Tag Archives: lose

Will Losing Weight Make You Happy?

Posted on February 6, 2015 | 3 comments

thanks-weight-scale
I know that you’ve heard that losing weight is not the key to happiness and will not solve all your problems. But, after 30 years working with thousands of clients and readers losing weight, I can say without reservation, that they become incredibly happy. As they shed the pounds, my clients show an amazing transformation in their mood and quality of life. To describe them as ecstatic would not be an exaggeration in most cases. There is no question that losing weight makes people happy.

What is happiness? Happiness is a state of being. It’s the experience of joy that you’ve known when something terrific happened, like getting that job you were hoping for. Do you remember how great you felt when you finally got the job you wanted, or that great car you had your eye on, or when you went on the best vacation of your life? You were tremendously happy, right? That’s what I see in my clients every week. It’s what my readers write in the mail I get from my them. It’s what I feel everyday as I practice the method that helped me solve my weight problem 30 years ago, losing 140 pounds after 25 years of failing at diets. It’s what my clients feel every day they practice what I teach them. Yes, losing weight will make you happy if that’s something you’ve struggled with.

before and after #2

This is me before and after my weight loss, and believe me, I am much happier, much of which is due to my successful weight loss. (Read about my method in my book, The Anderson Method.)

This is not to say that if you are unhappy weight loss will fix everything. It is not the magic key to happiness.

While weight loss is my specialty, I am a licensed mental health counselor who has helped people with all sorts of problems, from severe and persistent mental illness to the more common problems people face, like depression, anxiety, stress disorders, and adjustments to traumatic experiences like the losses of loved ones, relationships, career, or hopes and dreams.

If you are overweight and unhappy, I’m sure losing weight will make you happy as you succeed, but shedding some weight will not result in long-term happiness if it is done the wrong way or it is the only thing you seek to change. In fact, a focus on weight loss alone can make one more unhappy if it is approached improperly.

For instance, if you don’t like yourself, if you are mad at yourself for one reason or another, you may think that losing weight will fix that. While solving your weight problem permanently would certainly help your self-esteem, fixing your relationship with yourself has got to occur as a priority above and before anything to do with weight. We need to love ourselves regardless of circumstance, fat or fit, with our successes and our failures. That’s more important than weight loss. That has more to do with long term happiness. When we adopt a habit of compassion and forgiveness of people for their human failings instead of passing a judgement of eternal damnation, healing can happen. And that goes for us as well as others. Without it, we don’t get better. Without it, we get stuck in the disorder.

If we go about losing weight the wrong way, we won’t learn how to change ourselves permanently, and we’ll gain it back. In that case, we’ll be making ourselves miserable instead of happy. I know, because I did this for 25 years before I developed the ability to succeed. We need to equip ourselves with scientific, medical and behavioral truths instead of nonsense. If we keep ourselves ignorant of the truth, our head filled with myths, we’ll have no hope of ever solving the problem. Using diets and plans that are not science-based, and plans that are not focused on making permanent changes in behavior and habit, is a prescription for misery instead of happiness.

You may have to undergo a conversion experience, replacing some of your most closely held beliefs with more worthy ones, based on whole health and science rather than diet gossip and folklore.

Here are a few examples of the belief swapping that needs to be a part of this conversion:

1) The way a person looks and how much they weigh is not the measure of them. We need to stop believing that the way a person’s body is made makes one better than another. It’s a superficial and ugly way to think. We need to value and respect all people, regardless of how they look and what they weigh.

2) We need to stop believing that self-control and other personality characteristics are a simple matter of character and “will-power.” It’s a mistake to believe that all people have the same drives to deal with. It’s foolish to believe that we really know what causes our feelings and behavior. There are unknown forces at play. It’s wrong to believe that we are in charge and we simply choose our feelings, desires and other inner experience. Multiple powerful factors cause our feelings that result in a huge appetite or no appetite, attraction to men or attraction to women, preferences in music or sports and other characteristics of our personality. We are born into a body and brain that we did not choose or create ourselves, and then we have to figure out how to live in it. However, we do not have to be helpless passengers in this journey of life, taking no responsibility ourselves. Some things, we can change. Some of us have a more difficult time changing than others, while some seem to have been born into perfect conditions. Good for them. I was not one of them. However, I do not have to be a helpless victim of my unique circumstances and neither do you. Change is possible. We may have it harder than others, but blaming ourselves or anyone else for it is as unhelpful as using our unique characteristics as excuses. The solution is to accept the hand we’ve been dealt and learn how to make our lives and ourselves better.

