Weight Loss Pledge: Making and Keeping It

Have you noticed we tend to make the pledge to lose weight at night (again? finally? once and for all? for real this time?)? Okay, maybe it is mid-afternoon...but it seems like we never pledge to lose weight early in the day. And when we do make the pledge we always want to start "tomorrow."

I figure we make the pledge to start the next morning because we want the fresh slate of a new day...or maybe because we want the head start not eating while we sleep gives us!

But how many mornings arrive where we find our resolve has vanished. Maybe we wake up hungry, or maybe it is something else.

My theory is we feel fatter later in the day. Our bellies distend a bit further from food not yet digested. We swell from water retained in our not properly flushed systems.

We wake feeling less bloated and gravity hasn't worked its black magic on us...weighing us down all day long yet. This can lead us to thinking that maybe our situation isn't really that bad. Poof, our best laid plans from the night before disappear on the cool morning air.

So why is it that there is an abundance of weight loss pledges made and so few kept? It has got to be more than the difference between evening and morning.

I believe one of the reasons the pledges slide away so easily is because the night before we were committing to a diet and all the negative connotations behind that word hidden by the shadows of darkness are strong in the light of day.

Instead of dieting, (we do know that diets don't work, right?) let's commit to Refusing to Diet.

And let's do it right now.

No matter what time it is. Don't say "tomorrow."

If you are feeling compelled to say "I really want to lose weight" then the time to start is NOW not in the morning. Not tomorrow. Not Monday. Not on the 1st. Not next year. It is NOW. This instant.

Because it isn't about a diet. It isn't about restricting yourself for chunks of time known as days or weeks or months. Losing weight successfully is about making small changes that you can live with--for a healthy lifetime.

So raise a big glass of water and toast to your health--from this moment:

I choose to regain my health and drop this excess weight. I Refuse to Diet and here's to my healthy, energetic, slender body--I deserve it!

Cheers to that!