This is not one of those pep talks where I tell you that failure is not an option, that you have to believe in yourself and summon your inner strength, or that you have to keep working harder and harder even when things seem hopeless and you wish you could give up. In fact, I hate that kind of attitude, at least when it comes to weight loss, because it just doesn’t work.
What this Article is Not About
The get tough, work harder, never give up approach can work for many things in life because they are finite. If you have to work hard you can force yourself to do so because there is light at the end of the tunnel. You will push yourself and get the result you want, or there is a natural limit at which point you can stop working regardless of the result e.g. a time limit.
This is not the case with weight management because it lasts a lifetime. It is impossible to work at something you don’t enjoy for your entire life – if it was possible just about everyone would succeed at weight loss because they could just work harder. So when I say that you shouldn’t use the word failure I don’t mean it in this sense, Im referring to something far more important.
If it’s Not a Failure, What the Hell is it?
When we don’t get the result we want it is typical to say that we failed or that the tool or method we were using failed. Sometimes this is true, but in weight loss it is only part of the story.
Failure is an outcome, not a cause. You must look at why something didn’t work and learn from it so that you can increase your chances of success in the future. The old adage that you learn more from your failures than from your successes is true. So if you have tried to lose weight ten times and you are still not at your ideal weight those are not “ten failures”, they are “ten learning experiences”.
Learning is Useless if You Don’t Know What to Learn
There are two things to look for when examining a past weight loss experience: things that worked and things that didn’t work. Even though your overall outcome was negative that doesn’t necessarily mean that there was nothing effective about the plan. For example, you may have enjoyed the exercise plan but not the diet, so the exercise plan can still be part of your new lifestyle. Also, while the diet as a whole may not have worked there may have been some foods or meals that you enjoyed, so they could be useful in the future.
When you look at why things failed you have to look as deeply as possible. For example:
- You didn’t lose weight because you didn’t stick to the diet
- Why didn’t you stick to the diet? Because you were hungry all the time so you went back to your old habits.
- Why were you so hungry? Because there wasn’t enough food at each meal.
- Why wasn’t there enough food at each meal? Because the daily calorie limit was too low.
- Why was the calorie limit too low? Because it was based on a theoretically ideal limit instead of using your existing calorie intake as a starting point.
In this example you would have identified that you weren’t getting enough food because you cut your calories by too much. That made you hungry so you started overeating again. But what if there was a different reason?
- You didn’t lose weight because you didn’t stick to the diet.
- Why didn’t you stick to the diet? Because you were hungry all the time so you went back to your old habits.
- Why were you so hungry? Because there weren’t enough meals.
- Why weren’t there enough meals? Because the daily food allowance was split into three meals and you are used to eating six times a day.
So here we have the same basic cause, but the root cause is deeper. That is why it is important to learn the true cause of the failure – it gives you clues about what is likely to succeed.
In the first example the solution would be to reduce your calorie intake by a smaller amount. For example, if you failed by dropping from 3,000 to 1,500 calories a day, you could try going from 3,000 to 2,000 or even 2,500 the next time. This will create a calorie deficit but it is not a drastic change. You will be eating an improved amount of food that is still similar to what you are used to.
In the second example the solution would be to split the daily food allowance into five or six meals instead of three. Even though the total amount of food will be the same the frequent feedings may have a greater satiating effect, and it would be mentally easier to go for two or three hours between meals than six or seven hours.
Modify or Overhaul?
In both those examples you have found something that needs to be modified – you would eat the same foods but just increase your calorie allowance, and you would eat the same amount but split it up differently. So you have found something that was partly a success and partly a failure. But sometimes you may have to try something completely different:
- You didn’t lose weight because you didn’t stick to the diet.
- Why didn’t you stick to the diet? Because you didn’t like the foods and meals and you were hungry all the time.
- Why didn’t you like the foods and meals? Because you had to eat foods that you don’t like the taste of and avoid foods you do like.
- Why were you hungry all the time? Because the meals were too small and infrequent, and the foods were not filling.
So in this case you need to start all over again because there is nothing good about this diet and nothing that can be modified to work better. You would have to choose or create a new eating plan that includes foods you like and avoids those you hate, and eat more food and/or identify some Helpful Foods so that you are not starving all the time.
If at First You Don’t Succeed…
If you don’t know why your plan failed you will probably make the same mistake again. Most people who fail to lose weight end up trying the same thing or something similar again. The only difference is that the promise to try harder. Their assumption is that they failed, that there is something wrong with them and not with the plan, and that they will succeed if they just keep trying.
That old proverb “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” is flawed. While it encourages persistence, which is a good thing, it also blinds you to the fact that there is a reason you didn’t succeed. This article looked at a couple of simple examples, but there are countless reasons that a weight loss plan could turn out to be a learning experience for you rather than a total success.
Rather than just trying again, the advice really should be “if at first you dont succeed, try something different”. It doesn’t have to be radically different; maybe something just needs to be modified or improved slightly to suit your unique needs. But something definitely needs to change, otherwise you will get stuck in an endless cycle of poor results from which you learn nothing, and that is the only true way to fail.
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