3) We need to stop believing that failures and a history of quitting makes us defective. I heard a coach say, “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” Hearing that made me sick. I had a history of failing and quitting just about everything that was really hard. In time, I came to realize that what the coach said was not true. Sure, people who were able to persist, who could tolerate the tough trials, did better. But I learned that persistence is not a matter of having never quit. Persistence is getting up and working at it again. Look at how a baby learns to walk. They keep falling and going at it again. Sometimes, they quit trying and go back to crawling. But they keep trying to stand and walk. After a while, they are falling less, and eventually, not at all. It’s the same with finding and doing what makes permanent weight loss. Like a baby, people who are successful fail and quit many times. But they keep getting back up, and eventually, they are doing well enough to be fit for life.

If you are overweight, I guarantee that losing weight will make you happy. I encourage you to go for it. I encourage you to relish the joy and happiness it gives you. At the same time, I guarantee that there are other things you need to change about yourself, and with that, you have a chance at lasting happiness, not just a flash in the pan.

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The TGIF! Diet — Why It Works

Posted on January 9, 2015 | Leave a comment

TGIF Diet Day healthy breakfast

No, we’re not talking about the restaurant. We’re talking about how I lost 140 pounds 30 years ago and kept it off with what has been called the TGIF diet. I wrote the book about it! The Anderson Method

I teach a lifestyle where five days a week we are quite austere, like people on a diet, and then, for two days, we are more relaxed, eating more normally on the weekend. I had tried and failed to lose my excess weight for 25 years until I discovered how to succeed with this method. So can you. We win every day, every week and every weekend, work hard M-F and then it’s “Thank God It’s Friday!” It’s a great way to live.

On the weekends we are able to do the things people normally can’t do if they are trying to lose weight. On the weekends we go out to dinner without denying ourselves, have drinks and deserts without guilt, and we go to parties while not denying ourselves a good time. Then, Monday, it’s back to work, nose to the grindstone. And when Friday comes, it’s TGIF! I lost all my excess weight doing this, 140 pounds in 18 months, and I’ve kept it off for three decades.

I’m not talking about bingeing on the weekend or having a free-for-all on weekends where anything goes, and then feeling lousy about it afterwards. They are not “cheat” days. They are carefully formed habits of eating everything I like and want in ways that prevent me from being overweight. It’s a matter of training and reprogramming, like becoming addicted to healthy eating instead of overeating. Also, I am enjoying the food more than ever before, guilt free! All of the eating habits I’ve developed have been carefully created so that I’ve learned how to eat all the foods I like and want in ways that have allowed me to lose all the weight I wanted to lose, and keep it off.

In order for this to work, you need to learn about the metabolic rate you’ll have at your goal weight (there is no mystery to this) and then learn about the caloric values in all the foods that you like to eat. Instead of learning how to diet and lose weight (only to gain it back when we go back to “normal”), we learn how to eat what we like in a way to become and stay at our desired weight for the rest of our life. We actually train and reprogram ourselves to eat what we like in the quantities that will fit into our caloric budget (low on weekdays, then up to our burn rate, but not over, on weekends) and we practice this until it becomes habit. I’ve found there is almost nothing I need to cut out of my life to succeed. Everything I like can fit into the plan somewhere.

In this way, we avoid the experience of losing weight while we punish ourselves, only to become worse overeaters when the diet is over. In the typical diet approach, people do something strange for a while, lose a bit of weight, get sick of the dieting and then go back to the habits that made then overweight, only worse. They regain more than ever, returning to unstructured, unconscious eating of incredibly caloric foods without knowing it and without realizing what they are doing. Immediately after losing weight, most people begin literally training and programming themselves to become chronically overweight and addicted to overeating.

