We often hear that diets don’t work and the popular statistic is that around 95% of people who lose weight gain the weight back and add a little more to the scale as well. Sounds discouraging but looks can be deceiving. A University professor once told me that statistics were like prisoners because if you tortured them enough, they’d tell you just about anything.

            Most diets do work initially. Most people do lose the weight they’re looking to lose or at least a good portion of it. Where diets often fall apart is how they often fail to address the foundational patterns of thought the dieter holds regarding issues of self care, self respect, self love, self acceptance etc. The bad food and bad lifestyle habits, which make someone gain weight, are merely symptoms of what they believe. You can change the food inputs for a short period (and call it a diet) but what happens when a person’s old belief system is waiting for them after the diet is over and that old belief system is structured in such a way that it will always provide the same unhealthy outcome?

            We often hear that food or exercise are the factors that impact a person’s weight and that’s true but what about the belief systems, which drive a person to always choose poorly for themselves? Are the patterns of poor self care the real issue and the food choices just symptoms of something deeper going inside the mind? If there is something going on deeper inside the mind and those issues are not addressed, what are the chances the person will keep the weight off permanently after a successful diet?

            I often work with smokers and I started to notice that if they quit cigarettes, they would take up something equally abusive to the body like over eating ice cream. As a health coach, I would next work on eliminating the ice cream yet when that was accomplished, maybe they would start consuming excess amounts of alcohol. Next we would work on the alcohol but the cycle was obvious and frankly never ending. There was an obvious pattern of behaviour where the person themselves were a target of abusive, by their own hand. There was no other way to describe it. I never look at anything and try to make it fit what I believe. I believe what I see and work backwards.

            When a client enters my office, I tag the condition they come in as “the crime scene.” I observe what results they’re having in their life and work backwards into the belief systems that could produce such results.

            After seeing over 1000 clients, it became obvious that there is much illogical behaviour occurring. Many of my clients were pretending to diet and then eating take out foods at night. (obviously breaking the diet). Many were paying for my help in advance but missing appointments. (obviously expensive and a waste of money) There were long histories of failed gym memberships, home exercise equipment purchases that were never used, failed diet attempts, exercise videos never watched etc.

            To me it was obvious that there appeared to be two forces at play inside the mind and one of those forces were continually sabotaging any effort regarding betterment, therefore producing the consistent cycle of attempt and failure. Looking at the client’s life (the crime scene), this was the only logical conclusion and my research confirmed this was frequently observed by many others in the health field. What I was witnessing was already a huge topic, generally known as self sabotage.

            Could there be another part of the mind that could derail a person’s attempt to become a better version of themselves and if so, where did such mental programming come from? More importantly, could you reprogram the mind in such a way that a person would always choose self care over self abuse? Could you make a person a walking self love machine instead of person who continually placed themselves at the wrong end of their own proverbial shot gun? The answers are yes on all accounts and I will continue this series in the next article. For more information like this, you can follow me on facebook. (Jason Christoff)