For about three decades I have been trying to loose weight.
I am not obese (at least not yet) but have extra 5-6 kilos which keep creeping up every time I lose them.
It takes mammoth amount of both mental and physical effort to loose extra weight, and I do manage to loose it, for say good 5 to 8 months and then it creep back on, almost unnoticed.
This week, I finally got the explanation, why it was happening.
“When a person who is overweight goes on a diet without changing or altering the self-image, any weight loss is temporary. That's why people gain and lose tons in a lifetime. Say you lose it. You're automatically programmed to find whatever you lose.” -Bob Proctor.
Our self-image is like a cybernetic instrument, similar to a thermostat. It measures deviations from our goals and immediately corrects the course.
In the back of my mind, I have an image of myself as an overweight person. Although I want to lose weight and take various steps to control my weight, I often tell myself that:
it’s hard to control weight in middle age,
it’s difficult to lose weight once you’ve gained it, and
body has a reason to store a bit extra fat in middle age, something to fall back on.
With these arguments, no wonder I was putting the weight back on.