Loose weight quick! quick!

……..and the list goes on and on and on …………If you’re like me, these phrases will get your heart racing, excitement builds up inside you, the voice in your head starts shouting, “Yes! Yes, this is the one, this one will work, you just need to stick to it and you know it will work!! All it takes is a little willpower. You can lose 20kg’s in 3 days!! You’ll look great! You can wear a bikini, you hair will become long and shiny, your eyes will turn blue, your legs will lengthen, your toes won’t look like fat sausages anymore and your stomach will show a six pack of rock hard abs!”

On top of all of this, the product you’re looking at will be screaming for attention, “Yes! I can do everything the little voice in your head said I can do! Pick me pick me! I’m not that expensive. Only R499.00 for a bottle of pills that will last you one WHOLE month!! You don’t have to go hungry. In fact, you can eat EXACTLY the same things you’re eating now! You don’t even need to do any exercise! Fruit and vegetables are optional. All this for under R500.00!! Pick me, you know you want to………go on………I dare you…… Do it NOW before stock runs out!” Never mind the fact that you’re looking at rows and rows of the same product strategically placed at eye level and you’re the only person in the shopping aisle.

Then the next product starts screaming and the next one and the next one – oh no, that magazine is calling me, and in a surprisingly sexy voice it says, “Look at me, I have the secret, all you have to do is eat white chalk for a month and you’ll lose ALL your fat and to top it all off, your metabolism will be corrected FOR-E-VER. Guaranteed!!”

And last but not least, don’t forget how you couldn’t eat for five hours in between your meals. Do you really want to go back to all of that? You were broke for most months because all you could think of was the next potion you could take, that one pill you could drink and wake up the next morning 15kg’s lighter than you were the day before, those miracle drops in your water and that wonderful belt which shocked the living daylights out of you every time you took a breath.

Come on now, you know that you need to be sensible. Eat healthily and exercise. This is all it takes. I repeat, eat healthily and exercise. I am your voice of reason, I have spoken, let no man shut me up.” It’s easier said than done (well in this case I didn’t really SAY it because the voice is in my head).

The voice of reason is a wonderful thing, it keeps you from jumping off tall buildings, from trying to get out of a moving car, from eating that mouldy cheese when there’s nothing else in the fridge and it will even sometimes stop you from kissing that gross guy when you’re blindly drunk (emphasis on sometimes). But for some reason, the VOICE OF REASON can never shout loud enough when it comes to the next ‘fat loss remedy.'

I firmly believe that there are at least 3 voices in all of our head’s (some people have a lot more but hey, who’s counting?).

• The voice of reason is one of them.
• The second one is that desperate little voice who wants to try EVERYTHING and ANYTHING to lose weight.
• The third voice needs no introduction but ladies and gentlemen I’ll do it anyway……..drumroll please……..tada!! I give you………THE REBEL!!!

The rebel is louder than the desperate voice and a heck of a lot louder than the voice of reason. The rebel works in two ways and causes havoc whenever it clears it’s throat.

1. The rebel will tell the desperate voice not to listen to the voice of reason and to buy the next miracle product even when the same voice of reason is throwing an impressive tantrum.
2. The rebel will convince the desperate little voice that the body really needs that chocolate even though you’ve already had
3. Yes, I feel it with my whole being.

So even though the rebel wants you to go against the voice of reason and buy all those ‘lose weight quick fixes’, it also wants you to act against ‘the diet’. Not much help, this rebel – now if only I could find a way to shut IT up.

If you Google the words ‘LOSE WEIGHT’, you will get a response of 19 500 000 pages in 0.22 seconds (give or take a few milliseconds). That’s nineteen and a half million pages of weight loss advice and information (and I think I’ve read almost all of them).

What I would like to know is, how many times a day around the world does someone look up something on the internet, in a magazine, on an old piece of paper handed down from generation to generation, in a health shop, chemist, grocer, shoe shop (because you can find it just about anywhere) to find out how to lose a few kilo’s?

Well, I don’t know the answer so I’m sorry to disappoint you but what I do know is that this weight loss industry has made billions and billions – and that’s just off me!! Okay, I’m kidding, but you know what I mean.

Besides researching, people are talking about it almost everyday to their friends and family, weighing themselves, and generally just stressing about how much they weigh and how they can lose weight. And every time you see someone who has lost an impressive amount of weight – you want to know how they did it, what it cost and where you can get it. Some go even further to lose weight - injections, weight loss surgery and even plastic surgery.

I was about 8 or 9 years old when I started gaining weight. I don’t ever remember it being a problem until the girl’s next door were having a conversation about where their bones were sticking out. Not to be left out, I proudly announced where MY bones were situated. One of them laughed and said, “Candice, you don’t have bones, you have HARD FAT!!” I wasn’t impressed. I think I might even have cried about it. But ever the optimist, I didn’t let it get me down – or so I thought. I’m sure that if it wasn’t such a problem for me I wouldn’t have remembered it.

I was 13 when I was taken to a slimming club along with my mother and my older sister. My sister was in matric at the time and wanted to lose weight for the dance, and my mother asked if I also wanted to go (to the slimming club, not the dance). Being 20kg’s heavier than my peers, OF COURSE I WANTED TO GO!! Finally I could be ‘normal’.