Needless to say, there is more work involved than having a shake or prepared meal that some company sells, or simply starving yourself for a while. We have to actually learn about the food we really eat, and train like a musician or athlete to act habitually in ways that keep us fit. We develop a kind of “muscle memory” of the mind with our eating habits. And like people who become skilled in sports, it’s a mental game, where the mental techniques to master will, motivation and execution are the most important aspect of the sport. But oh, the glory and pleasure of the victory.

Here’s the link to the article as published on The Huffington Post:      

                          The TGIF! Diet — Why It Works

 

 

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Say “Yes!” to Goals for 2015, Not Resolutions

Posted on January 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

before and after #2This is me, before and after I finally discovered how to succeed with permanent weight loss.

As the New Year begins every year, the subject of New Year’s resolutions comes up, and with it, comes a flurry of opinions.

Is it a good idea or a bad idea to make resolutions?

Most of us have a history of making resolutions, most having to do with diets and exercise. Then we promptly fail to keep them and we feel like defeated failures in the very first week of the new year. It’s an awful feeling I know too well from the 25 years I struggled against obesity, until I finally discovered the solution, lost 140 pounds and kept it off for 30 years now.

So, here’s my take: don’t make resolutions, which are promises to do or not do something, ever, that you’ll most likely be unable keep. Sticking perfectly to your resolution is unlikely, and with most of us, the failure causes us to say “the heck with it” and give up trying all together.

Instead, sit down and write out some hopes and goals for your life, and then for the year. What have you got to lose? You won’t be any worse off if they don’t happen.

I personally know of and teach the incredible, almost mystical power of having written goals. I talk about this in my book, The Anderson Method, and I lead counseling clients through a detailed training process in goals orientation that yields almost miraculous results.

I was pretty much an undisciplined wreck as a young person, constantly making vows in the morning to do one thing or another, then losing my motivation and belief by noon most days. I often could not follow through on just about anything that didn’t feel good, whether it was writing a letter, starting a diet, applying for a job or even doing something as simple as making a phone call. By the time I was 30, I was over 300 lbs., smoking like a chimney, in terrible health, without a college degree, a successful career or the financial means to live a nice life.

However, I was a good (though painfully pokey) student of psychology. I had become a self-trained scholar in behaviorism, the psychology that studies how we acquire and dismiss habit, experience motivation and shape the behavior that produces the results of our lives. Among the many lessons I learned is that we are naturally goal-seeking, goal-oriented creatures. This is why I want to encourage you to embrace your hopes and dreams and write down your goals. You see, it is our nature to select goals to attain and work to attain them. If we don’t do this consciously, we do it unconsciously. If we haven’t consciously chosen goals to attain, we unconsciously select from those that are suggested to us, like those that our parents, bosses, peers and the advertisers suggest, or we simply act to satisfy the call of our pleasure-seeking reward systems and do what feels good, avoiding what doesn’t. If we are not acting on attaining the goals we’ve chosen to aspire to, we end up acting on other impulses, seeking toys and treats that seem to promise the satisfaction we need in life. We end up working, watching, texting, spending and eating our lives away as if those things will fulfill us. The problem is that they don’t. The satisfaction is short-lived, and we end up needing more, overworked, overweight and poorer for it.

I had to hear the advice to write down my goals for years before I started actually doing it, but when I did (together with using other Therapeutic Psychogenic technique) my life completely changed.

I solved my lifetime obesity problem and lost 140 pounds permanently. I not only completed a college education, but I completed graduate school training in clinical counseling and psychotherapy. I obtained the Florida Medical Quality Assurance license to be a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and established a successful private practice. I wrote a successful book. I created a rewarding lifestyle of living, boating and fishing in one of the most beautiful places on earth. All of these things were only pipedreams when I first summoned up the courage to admit to myself that I would actually want those things to happen. That happened when I wrote them down.

When I first wrote them down, I actually thought they were too unrealistic to think of as goals, but I was encouraged to admit my dreams and goals. What would I like to have happen in my life, if by some miracle they could happen? There was nothing to lose in confessing my dreams.

