Losing Weight

With motivation, patience and a huge helping of self-esteem, you can sculpt your weight worries into positive change.

Ann Donaghy* knew she was overweight after she graduated from college. Though she regularly wore men’s clothing to hide her size, she continued to avoid the issue of losing weight. “I realized I had a problem when I went to the doctor and she told me that I weighed 225 pounds,” Ann says. “Even my tall, 5’11” frame couldn’t hide the weight.” It was that moment when Ann realized something had to change.

Maybe you’re in the same boat as Ann—your clothes feel snug, your face looks fuller and you feel lethargic. If so, you’re not alone. According to national data, nearly 66% of all Americans—about 144 million of us—are overweight or obese, nearly double the statistics of the 1980s.

With a change in her diet and the addition of an exercise routine, Ann was able to lose 80 pounds over the course of a year. “Today, I have more energy and confidence to walk down the street with my head high,” she says. “I know that I’ll never allow myself to be like that again.”

It’s clear that we must take matters into our own hands and make important lifestyle changes in order to lose weight. When it comes to losing weight, “the most important thing is to start,” advises Greg Joujon-Roche, founder of Holistic Fitness, which provides specialized programs to Hollywood actors. “People don’t realize how quickly their bodies can change if they truly commit to it.”

Your Ideal Weight

To begin your weight loss journey, you need to determine your weight loss goals. The first step is to figure out your current body mass index (BMI), and your ideal BMI (and weight) for your height and body type. To determine this, you should schedule an appointment with a doctor or registered dietician. Also, information is available online at the Center for Disease Control’s web site or Revolution Health. Every person’s body is different and these BMI charts are only guidelines: Your ideal weight may be different than someone else of the same height.

One way to find the right weight loss goal for you is to “think about the lowest amount of weight you’ve been able to sustain as an adult,” says Elisa Zied, spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association and author of So What Can I Eat?!: How to Make Sense of the New Dietary Guidelines for Americans and Make Them Your Own. “Aiming too low can just set you up for failure and may be unrealistic to maintain in the long-term.”

No matter how much weight you need to lose, a sure path to success includes setting realistic weight loss goals during your first 30 days and beyond. Start in small chunks and work up from there. Zied suggests starting with a goal of losing 5% of your current weight and give yourself a generous amount of time to do it, thus avoiding a setup for failure. For example, if you weigh 200 pounds, your initial weight loss goal should be 10 pounds. If a healthy weight loss rate is about one to two pounds a week, it could take three months or longer to lose that weight. Dropping pounds any quicker and you may be damaging your health or setting the stage for a yo-yo dieting pattern.

“Anything that is worthwhile takes time, and you need to give yourself time to make the healthful weight loss habits stick,” Zied explains.

Fueling Fitness Through Food

With all of the fad diets out there—a new one every day, it seems—it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when trying to find the right one for you. Any healthy diet addresses a basic equation: Your body weight equals the energy from calories you take in from food minus the energy you burn through activity and body function. It would seem, then, to lose weight, you simply must eat less and exercise more.

Unfortunately, that concept is simple in theory and difficult in practice. “Body weight has so many factors beyond simple energy intake and expenditure,” says Zied. When you throw in stress and emotional eating, “hidden” calories in low-fat food and plain old laziness, it can become much more difficult to consider that equation—let alone balance it.

When creating your diet plan, look for the basics of healthy weight-conscious eating, including lean protein, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and water. Balancing energy and activity will promote weight loss, and a diet that you enjoy is one that you’ll be able to stick with for the long haul. If you’re unsure about the elements of a healthy diet, do some research into the most popular diets and choose the one you think you can stick to.

Derek Zar was able to lose 200 pounds by paying attention to his diet. He gave up soda and late-night fast food runs, and started listening to his body’s natural hunger cues. “After a while, I started to see the difference in my cravings: This type of craving meant water, this type of craving meant food,” he says. “Eventually, you go on automatic pilot—you start realizing you don’t need food now.”

Exercise is the other essential ingredient for losing weight. According to the National Institute of Health, only 29% of Americans engage in vigorous physical activity outside of work, while a whopping 59% get little to no vigorous physical activity in their lives.

Just as one diet can’t fit all, the same goes for an exercise routine. Most experts recommend 30 minutes of moderate activity three or more days a week to maintain your weight. In order to lose it, you’ll need to double that amount of activity. A pound represents 3,500 calories, so to lose one to two pounds each week, you’ll need to run an average 500-calorie deficit each day.

Snack on Self-Esteem

Your mental approach to losing weight is just as important as your diet and exercise plan: If you believe you can succeed, you will. “Attitude is everything,” says Cindy Allison*, a 45-year-old mother of two with a history of an eating disorder. She was able to lose more than 100 pounds, and she owes her success to the right mindset. “You have to be willing to try and fail and try again—to honestly believe that you’re important enough to deserve the effort to take care of yourself,” she says.

