Weight Loss - A Coaches Experience

Coaching and losing does not work terribly well. For years I have struggled with my weight. I have always liked my food, and grazing in the evening was a favourite pastime. The fact that I grazed on chocolate and biscuits only compounded the problem.

My experience with dieting was that they always worked - temporarily, but that when I reverted to normal eating habits the weight came back on. I like taking exercise and this helped me lost the weight, but 5 consecutive rainy days would come and I would be back at square one. (For info, I am Irish, and 5 rainy days in a row are not uncommon here.)

Then a life coach said something profound to me. He asked me why I wanted to lose weight. I said to be healthier, to be fitter, to live longer and to feel better about myself. So he suggested that those be my goals, rather than losing weight simply for the sake of it. I therefore took the simple goal of being as healthy as I could be for the next 3 months. The purists among you will have correctly identified that this is not a SMART goal, but notwithstanding I tried it anyway.

The first amazing thing to happen was that I gave up on chocolate and biscuits. When I say gave up, I mean completely cut them out of my life. What makes this amazing to me, is that for the first time in my life I did not have any cravings. In my mind, chocolate was not consistent with “being healthy” and it did not make any sense to eat it. On day one I bought two bars of my favourite chocolate and left them in the fridge. There they stayed until 3 weeks later my wife ate them. Every day I opened the fridge, every day I saw them, and not once did I want to eat either of them.

After a few weeks people began to notice. I was getting comments on how well I looked, and how much slimmer, or fitter I looked. I had stopped weighing myself so I had no idea if they were right, but I certainly felt better, slept better, and was more alert during waking hours. In addition, my clothes all fitted me better, and I spent a lot less time in front of the TV. In short, I was happier, I felt healthier, and felt that I was making real progress toward my goal.

I had always chosen Christmas as the end date. I felt that with all the good food, parties, and general “slobbing out” happening I decided that I would evaluate my progress just before that all started. In general I felt that progress was good. So it was with some anticipation that I looked at my weight just before Christmas, and got my first shock. I had hardly lost any weight. I had lost 5 lbs in 3 months, which was my worst performance ever. Over Christmas I reverted to normal Christmas food, drinking, partying and generally paying no attention to myself and what was happening, and then I got my second shock. My mood became worse, so much more negative and intolerant. I became lazier and spent time watching rubbish on the TV. Yes the weight came back, but by this time, I didn’t care about that. I had finally started to love myself, and enjoy being healthy, taking the exercise I wanted, trying new things, meeting new people, and I really missed all that.

Two things came out of my experience. Firstly having a goal which involves losing something does not work permanently. It is much better to pursue a positive goal, and to introduce a change into your life which you want to be there. This change is sustainable and you will find that after a month of conscious change, the new life will become second nature and you will find yourself doing it unconsciously.

The second thing to come out of my experience is that anything is possible, but that the goals must be genuinely what you want. If they are, then not only does change become possible, it becomes inevitable.