I don’t want to suggest that this was all I did to succeed at weight loss and the other accomplishments. There are lots of other pieces of the Therapeutic Psychogenic mechanism that I used and teach. Like the parts of a car, you need them all assembled to be able to get anywhere. Leave important parts out and you go nowhere. But writing down your goals is one of the most important, the foundation and starting point that everything else grows from.

I make this point today because you will hear over and over again that you should not make resolutions, and some people will hear “don’t set goals.” That would be a tragedy. A friend’s mother thought that if you didn’t hope for too much, you wouldn’t be disappointed. However, she didn’t hope for much, didn’t get much, and she was still disappointed! I agree that making resolutions is a bad idea, but I think writing down your goals is absolutely neccessary if you want your life to get better.

I also make this point today because you’ll also hear that it’s a good idea to make resolutions. But that sets you up for an almost certain sense of failure when you break your vow, which results in a loss of hope and a reluctance to try again to make things better. Again, I agree that making resolutions is a bad idea, but I think writing down your goals is absolutely neccessary if you want your life to get better.

Take the time this week to go off by yourself with a pad of paper and make some lists.

Make a dreams list. If all things were possible, what would you like to have happen in your life? Then make a five year goals list. Five years from now, where would you like to be? Make a one year goals list. If you were on your way to the five year goals, where would you be and what would you have done at the end of this coming year? What do you want to make sure you do this year? Want to lose weight? Eat healthier? Take a vacation? Write them all down. Things that take effort and initiative don’t happen by accident. Accidents happen by accident. So be deliberate in telling your mind what you want it to do. Don’t leave it up to chance, and certainly don’t leave it up to what others want of it.

When I wrote down my goals, it’s not like they all came true overnight. I would write out what to do this month, this week and today. Most days, weeks and months I only made a little progress, sometimes none. Most years I made only a bit of progress on some. But I started getting better. And look what happened! The year I started writing out goals, things got better, and one year has been better than the last. What if that started happenning for you?

So, forget about making resolutions, especially to stick to a diet. If your goal is to be a certain weight at the end of the year or to lose a certain amount of weight, what do you think your goal for next week should be? Everybody says “I know what I need to do, I just can’t do it.” I guarantee you you don’t know.

What you need to know is not about diets and exercise routines. It’s about your mind and how to retrain it. So, if your goal for the year is to lose weight and keep it off, your goal for this coming week should be to read my book!

You can make your life better. I can teach you how . It starts with a vision of what you’d like it to be, a picture with the details described. Start using written goals. You’ll be surprised what can happen.

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Say “Yes!” to Goals for 2015, Not Resolutions

Posted on December 30, 2014 | Leave a comment

weight loss image before and afterThis is me, before and after I finally discovered how to succeed with permanent weight loss. As the New Year begins every year, the subject of New Year’s Resolutions crops up, and there comes a flurry of opinions about it.

Is it a good idea or a bad idea to make resolutions?

Most of us have a history of making resolutions, most having to do with diets and exercise. Then we promptly fail to keep them and we feel like defeated failures in the very first week of the new year. It’s an awful feeling I know too well from the 25 years I struggled against obesity, until I finally discovered the solution, lost 140 pounds and kept it off for 30 years now.

So, here’s my take: don’t make resolutions, which are promises to do or not do something, ever, that you’ll most likely be unable keep. Sticking perfectly to your resolution is unlikely, and with most of us, the failure causes us to say “the heck with it” and give up trying all together.

Instead, sit down and write out some hopes and goals for your life, and then for the year. What have you got to lose? You won’t be any worse off if they don’t happen.

I personally know of and teach the incredible, almost mystical power of having written goals. I talk about this in my book, The Anderson Method, and I lead counseling clients through a detailed training process in goals orientation that yields almost miraculous results.

I was pretty much an undisciplined wreck as a young person, constantly making vows in the morning to do one thing or another, then losing my motivation and belief by noon most days. I often could not follow through on just about anything that didn’t feel good, whether it was writing a letter, starting a diet, applying for a job or even doing something as simple as making a phone call. By the time I was 30, I was over 300 lbs., smoking like a chimney, in terrible health, without a college degree, a successful career or the financial means to live a nice life.

