Piece of cake

Here's one thing I've realized about weight loss: It's simple. Now, before an angry ban of women bearing food scales and dumbbells as weapons shows up at my door ready for a brawl, let me explain myself.

For starters please note that I didn't say it was easy. I said it was simple. People try to complicate it all the time, and they do that quite well. They subscribe to the mentality that you’ve gotta eat low carb/high protein, or that you should replace a meal with a shake, or that you have to eat only tofu and bean sprouts when you hate tofu and bean sprouts, or that you need to order the food that some plan tells you you need to eat. And maybe sometimes those things do work, but it’s complicated and leaves little room for anyone to keep it up. Once you’ve lost the weight, what do you do? Avoid carbs for life? Continue buying their food? And what have you learned?

That’s the complicated part that makes people think that they can’t do it. But that’s just noise. Here’s the simple part: Eat less. Think more. Move more. Lose weight.

I know half the people who just read that are thinking it’s oversimplified bullshit. I’d encourage you to give it a second thought, though. It really is that simple.

Eat less— you probably don’t realize what a serving size is, or how much you are truly consuming in the course of the day. You need to burn more calories than you eat in order to lose weight. Are you making that possible for yourself?

Think more about the choices you make— food is fuel for your body. What is your body running on?

Move more— getting in shape is not going to happen overnight, so just get going. It’s not an all or nothing deal— you don’t have to run a marathon tomorrow. Start small if that’s what you’re comfortable with. Nike has had it right all along. Just do it. Whatever it is.

And then, lose weight.

And this is why it’s simple but not easy. If it was easy to do all this, and to lose weight as a result, then we’d all be wearing a size 2 and one-piece bathing suits wouldn’t exist. Over the past few months I’ve lost weight some weeks only to gain part of it back the next- with no discernable difference in what I’m eating or how much I’m exercising. It’s frustrating, and some days I’ve wanted to tear my hair out. So I’m not gonna say that it will always work out exactly the way you want it too. But guess what? Keep it up, and over time your body cannot deny you the weight loss.

Don’t expect yourself to be perfect, because you won’t be, and that’s just setting yourself up for failure in your own eyes. Don’t expect it to happen overnight, because it won’t; it took you a while to gain weight, so it’s going to take you a while to lose it. Don’t make excuses for yourself— you’ll always be busy and you’ll always have obstacles— but you can always make time for something you consider a priority... aren’t you a priority to you? And don’t expect it to be easy, because it will always be a struggle, although the struggle will diminish over time. If it still feels complicated, then make it feel uncomplicated. Focus on what it really boils down too, and I think you’ll find that all that’s left is truly quite simple.