We had this group leader who always said this one line which we thought was hilarious and every time when our class was done my sister and I would mimic her and say: “Smell it!! Don’t eat it!!” True story. I of course preferred to smell it and then eat it. And if I didn’t lose any weight that week, I would make up an excuse like ‘I didn’t go to the toilet yet’. She in her infinite wisdom would send me right then and there to the loo to shed that extra weight. I kid you not.

I lost about 8 kg’s (yay me!!) but as diets go, I got bored and tired of counting all the carbs, proteins and how much vegetables and fruit I ate. Inevitably the weight just piled back on again. How many times have you heard that?! (My sister looked stunning for her matric ball though.)

Considering that I was bigger than my peers, I was never uncomfortable in my clothes (the ones that fitted). I think I wanted to prove that even though I was overweight I could do what thin people could do and sometimes even do it better than them. I swam, played volleyball, netball, did gymnastics and could even read as well as some of them (I hope you caught my little joke there, because it IS meant to be a joke. I can read, really I can).

I went to an all-girl’s high school where our gym teacher regularly weighed us. My weight was constant at 75kg’s. That’s 20kg’s more than the rest!! I think that’s when I became addicted to looking at the numbers on the scale. At my worst (last year) I was getting onto the scale up to 4 times a day!!

I never knew how much weight I lost because I never weighed myself. I ate what I wanted, when I wanted. Yet it never occurred to me that even though I wasn’t feeling deprived of any foods, that it was still possible to lose weight. I never thought constantly about losing weight as my focus was elsewhere. So of course, the weight came off without me even thinking about it.

So, the focus was off weight loss, I was eating what I felt like eating and I was getting regular exercise. I had the secret to weight loss in Holland but as soon as I hit home soil, all was lost!!

When I arrived back home in South Africa, everything went back to normal. My old eating habits, no exercise and now that everyone told me how good I looked when I came back, I wanted to lose more, I wanted to hear more about how thin I was getting. But the more I wanted to lose, the more I gained and gained and gained until I went to Australia in 1997.

After the trip to Sydney and Perth I came back home and had my photo’s developed – whoa mamma!!! I hadn’t realised how much weight I had gained until I saw those pictures. I decided to join a slimming club again (I did this quite often over the next 10 years, join a club, leave – gain weight, join again, leave – gain weight, join again. I think you get me). I weighed in at 88kg’s!! The heaviest I had ever been (not counting what I weigh now of course)!! But (whoohoo!!) all those months of hard work paid off. I lost 15kg’s! I felt great and I now weighed 2 kg’s less than I did at high school!! Bonus!!

The wonderful thing about children is that they love their mommies unconditionally. They think you are the most beautiful person in the world, and when they tell you everyday that they love you, it makes having them all worthwhile. So I don’t regret gaining all that weight during my pregnancies at all.

In between and even during the pregnancies I rejoined the slimming club and left a few times (as I so eloquently explained before). I knew that this eating programme was healthy and that I needed to exercise as well but I was one of those people who couldn’t stick to an eating programme, no matter how flexible it was. I used to weigh in on a Wednesday and after each gruelling step on the scale I would buy a packet of hot chips or a chocolate or anything I wanted (which actually defeated the purpose). I thought I deserved it because I had dieted so hard the previous week.

In between all this joining and leaving, I was taking pills, drinking shakes and taking drops in my water (just imagine what this must have done to my metabolism!). I was speaking to people who had lost weight hoping it would rub off on me…….I had been to Shape workshops where Cari Corbet-Owen gave a talk and I even attended one of her workshops but still I believed that I needed to lose weight in order to be happy. It never occurred to me that I could be happy as I am.

So, I joined the slimming club AGAIN!!! And again I got bored and blah, blah, blah, you know the rest.

Then I came across Cari’s website – Mind Over Fatter – which I had saved a while back under my favourites on my web browser. After some thought (the voice of reason was questioning me again) I ordered the programme. I am now on a journey of self discovery and self love.

I accept that weight loss is not the final destination to happiness but I still have a long way to go in changing my mindset. In the back of my mind that desperate little voice is still trying to convince me that I need to lose weight in order to be happy. And the rebel is still telling me to EAT IT, DON’T SMELL IT!! But the voice of reason is getting louder every day and it’s getting more talk time than ever before…

Now I have a new voice in my head which says: I am beautiful exactly as I am and I have family and friends who love and accept me regardless of my size….. This is what life is about and what makes it worth living. Hearing my four year old daughter saying, “Thank you my lovey dovey” when I give her a glass of water is an instant ‘pick me up’ that no shake or pill or even kilo lost can conjure up.

So, to all the lovey dovey’s out there, enjoy who you are and stop worrying about your looks and what other people might think of you. Chances are, they’re thinking about their own flaws, not yours.

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© Copyright ditch-diets-live-light.com 2008: Photos of Cari by Di Loria
Disclaimer: Your unique health situation may not allow you to stop dieting.
ALWAYS CONSULT WITH YOUR INDIVIDUAL HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL.
Neither Cari Corbet-Owen nor ditch-diets-live-light.com dispense medical advice.

SBI!