Research supports the role of a positive attitude in weight loss. A 1996 University of Maryland study compared “believers” (those who thought they could lose weight) with “disbelievers” (those who did not believe they could follow a healthy program). After nine months, believers lost 30% more weight than those who lacked faith in themselves.

Maintaining a positive attitude also worked for Nancy Gilman, a mother of two who reached 250 pounds at the age of 35. Nancy found a balanced approach to weight loss while using nutritional supplements, which helped her change her attitude about weight and health. “All of a sudden, I believed change was possible,” she notes. She realized that her negative mindset had undermined her weight loss. “I definitely started with some disempowering beliefs,” Nancy remembers. “I believed that in order to be thin, I had to be sick. My choices were to be either fat and healthy or thin and sick.”

“During your first 30 days, don’t judge yourself. Get out of your own way. Just show up and love yourself,” explains Joujon-Roche. You can build a better attitude by noticing the negative statements that go through your mind, then turn them into positive ones. Instead of saying “I can’t lose weight because it’s too hard,” try “I’m worth the effort and I will reach my goal.” Rather than “I fell off my diet—I’m a failure,” try “I can take this setback as a learning opportunity.”

You should also work on unpacking any emotions that you’ve associated with food. Do you reach for it when you’re bored or sad? Have you come to rely on it as a comfort when you’re unhappy? Ask yourself these questions when you grab for something to eat or avoid that gym visit. Remind yourself that food is for nourishment and energy, not for comfort.

Weight Loss Shortcuts?

If you take your cue from the media, weight loss seems easy with the latest potion or exercise gadget. According to the University of Connecticut in Storrs, 65% of diet pill users think that a pill can help them lose weight. But don’t believe the hype; most diet pills are not regulated by the government, they often have unpleasant side effects (like jitteriness or oily stools) and are often just a distraction from the difficult lifestyle and attitude changes you need to make to lose weight.

“Pills and quick-fixes can sometimes work over the short term,” notes Zied. “But over the long term, it comes down to diet and exercise. If weight management were that easy, we would all be thin and fit since that’s highly desirable in the appearance-obsessed world in which we live.” With very low calorie diets, meal replacements, diet pills and other shortcut strategies, people inevitably regain weight unless they make significant lifestyle changes.

For men who need to lose 100 pounds or more and women needing to lose at least 80 pounds—particularly if other serious weight-related health issues like type 2 diabetes, heart disease or sleep apnea are present—weight loss surgery may be a viable option. Margaret Furtado, R.D., of the Massachusetts General Weight Center, a medical and surgical weight loss center in Boston, notes that surgery becomes an option only when other strategies have failed multiple times. “Even then, the team may not recommend surgery if the patient would not be safe,” she says. Untreated life issues such as substance abuse, depression and eating disorders sometimes must be addressed first. You can learn more about these procedures and explore whether you’d be a viable candidate through the National Institutes of Health.

Even if you’re a candidate for surgery, it’s far from a magical cure. “Patients who come to the Weight Center soon realize that this is not the easy way out,” says Furtado. “Weight loss surgery is not a panacea, and our patients must change their mindset and relationship with food and activity to maintain a healthy weight.”

Staying Motivated

It’s a great accomplishment to lose 10, 20 or even 30 pounds, but for those who need to lose 50 pounds or more, this may only be the beginning. The most elusive aspect of a weight loss regimen is maintaining that motivation to reach the finish line.

“Surrounding yourself with positive people is a great way to stay motivated as you’re losing weight,” says Zied. “Having people listen to you, not sabotage you but give you positive reinforcement when you’re making lifestyle changes can help rev you up, help you overcome obstacles and help you win at weight loss.”

Some people need personal motivation to keep them going. Jason Tirotta, a 28-year-old university media relations representative in Cleveland, lost nearly 100 pounds after watching his father’s health deteriorate after a lifetime of smoking and being overweight. “I didn’t want that to happen to me—and I was heading down that path,” he says. The memory of his dad continues to motivate him in challenging times. “I wrote his initials on my shoes when I completed a big marathon in great time, and I reached down and touched them every time I felt myself start to drag,” he says.

Joujon-Roche says that people need to remember that they’re losing weight not only to be skinnier, but to improve their overall health. “I see lots of people who are perfect when they’re filming, but after filming wraps, they fall off the wagon,” he says. “They didn’t have the restorative aspect and they didn’t have balance.”

The experts acknowledge that dieters often experience ups and downs. But with real commitment to a weight loss lifestyle that includes healthy diet and physical activity, the next 30 days can be the beginning of achieving a slimmer you for life!

*name(s) changed.