Get Lean for Life: How To Jump Off The Weight-Loss Rollercoaster

Have you ever looked in the mirror, gasped in horror at the bulge of flab hanging over your waistband and said, "That's it! I'm going on a diet"?

Yes? Join the crowd. Unless you're one of those lucky Metabolism Lottery winners who can eat everything in sight and never gain an ounce (in which case, why the hell are you reading this article?), you've probably played that little scene out more than once in the last several years.

I certainly did. Until I was married at age twenty, I worked mostly hard, physical jobs like landscaping or loading UPS trailers. I was a living, breathing calorie furnace. No pizza was safe in my neighborhood. I could eat and eat and eat and still fit into 30 inch waist jeans. Then I got married and some mysterious switch got flipped. Within a year, I ballooned from 165 lbs up to over 200 lbs. I was confused and not at all happy with the way I looked and felt.

I tried everything to reverse the weight-gain trend. You know, early morning jogs, switching to Diet Coke with my Quarter Pounder and Cheese meal deal, joining the gym, listening to the advice of slightly thinner friends, reading the latest blockbuster fad diet book. I did the Cabbage Soup diet, the Atkins Diet, the Zone plan. I even ordered diet pills from some sketchy online pharmacy in Canada.

The problem is, they all worked. Everything I tried helped me lose weight. Temporarily. After two months on the low-carb plan I was down almost thirty pounds. I took my fat jeans to Goodwill and kept grinning at my new thinner self in every mirror I walked past. You can imagine how horrible I felt less than a year later when I had to go buy a few new pairs of pants with the expando-waistband (you know, the ones which let you pretend you're wearing 34 inch khakis but actually stretch out a few more inches?). For more than a decade I rode the rollercoaster up and down and back up again.

I asked questions like:

What's wrong with me...am I just weak-willed, lazy and destined to be a tub of lard forever?
Did I get the fat-guy genes?
Is my metabolism past the point of no-return?

Hit the fast forward button a few more years. One day, in the year before I turned 35, I stepped on a scale and discovered that I had hit a new high water mark, so to speak. The little needle wiggled back and forth and finally came to rest between 235 and 240. Ugh! Something had to change, but I had no idea what to try.

You've no doubt heard that famous Zen proverb, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." This is exactly what happened for me. I met a wild and crazy fitness trainer who led me in a whole new direction. Sure, he showed me how to work out and designed meal plans to help me achieve the goal, but he added a priceless element.

My transformation guru showed me how to identify the reasons why. He showed me how I had always failed to maintain my weight because my relationship to this desired outcome was one-dimensional.

Here's what I mean: I had always wanted to lose weight because I couldn't stand to show up in an unattractive body. I was judging myself based upon an external social standard of perfection.

So, the real problem was my relationship to myself. Every time I would go on a diet, I would stay on-track just long enough for my body to not embarrass me in public. As soon as I got "there", I would lose my reason to maintain a basic discipline.

This led to a constant cycle of self-punishment (excessive exercise, crash dieting, etc.), self-criticism and disappointment. Around and around I went, briefly feeling good when I fit into acceptable-size pants but more often trying to hide my bulges or pretend I wasn't mindlessly over-eating.

My trainer knew that I needed two kinds of work: physical and psychological. He set me to doing pushups and climbing hills, but he also assigned journaling tasks to help me look at the less obvious causes of my pattern.

I discovered a few surprising belief-programs running in the background of my mind:

I am not good enough. As I examined my life as a whole, it turned out that I was in constant "prove-myself" mode. In my marriage, as a father, as a businessman, with my appearance...in every area of my life, I found nowhere to rest.
I have to work extremely hard to get what I desire. This belief is related to the first one, of course. I had a subconscious program running which said everything worthwhile in life must come at the price of enormous effort.
The only way I'll be accepted is to show up a certain way. Again, this is related to the first core belief: "I'm not good enough". I had to really face the fact that I didn't love myself unconditionally. I was very judgmental of my appearance, and, as a result, was convinced that everyone else was, too.

As I learned how to meet these erroneous belief patterns with love and acceptance, they began to dissolve. (Not all at once, of course. These were extremely deep-rooted notions and showed up with many different faces in my life.) Over time, I learned to be gentle with myself and how to find a more moderate, middle path.

In just about a year, I gradually lost 70 pounds. Amazed, I kept donating loads of old clothes to the thrift stores and cautiously buying pants I had been sure I'd never fit into again. Just over three years later, I'm gratefully wearing jeans with the same waist size as the ones I wore when I was married at age twenty.

People have often asked me since then, "What program should I use to lose weight? I want to do what you did..." I have to pause and think before answering. It's so easy to prescribe a bunch of do's and don'ts. But then I remember my own journey.

Here's the deal: pick any program, stick with it and you'll get results. If you're reading this, you've probably proven that it's possible to lose weight (and gain it back and re-lose it) over and over again. If you want transformation to stick, you will need to go beyond the gym and the calorie-counter. Add the element of self-discovery and genuine acceptance. From a new place of gentleness and love, you will find that the external behaviors are not so difficult anymore.

I have discovered that there is a way to completely enjoy life, exercise moderately and maintain a perfect body without the major ups and downs of the depressing diet rollercoaster. The key to freedom lies under all those half-hidden unconscious programs which run in the background. Find those and bring them into the light, and you can change anything in your life.

So, that's where to begin if you want to get off the weight-loss rollercoaster forever...

to explore this aspect of personal growth more, download your complimentary ebook/audio program titled: "Re-Map Life: Get Unstuck, Chart New Paths, Follow Your Bliss". Get this now by visiting http://www.YourAwakenedSelf.com. Jacob Nordby is the founder of this site, a speaker, transformation mentor and published author.