you willing to recognize that plateaus may happen on a long-term weight management program and that you may need to tweak your program as your weight goes down?
8. Are you willing to modify some things about the food you love either the type of food you eat, the amount you eat, the way your food is prepared, or the frequency of your eating – and deal with the discomfort you will feel as you adjust to a new way of eating?
9. Are you willing to devote the time it takes to be on a weight management program such as the shopping for healthy foods, keeping up your diary, exercising, educating yourself on nutrition, and evaluating your successes and issues?
10. Are you ready to start reframing and viewing weight management from something negative and bound to fail such highly restrictive dieting and extreme exercising, to something fun and positive for your body and your psyche?
I would like you to start viewing your past weight management attempts not as failures but as pilot projects you can look back on to learn what works and what doesnt work for you? None of us are 100% ready or perfect on all of these issues as we begin a weight management program, but you can prepare yourself for these changes in your life. If you feel you need some help along the way there are many excellent programs available to assist you.