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Asking the Tough Questions

Answering these three whys with honesty could kick-start your weight loss.

By Bob Greene, bestselling author of The Best Life Diet.

If you're like most people who are trying to lose weight, you want to do so in order to look better and feel better about yourself — that is, you want to be happy. But weight loss alone cannot make you happy. If you're an emotional eater, real joy is going to come only if you address the issues that send you running to the refrigerator. Do that and you'll improve all aspects of your life, make the weight-loss process easier and ensure the results are permanent.

The first step on this journey is to ask yourself some tough questions, which I've outlined below. I recommend that you write down your answers. By formalizing your responses, you're less likely to get distracted, and you may be surprised at what gets put on paper once your pen starts moving.

1. Why are you overweight?

Answers to this question are often along the lines of "I have a desk job," "I don't have time to exercise," or "I have to keep sweets in the house for my family and I can't resist them." These are what I call surface responses, or attempts to take the pressure off yourself and put the blame elsewhere.

What I want to hear instead are authentic feelings and reasons that you overeat. If you sit down on the sofa with a carton of ice cream after you put the kids to bed, it's not because your kids demand you have ice cream in the house, but maybe because you're worn out by the kids and need to reward yourself. Or perhaps you have a meeting with your boss the next day, and eating ice cream soothes your anxiety. Why, in other words, are you eating? What's the deeper reason?

I understand that many people are reluctant to admit their personal weaknesses; nothing else that can make you feel as vulnerable. But getting over your fear of the truth and then admitting how your life needs to change is going to set you on the path to change.

2. Why do you want to lose weight?

The common answer, "I want to look better," is a surface response, and I encourage you to dig deeper. Why do you want to look better?

In pursuing weight loss, most people are pursuing happiness. It's important, though, to think about how exactly you see weight loss bringing you happiness. Can becoming thinner really make all the other worries in your life go away?

I get concerned whenever someone ties weight loss to happiness, because there are only two possible outcomes. Either you never reach the size you're hoping for and you're unhappy, or you do lose the weight only to find it doesn't make you happy. This almost always leads to the misuse of food and back to being overweight. Losing weight isn't the key to happiness — happiness is the key to losing weight.

I'm not saying that losing weight along can't bring you some degree of happiness. It can. But take the focus off how losing weight is going to make you look and put it on how losing weight can help you improve your life.

3. Why have you been unable to maintain weight loss in the past?

If you don't believe in your ability to lose weight, you probably won't achieve weight-loss success. Many people have a core belief that they're not meant to be happy or deserve happiness; they'd rather have their beliefs confirmed than achieve true happiness, and so they find ways to sabotage themselves.

Take the time to think back on what caused you to fail in the past; it's another opportunity to take a close at your attitudes and your actions and the relationship between the two. If you've ever gone on a weight-loss program only to revert to your old habits, examine what triggered you to lose control of your eating. If you can discover what it is, you'll have a good clue about what in your life is driving you to eat. It's also quite possible that your attempt to lose weight was thwarted by an eating and exercise plan that was too rigorous or not rigorous enough.

Truthfulness is one of the keys of success in any endeavor, including weight loss. It's crucial to take the blinders off and see who you really are, why you do the things you do, and what's really going on in your life. Admit your weaknesses and you can do what you need to do to change them.

About the Author

Bob Greene is an exercise physiologist and certified personal trainer specializing in fitness, metabolism and weight loss. He has been a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show. He is also a contributing writer and editor for O, The Oprah Magazine, and writes on health and fitness for Oprah.com. Greene is the bestselling author of The Best Life Diet, Get With the Program! and several other books.

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