In defense of Oprah

Many of you dear readers also read my friend Alison's weight loss blog. In a recent blog, Alison suggested that Oprah's recent weight gain may be a publicity stunt. After all, how could someone with a personal chef and personal trainer possibly put on 40 lbs on accident?

I bought Oprah's most recent issue of O Magazine, and I read her article about how disappointed she is to have put the weight on. She talks about how she wasn't practicing what she preaches, and how she was slightly depressed, and in need of thyroid medication, and too busy to make the time to work out or eat the best meals.

This can happen to anyone. While I find Alison's cynical suggestion amusing, and also believe that people will go to obscene lengths to self promote, I don't think that is the case with Oprah. I understand Alison's disbelief because it seems that Oprah has it so together, but the fact of the matter is: only 2-5% of morbidly obese dieters keep the weight off long term. Those are pretty bad odds!

Once your body has "gone there," it just so easy to return there. It takes much less, and it happens much faster. I was just talking to a friend of mine this weekend who lost 60 lbs a few years ago. She kept it off for a while, but now she has gained almost all of it back. She's completely frustrated because she worked so hard to lose it in the first place.

Losing it, as hard as it seems, is really the easy part. Keeping it off for good is the true challenge. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can lose weight. Most people, apparently, can't keep it off.

It's discouraging to think that way, but there are the 2-5% who do keep it off (not counting the surgically altered folks like myself who have better chances because we are physically changed - but there are still plenty of us who manage to regain the weight too - it just takes a lot more), are doing something right.

I received the Beck Diet Solution book and workbook for Christmas. It was one of the items I had on my Amazon.com wish list. I haven't gotten very far in the book yet, but I've learned one concept so far that really resonates with me:

With dieting and weight loss, you have two muscles you can flex - your giving in muscle and your resistance muscle. (I probably messed up the names...you get the idea) Every time you give in to a temptation, your giving in muscle gets strong, and it gets easier and easier for you to give in more and more to temptations. Every time you resist temptation, your resistance muscle gets stronger, and it's easier and easier for you to resist.

I have found that to be very true for me. I started this journey only eating junk or less than ideal meals if I really, really wanted it. I knew I needed to break the cheating mentality, so that meant I would give myself permission to cheat from time to time, and that wouldn't ruin my diet for me. It worked! It was very rare that I would have something that wasn't ideal, because I was losing and losing, and I just wanted to be as healthy as possible.

With the amount of weight I had to lose, I was going to be losing for a long time before I hit my goal, and slowly I realized I was allowing myself to cheat more and more, especially since I've been on the plateau. Did the extra cheats affect my plateau? Possibly. I'm not sure. There have been weeks where I averaged 800 calories a day, and weeks when I've averaged far more since I've been on the plateau...still, no change.

The point is, I truly want to put healthy foods in my body. I do not want to fuel myself with junk, so unless I feel deprived or I have truly planned ahead to have something off course, I'm going to go back to resisting it, all the time. I'm going to strengthen my resistance muscle, and allow my giving in muscle to wane.

There are a million things we can do to sabotage ourselves. Oprah talked about not putting herself first, and that is a major error most dieters make. When I started this journey, healthy living and weight loss were my absolute top priorities. I rearranged my life to accommodate healthy living. Slowly, my priorities began to shift. I took on a consulting assignment, in addition to my busy full time job and full time schooling. Healthy living remained a priority, but not the top one.

It's a new year, and I'm going to do my best to have healthy living take top priority once again. Healthy living to me is more than just weight loss. It's putting my overall healthy and well being first. I'm going to make working out, losing weight and eating healthy foods a top priority, but I'm also going to make sure I have joy and fulfillment in my life.

Live your best life, right? ;-)