Anyone who wants to lose 100 pounds or more raise your hand.  50 pounds? 25 pounds?  Great, now although I obviously can’t see you, let me say this – each and everyone one of you with your hand raised is a stone-cold liar.

It’s ok, I was one too, for a long time.

The truth is, NO ONE wants to lose weight.  LOTS of people, including all of you hand-raisers would like to WEIGH LESS, and there’s a big difference.

Losing Weight vs. Weighing Less

Losing weight involves hard work and risk.  Making yourself uncomfortable as you take a leap of faith with absolutely no guarantee of return on your investment.  Where do you sign up, right?

If you’re overweight, you’ve either got your own personal horror stories about losing weight, stories you’ve heard from others, or both.  This makes the process intimidating.  We therefore look for a quick, and painless solution in the form of pills, supplements, “too good to be true” fad diets, all sorts of prepackaged food plans, and so on. We’ll try anything that someone claims is an “easy” way to lose weight… even though we know there’s no such thing.

Why?  Because we want desperately to avoid the hard work of losing weight and skip right to the good part – weighing less. “When I’m 50 pounds lighter, I’m going to workout every day”…. “Once I lose 25 pounds, I’m going to start buying clothing from that store that doesn’t have anything in my size right now”… “I’ll start hiking with my friends”… and so on, and so on.  It’s really easy to get caught up in the fantasy world where we already “weigh less” and forget that we have to go through the part where we actually lose the weight.

If it helps, here’s another way to explain this: I have absolutely no interest in ever getting on board a tiny airplane, going 10,000 feet into the sky, opening the door and jumping out with nothing but a parachute to prevent me from suffering a completely unsympathetic death.  HOWEVER, I’d love to have GONE skydiving.  I’d tell that story constantly! How cool would that be?  But again, no interest in the actual, you know, skydiving part of it.

Like I said, EVERYONE wants to weigh less. NOBODY wants to lose weight.

Taking a Leap of Faith

Two years ago I weighed 400 pounds.  As I’m writing this, I now weigh 257 pounds, and I haven’t spent a single of those days on a diet, or feeling deprived or unhappy about what I was eating.  So I imagine that my weight loss will continue.  How much more will I lose?  Can’t wait to find out, but I know I’m happy each day so that’s really what matters.

But here’s the thing, it’s incredibly easy to talk like this now, two years in.  I’ve now seen two years of results. I know things are going to work.   In other words, the dreams of “weighing less” are now reality for me, so I don’t mind the work to lose weight… because there’s no unknown, no risk, and no leap of faith.

As much as I appreciate when people congratulate me on my weight loss today, the person who deserves the congratulations is the ME from two years ago.  He was the one who took the leap of faith. He was the one who took the risk, and put aside the fantasy and just said it’s time to move forward.

And if you were someone who raised your hand in the beginning of this essay, then you can do it too.  Today, right now.

No Time Like The Present

I know what you’re thinking.  It’s not January 1^st.  You want to do this, but it’s best to start fresh at the beginning of the new year.  Well, unless you swallow a calendar, there’s nothing in your stomach to indicate that it’s the first of the year or any other date.  So don’t let that stop you.

You might prefer to start clean on a Monday morning? Well, I again unless you’ve consumed a day planner, I don’t see how it’s possible your digestive system will be able to tell the difference between Monday and Thursday.

And if you’re reading this at lunchtime, and think that it’s important to wait until tomorrow morning to begin? I would argue that unless you’ve inadvertently swallowed and old-fashioned pocket watch, there’s nothing inside you to indicate time of day.  So 1 pm is just as good a time to begin as 8 am.

Now, there is one caveat to all of this.  In the unlikely event that you have swallowed a calendar, day planer and old-fashioned pocket watch… I’d recommend that you first visit the nearest hospital emergency room and get that all sorted out.

And then, you know, we address weight loss.

It’s THAT Easy

Seriously, though, how do you “start” losing weight? You simply say “I’m starting right now.”   The details, you’ll sort out.  Hoping and waiting for some perfect plan while you live in a fantasy world… doesn’t work. Think about this for one minute. If five years ago you started with some clunky, weight-loss plan, and all it really netted you was a mere five pounds lost per year? You’d still be 25 pounds lighter than you were then. And that does not take into account whatever weight you might have gained in the last five years.

My point? If you really want to do this, then now is the time to start. You’re going to have to build your program yourself, but, be honest, you already know a lot of what you need to do. Once you get started it will just be a process of sorting out the details through trial and error.  Over the next few weeks and months I’ll post several more essays on various tips and tricks which have helped me immensely in my journey, and I hope they help you in yours.

But none of them will matter at all if you don’t, right now, take the first step forward and say “I’m starting today.”