However, I was a good (though painfully pokey) student of psychology. I had become a self-trained scholar in behaviorism, the psychology that studies how we acquire and dismiss habit, experience motivation and shape the behavior that produces the results of our lives. Among the many lessons I learned is that we are naturally goal-seeking, goal-oriented creatures. This is why I want to encourage you to embrace your hopes and dreams and write down your goals. You see, it is our nature to select goals to attain and work to attain them. If we don’t do this consciously, we do it unconsciously. If we haven’t consciously chosen goals to attain, we unconsciously select from those that are suggested to us, like those that our parents, bosses, peers and the advertisers suggest, or we simply act to satisfy the call of our pleasure-seeking reward systems and do what feels good, avoiding what doesn’t. If we are not acting on attaining the goals we’ve chosen to aspire to, we end up acting on other impulses, seeking toys and treats that seem to promise the satisfaction we need in life. We end up working, watching, texting, spending and eating our lives away as if those things will fulfill us. The problem is that they don’t. The satisfaction is short-lived, and we end up needing more, overworked, overweight and poorer for it.

I had to hear the advice to write down my goals for years before I started actually doing it, but when I did (together with using other Therapeutic Psychogenic technique) my life completely changed.

I solved my lifetime obesity problem and lost 140 pounds permanently. I not only completed a college education, but I completed graduate school training in clinical counseling and psychotherapy. I obtained the Florida Medical Quality Assurance license to be a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and established a successful private practice. I wrote a successful book. I created a rewarding lifestyle of living, boating and fishing in one of the most beautiful places on earth. All of these things were only pipedreams when I first summoned up the courage to admit to myself that I would actually want those things to happen. That happened when I wrote them down.

When I first wrote them down, I actually thought they were too unrealistic to think of as goals, but I was encouraged to admit my dreams and goals. What would I like to have happen in my life, if by some miracle they could happen? There was nothing to lose in confessing my dreams.

I don’t want to suggest that this was all I did to succeed at weight loss and the other accomplishments. There are lots of other pieces of the Therapeutic Psychogenic mechanism that I used and teach. Like the parts of a car, you need them all assembled to be able to get anywhere. Leave important parts out and you go nowhere. But writing down your goals is one of the most important, the foundation and starting point that everything else grows from.

I make this point today because you will hear over and over again that you should not make resolutions, and some people will hear “don’t set goals.” That would be a tragedy. A friend’s mother thought that if you didn’t hope for too much, you wouldn’t be disappointed. However, she didn’t hope for much, didn’t get much, and she was still disappointed! I agree that making resolutions is a bad idea, but I think writing down your goals is absolutely neccessary if you want your life to get better.

I also make this point today because you’ll also hear that it’s a good idea to make resolutions. But that sets you up for an almost certain sense of failure when you break your vow, which results in a loss of hope and a reluctance to try again to make things better. Again, I agree that making resolutions is a bad idea, but I think writing down your goals is absolutely neccessary if you want your life to get better.

Take the time this week to go off by yourself with a pad of paper and make some lists.

Make a dreams list. If all things were possible, what would you like to have happen in your life? Then make a five year goals list. Five years from now, where would you like to be? Make a one year goals list. If you were on your way to the five year goals, where would you be and what would you have done at the end of this coming year? What do you want to make sure you do this year? Want to lose weight? Eat healthier? Take a vacation? Write them all down. Things that take effort and initiative don’t happen by accident. Accidents happen by accident. So be deliberate in telling your mind what you want it to do. Don’t leave it up to chance, and certainly don’t leave it up to what others want of it.

When I wrote down my goals, it’s not like they all came true overnight. I would write out what to do this month, this week and today. Most days, weeks and months I only made a little progress, sometimes none. Most years I made only a bit of progress on some. But I started getting better. And look what happened! The year I started writing out goals, things got better, and one year has been better than the last. What if that started happenning for you?

