How to answer the question, and a musing on delayed gratification.

So maybe readers can help me out with this one. 

What do I tell people who ask me "How did you do it?  How did you lose all the weight?"

You know that the answer is long and complicated, not something that is easily distilled into a sound bite.  On the eating level, I have developed something like two dozen different strategies to help me control gluttony.  The exercise is easy to explain, but its effect is, I believe, mostly on my confidence and mental state.  And then there's the motivational strategies -- there are probably a dozen of those too.

I get the question a lot though.  "Look at you!  How did you do it?"

Yesterday my inner technical editor realized that there isn't a single answer or a single set of answers, because the inquiry represents two distinct questions:

1) What strategy and supporting tactics did you employ?  what did you DO?
2) Why did you succeed this time and not the other times?  How did you stick to it?

Some people are looking for an answer to (1), others to (2).

I also have to ask myself, what can I say that will really be helpful to other people?  My interlocutor might not need to lose weight, but maybe she will tell my story to someone who does.  Most people believe that "eat less, exercise more" is oversimple -- that is, though, what I did.  The only layer of complexity I added to it was that I chose to seek out "eating less" and "exercising more" each for their own sake.  I became motivated to eat less because I didn't want to be a disgusting glutton anymore.  I became motivated to exercise more because I wanted to be a person who exercised.  

Instead of delayed gratification (I ate less and exercised more and then I lost weight and that made me happy) I achieved sooner gratification (at that meal I ate less, I succeeded at defeating gluttony; this morning I exercised, I succeeded at swimming so many yards).  It is so much easier to be motivated when the gratification is close in time to the decision point.

Comments

[Christy P]

I think you got it there - you redefined your goals, and therefore success, into ones that were quantifiable and achievable not just on a daily basis but multiple times each day. Rather than focusing on a primary goal that seems so far away "Lose 40 pounds", you kept that as not just a secondary but even a tertiary or quaternary goal. The primaries were "Eat an appropriate amount at this opportunity", "Exercise today", "Let myself feel hungry for two hours from 10AM to noon". Each time you achieved one of these goals, it made you into an achiever, and if you didn't at one meal, then you weren't a complete failure, because you had a string of successes in your back pocket. It is really like the idea of intentional living. Making choices with thought behind them instead of reflexive action.

We talk about small goals in other parts of life, but I think the concept gets neglected with good eating and physical activity. Those lifestyle choices are seen as such an all or nothing prospect that people lose perspective.

[Jennifer (Conversion Diary)]

Wow, that is a great comment! Thanks for directing me to it. Just sent you an email, BTW.