Weight Loss Role Models

There really are people who have done it.  They have lost 50 or 150 pounds and have kept it off.  They have radically changed their lives.  Best of all, they know how they did it.

They can tell you:

– The diet they used and why it worked for them.

– The diets they tried that didn’t work for them.

– What changed in them between being unsuccessful and successful.

– What pitfalls to watch out for.

– When you’re talking like an addict and need to have some sense beat into your head.

– What it’s like being thin after being fat for a long time.  They can describe the joy, the freedom, the energy, the life they have access to.  They can inspire you like nothing else, until you have your own successes to keep you motivated.

– Tips and tricks for filling snacks, strategies to make it through hungry days, warnings about whose diet salad dressing tastes like Vaseline, and how to really liven up a diet shake with some sugar-free salted caramel syrup.

– How a thin person orders in a restaurant and avoids the buffet at cocktail parties.

– That you’re not alone.  They can reassure you that the isolation, fear, anxiety, panic, or sadness you’re feeling is totally normal.

– To believe in yourself.

– That change is possible.

You need these messages and information.  Trying to change from a fat person to a thin person is an incredibly difficult undertaking.  It involves rearranging all of reality in your head, as well as making big changes in the physical world.  It’s hard to keep the faith.

Role models who have walked this road before you can make the difference.  They’re not hard to find.  They’re on the discussion boards of any of the big diet programs or sites.  They’re there giving back to others who are where they used to be.  It’s the same urge to extend a helping hand that makes people be sponsors in recovery programs.

Take the helping hand.  Thank them for their advice, even if you aren’t really ready to hear it.  If you don’t like the advice, remember it’s not an attack.  It’s intended as help.  If it’s not the help you want right then, that doesn’t make them wrong. 

Do you remember any previous times when you were stuck in something unhealthy for you?  Remember how invested you were in whatever self-destruction or addiction you were acting out?  That’s often true for fat people as well.  There is a lot of abuse hurled at the “vets” by people who are just starting out with their recovery—or hoping for a magic pill and not actually in recovery at all yet.  Don’t abuse them, because you will want them later.  Remember the mood swings and psychotic bitchery discussion from Chapter Six, and try to keep yourself in check.

Thank them as often as possible for showing the way.  Their presence in your life is a gift.