Research shows that 98-99% of people who do a weight loss program gain it back and more within the first year. That proved true in my life. But, even knowing that fact...I found myself still trying to beat the odds, for years. I spent almost 25 years yo-yo dieting. I felt if I could just get to that "magical" number, everything would be ok after all. But the harder I tried, the harder it got to stick to a program to get there.
What changed, you may wonder!? Well....I found the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. Every podcast I heard resonated with me. I finally felt someone understood my struggle. In one of his lessons Marc David (the founder of the Institute) gave this analogy for dieting and it clicked. He said something to this effect. . If we were going to go skydiving and I told you there was a 1 - 2% chance your parachute would work, would you actually jump?
At the point in my training that he said that, I had been working to put my scale away and stop obsessing about the number....but I hadn't been able to do it. But in that moment, it finally connected for me. I had been trying to get to that number and stay there via dieting for almost 25 years. Why would I keep doing something that wasn't working. I finally realized....I need to "fix my parachute" (my mindset) if I want any plan to work out the way I had hoped.
And so began the total transformation in my mindset toward dieting. I'm so grateful!