The Only Way Weight Loss Works

If you want to lose weight, you have to give up.

Losing weight is hard work.

You can’t just wake up one day and decide to drop thirty pounds.

There’s no such thing as motivation, either. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. Our only hope is habits. An abundance of tiny daily disciplines that add up over time.

The problem is that last word; “time.”

Today, if you decided you wanted to learn to play the piano, like really get good at it, you would immediately understand the commitment. The massive amount of time it would take you to transform from someone who couldn’t perform to someone who could.

Weight loss is no different. But we sure treat it like it is.

Instead of settling into months, maybe years of effort to lose those extra pounds, we overestimate the effects a few good weeks should have. Then, when our expectations don’t equal reality, we ditch everything and dive back into the behavior that got us all busted up to begin with.