Win the Weight Loss Power Struggle

By Sharon Jentzer, Captain, USN (Ret.)

Do you feel like you are in a “fight-to-the-death” power struggle with your body over your weight?

Perhaps you feel like you have already lost that battle and you are trying to come to grips with the terms of surrender. Wait! Don't give up hope yet. There is another way to look at the situation in which you find yourself.

What if you look at your body as the result of millions of years of struggle for survival, a body that is fine-tuned to thrive during times of famine? You might begin to appreciate it as an engineering marvel. Your body has the capacity to thrive when others were not even able to survive. Your body deserves your utmost respect.

You are living in a biological masterpiece, yet you may be feeding it highly processed chemicals posing as food and chaining it to a couch, when it is not parked in front of a computer. It's not your fault.

You had no idea that you were living in such a magnificent body. It is literally dying to eat the fresh fruits and vegetables that it was designed to munch on while it was walking across the Serengeti.

Take the upper hand in this epic power struggle. Move to a new groove as you explore the wonders that await you in your supermarket's produce section. Get in touch with the real you one who wants to eat real food, and drink fresh water. Be careful not to feed it too much it was designed to thrive in times of famine, but it can struggle to find its way in times of overabundance.

And just so you know, there was no sugar, or artificial sweeteners in the land of your ancestors. Your body has no idea what to do with all that extra fat and sugar in your diet, so it just stores it in case you have to live through another famine.

Since you are reading this magazine, I'm pretty sure that you don't live in the Serengeti and you are not facing impending famine. However, your body doesn't know that. You cannot change your body, but you can change how you live in it. You live in a miracle of design. Live well.