Sunday, March 16th, 2008...5:28 am
Lose Weight or Die
How’s that for a scary headline? But what if this was literally true in your life? What if you were told by your doctor that if you didn’t lose weight, adopt healthy eating habits and start exercising you will likely die soon of a heart attack. Would you change?
The research says you wouldn’t. Alan Deutschman in an article he wrote for Fast Company.com called Change or Die said the odds are 9 to 1 against you changing.
Dr. Edward Miller, the dean of the medical school and CEO of the hospital at Johns Hopkins University studies patients who have undergone bypass surgery, a risky and very expensive procedure. He mentioned that many patients could avoid the return of pain and the need for repeat surgery by switching to a healthier lifestyle. Yet very few do.
“If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle,” Miller said. “And that’s been studied over and over and over again. And so we’re missing some link in there. Even though they know they have a very bad disease and they know they should change their lifestyle, for whatever reason, they can’t.”
It seems the fear of death fails to motivate people to change their lifestyle habits. In observation of patients, if a life threatening situation is encountered such as a person actually suffers a heart attack the person is typically scared enough to do whatever the doctor said, but this only lasted a few weeks. Dr. Dean Ornish who dedicates much time to this issue noted that:
death was just too frightening to think about, so their denial would return, and they’d go back to their old ways.
Dr. Ornish does not try to motivate his patients with the “fear of dying” approach, instead he motivates them with a “joy of living”. This helps them shift there focus from what they can’t do to what they can do and what life will be like when they improve their health. “Joy is a more powerful motivator than fear.” he says.
It seems that in order for someone to change their ways the message they receive must be positive, inspiring and stir an emotional want in the person.
When you go on a diet or start an exercise plan you can use this information to your advantage. Do not try to motivate yourself by creating fear such as telling yourself you are going to get heart disease of diabetes if you don’t do something or even on a less critical note, don’t focus on looking bad if you don’t lose weight or looking heavy at the beach this summer. These types of motivation will give you a few days of motivation but they will fade.
True weight loss and dieting motivation will come from focusing on what you stand to gain. Train your mind to focus on your target and create a vision of what life will be like once you are at your goal weight.
By simply changing your story from “lose weight or die” to “lose weight and live a great life” you will find the motivation you need to succeed.
Do you agree or disagree with this approach. Share you comments.
1 Comment
March 16th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
From my personal observations this is true…but all too often these events happen in the lives of people who have had a particular lifestyle for many years…and it is hard for them to really understand what needs to be done and stick with the doing…especially in light of the fact that there are so many contradictory messages out there…for years it’s been low fat—which only made me fatter and elevated my cholesterol because I wasn’t getting enough good fat and eating too many “poor” carbs…no one explained the difference to me or the physiology of it all—had I understood how my body processed the food I eat I could have made better choices…but the information is constantly changing…and when it comes to the food supply…so many processed foods on the shelves in the grocery store are not even, in my book, food capable of nourishing the body…they may prevent death if starvation were the issue, but they certainly do not prolong life or promote health…it’s going to take intensive training and education for people to understand and then apply what they understand…and if they don’t see results or hear in the interim contradictory evidence, they will become discouraged and figure what’s the point.
I think it’s terrible that our grocery stores are so full of junk…in a way it’s a travesty. Like the Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice “Cocktail”…I saw a TV special…the Ocean Spray executives were expressing how amazed they were that people actually spent a lot of money on mainly water and high fructose corn syrup . The were laughing all the way to the bank.
Doesn’t anyone bear any moral responsibility? Just because a willing buyer is out there, does it make it o.k. to take advantage of peoples’ ignorance just to get in their purse? That to me is the biggest shame.
Anything goes when it comes to increasing the bottom line…and in the food industry this practice puts us all in peril. “Buyer beware” is as true today as ever, but having a government who puts laws in place to protect us when it comes to food puts us in the frame of mind to think if it’s “allowed” then it must be o.k.
I’m thankful that we don’t have to worry about someone adding sand to our sugar to make a buck…the gov’t protects us from that….but while that isn’t the case, stuff is being put into our food, or called food that benefits us little if at all and in the long run harms us….
How many school kids’ lunch consists of bologna on white bread with mayo, potato chips and a Ding Dong? Terrible from nutritional standpoint…yet, that’s what I grew up on and I’m soon to be 58 years old…only I didn’t have Ding Dongs back then, it was a Hostess Chocolate cupcake…and I had ketchup instead of mayo on my bologna…that was my meal every day…along with a half pint of whole milk…a carrot stick or apple never crossed my lips…
Until we make health more important than the bottom line our country won’t change…and I don’t see that happening…as the Frenchman d’Tocqueville said in reference to capitalism—as long as America is good she will be great, but when she ceases to be good she will cease to be great. I learned that in elementary school. At the time I had no idea what it meant nor why it stuck in my mind. After becoming a Christian is made sense.
When the Golden Rule is cast aside, then each does what he deems right in his own eyes…and we are seeing that, truly, the love of money is the root of all evil.
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