Eat, Drink And Be Merry? Why Worry About Your Weight In The Middle Of A Life-Changing Crisis.
Is this a time to say “anything goes” or a time for self-improvement?
Why attempt weight loss during the COVID-19 crisis? Because losing weight will make you feel good, gaining weight will make you feel awful, and right now, you need something that will make you feel good.
Everyone paying attention today is realizing that we are going to be practicing rigorous pandemic protocols from this date forward. Things will never be the same. The changes and loss of creature comforts take their toll, but we will adjust. Human beings always do. Yes, it will be a challenge. But we can choose to embrace the challenge and figure out how to come out on top, better than we were before, or we can choose to resent the challenge and magnify the suffering. Which will it be?
I’ve heard and read many comments about gaining weight during the crisis, as if comfort or boredom eating is unavoidable. It’s not. We can use this time to focus on losing our excess weight and getting healthier and stronger instead of focusing on our woes, getting fat and making ourselves unhappy and unhealthy.
If you use this crisis as an excuse to overindulge in unhealthy self-gratification and the pity-pot, you’ll end up making things worse. On the other hand, if you use the time and opportunity to work on eating healthier and being more active, you’ll improve things and feel good about yourself. You can’t control the virus or the epidemic, but you can control how you react to it. You can make it work for you, instead of against you.
During lock-downs and isolation you have more time to take care of yourself and an opportunity to focus on you and your health. Take advantage of it.
Don’t let obsessing on the news and fear-mongering predictions rattle you. Don’t throw caution to the wind with a “you only live once” attitude, indulging in short term pleasures that cause long term suffering. There is another way to think about this.
Many of my clients, and I too, used to say that we’d quit all attempts to diet and lose weight if we discovered we only had a short time left to live. “If I learned I had only six months left to live, I’d eat whatever I wanted, do whatever I felt like doing. I’d break every taboo I’ve wanted to break.” We imagined a life of unimpeded self-gratification and self-indulgence with no consequences.
However, there is no such thing as actions without consequences, and the consequences of indulging in unhealthy behavior can be very painful and long-lasting, perhaps irreversable. A few weeks of free-wheeling overindulgence on junk food, large portions and constant snacking can result in button-popping gains that will take months to get rid of, if ever. Unimpeded self-gratification results not in wonderful feelings, but feelings of failure, shame and bloating.
There is a different route to gratification and satisfaction, one that results in a happy result rather than a depressing one. We need to quit the old routine of wishing we could indulge in overeating without paying the price. We need to practice a new way of indulging that has positive consequences.
Understand that permanent weight loss does not involve giving up the pleasure of good food. In fact, with the right approach, you’ll enjoy good food more than you ever did, and without unhappy and unhealthy consequences.
Instead of dieting and hyper-exercising, we can program ourselves to have lifetime health-creating habits that are more satisfying than the health-wrecking habits. We can get addicted to things that make us fit rather than fat. And it’s done with technique and training, not sheer will. Building the habits that will make you healthy is not the result of will power as much as “mind power”, self-programming and mind control technique.
The reality is that you don’t have to give up the food you like to control your weight. You can train yourself to have it in a new way that is more satisfying than the old way. Training is work, but it’s worth it. And this COVID-19 crisis is the perfect time to do it. Staying home and following the social-distancing rules gives us the perfect conditions to succeed. Read my articles, Science-Based Weight Loss and Dr. Fauci’s Silver Lining for more about this.
Like all the crises in history, this too shall pass. It’s not the end of the world. Your job is to survive it and come out on the other side smarter and stronger.
Since the beginning of time, the world and our societies have endured countless wars, calamities and convulsions and emerged from them to heal the wounds and repair the faults. Some people have been broken by them, but not all. Even in the worst upheavals, people have survived to become better for it. Decide to be one of those who not only survive, but improve. You can. You have the power within you to heal, improve your health, your self and your life. Eat, drink and be merry in a new healthy way.
William Anderson is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, the author of “The Anderson Method of Permanent Weight Loss” (paperback and Kindle at Amazon, audiobook at Audible). He was obese until his early thirties when he lost 140 pounds and has kept it off for 35 years. Since then he has made it his life’s work teaching thousands how to successfully manage their weight.