So, forget about making resolutions, especially to stick to a diet. If your goal is to be a certain weight at the end of the year or to lose a certain amount of weight, what do you think your goal for next week should be? Everybody says “I know what I need to do, I just can’t do it.” I guarantee you you don’t know.

What you need to know is not about diets and exercise routines. It’s about your mind and how to retrain it. So, if your goal for the year is to lose weight and keep it off, your goal for this coming week should be to read my book!

You can make your life better. I can teach you how . It starts with a vision of what you’d like it to be, a picture with the details described. Start using written goals. You’ll be surprised what can happen.

 

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The TGIF! Diet

Posted on December 9, 2014 | 4 comments

Did you know that The Anderson Method has been referred to as The TGIF! Diet for 30 years? Stay tuned for the explanation. (Those familiar with my method already know.)

Addendum 1/9/15: Here’s the article I wrote in The Huffington Post explaining it:  The TGIF! Diet — Why it works.
Group of friends having lunch with glasses of wine at table, smiling

No, we’re not talking about the restaurant. We’re talking about how I lost 140 pounds 30 years ago and kept it off with what has been called the TGIF diet. I wrote the book about it! The Anderson Method

I teach a lifestyle where five days a week we are quite austere, like people on a diet, and then, for two days, we are more relaxed, eating more normally on the weekend. I had tried and failed to lose my excess weight for 25 years until I discovered how to succeed with this method. So can you. We win every day, every week and every weekend, work hard M-F and then it’s “Thank God It’s Friday!” It’s a great way to live.

On the weekends we are able to do the things people normally can’t do if they are trying to lose weight. On the weekends we go out to dinner without denying ourselves, have drinks and deserts without guilt, and we go to parties while not denying ourselves a good time. Then, Monday, it’s back to work, nose to the grindstone. And when Friday comes, it’s TGIF! I lost all my excess weight doing this, 140 pounds in 18 months, and I’ve kept it off for three decades.

I’m not talking about bingeing on the weekend or having a free-for-all on weekends where anything goes, and then feeling lousy about it afterwards. They are not “cheat” days. They are carefully formed habits of eating everything I like and want in ways that prevent me from being overweight. It’s a matter of training and reprogramming, like becoming addicted to healthy eating instead of overeating. Also, I am enjoying the food more than ever before, guilt free! All of the eating habits I’ve developed have been carefully created so that I’ve learned how to eat all the foods I like and want in ways that have allowed me to lose all the weight I wanted to lose, and keep it off.

In order for this to work, you need to learn about the metabolic rate you’ll have at your goal weight (there is no mystery to this) and then learn about the caloric values in all the foods that you like to eat. Instead of learning how to diet and lose weight (only to gain it back when we go back to “normal”), we learn how to eat what we like in a way to become and stay at our desired weight for the rest of our life. We actually train and reprogram ourselves to eat what we like in the quantities that will fit into our caloric budget (low on weekdays, then up to our burn rate, but not over, on weekends) and we practice this until it becomes habit. I’ve found there is almost nothing I need to cut out of my life to succeed. Everything I like can fit into the plan somewhere.

In this way, we avoid the experience of losing weight while we punish ourselves, only to become worse overeaters when the diet is over. In the typical diet approach, people do something strange for a while, lose a bit of weight, get sick of the dieting and then go back to the habits that made then overweight, only worse. They regain more than ever, returning to unstructured, unconscious eating of incredibly caloric foods without knowing it and without realizing what they are doing. Immediately after losing weight, most people begin literally training and programming themselves to become chronically overweight and addicted to overeating.

Needless to say, there is more work involved than having a shake or prepared meal that some company sells, or simply starving yourself for a while. We have to actually learn about the food we really eat, and train like a musician or athlete to act habitually in ways that keep us fit. We develop a kind of “muscle memory” of the mind with our eating habits. And like people who become skilled in sports, it’s a mental game, where the mental techniques to master will, motivation and execution are the most important aspect of the sport. But oh, the glory and pleasure of the victory.

Here’s the link to the article as published on The Huffington Post:

The TGIF! Diet — Why It Works

 

 

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