Is Losing Weight Actually the Wrong Goal?

We need to overcome the negative stereotypes to focus on the real goal of a healthy lifestyle

By Bill Zolis

You eat too much, you don’t exercise enough, you get fat, right? Sure, end of story. But if there’s one thing that our common sense will tell us, based on what we see around us and our own experience, it is that it can’t possibly be as simple as that.

All the negative stereotypes around excess weight and obesity – you know what I’m talking about — are causing a lot of people a lot of anxiety and guilt and uncertainty. But let’s think this through and try to apply some common sense. We’re not doctors, but – wait, hold on a second here, a 2007 Physicians Health Study, published through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the U.S., found that 40% of doctors were overweight and that 23% were obese.

Just sayin’.

What that means to me – just common sense, if you’re still with me on that – is that if being overweight was just caused by lack of motivation or self control or whatever, then the very intelligent, highly educated, hard-working, strongly motivated and well-informed members of the medical community would not still be struggling with the same issues at such a rate.

If you go to reputable sources of information from people who are not pressuring you to buy something, such as the Mayo Clinic, you’ll find that everything we know about weight management can be summed up in two words: healthy lifestyle.

So I’m thinking that our workplace wellness programs would be more successful – and our people would be more motivated – if we could just forget the negative stereotypes about people who are overweight and, more important, if our programs were designed to tell people that it’s okay to stop believing all those negative things about themselves.

Never mind the fad diets, the miracle weight-loss programs and best-selling books that prey on anxiety – and that pop up in ads anytime you search “weight loss” on the Internet. Never mind all the health warnings about the dangers of being overweight that we are peppered with every day – okay, they’re right, we get it, but they’re a) not helping and, b) just making us feel bad. Never mind the popular view that being overweight is your fault – maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but let’s talk about what we can do about it. And the big one that just might get me in trouble with some of my readers: never mind weight loss.

Don’t get me wrong. Weight loss, for that 40 or 50 or 60 percent of us who could lose a few pounds, is a good thing and a desirable outcome. What I’m saying is that it may not be an appropriate goal to set, and I’ll tell you why.

Every reputable, non-fad, non-scam source of information I can find will tell you that “healthy lifestyle” is what it’s all about. (And, interestingly, I couldn’t find any that said choosing a number – say 30 pounds to lose – was a very good idea.)

Let’s set “healthy lifestyle” as the goal and let weight loss, by itself, take care of itself. Or, to put it another way, let’s work toward a healthy lifestyle with a goal of, yes, living a healthy lifestyle.

And let’s not forget that losing weight can be much, much harder for some people than it is for others. We can’t judge ourselves or measure our success on the basis of any one-size-fits-all benchmark of ideal weight. Some individuals may still need – and your benefits plan may need to accommodate – more specific supports such as nutrition counseling, cognitive behavioural support and even certain medicines if prescribed by a physician.

Like I said in a previous blog (Three Things I Learned From Doc Martin) “the goal here is to gradually reset your appetite, your eating habits and your metabolism, and get comfortable with some fairly moderate lifestyle changes that allow you to maintain a reasonable weight without worrying about it all the time.”

Setting a goal of losing a certain amount of weight may not be a bad thing, but the problem is that, when we get there, we find ourselves asking “Where do we go from here?” and having to fight every day just to stay in the same place.

But if we decide to live a healthier lifestyle as our goal, today, rather than as a means toward a goal of losing a certain amount of weight at some point in the future, we will quickly start to notice some important changes in our lives:

– we will by definition be focused on the long term right from the start,

– we will find that our goals are achievable every day,

– we will have goals and a program that are sustainable in the long run,

– we will be able to measure success in terms of the positive changes we make,

– we will feel better and worry about our weight less,

– we will start to be healthier, and,

– yes, we will stop gaining weight and then start to lose some of it.

This has to be a personal journey. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, or the stereotypes, or how easy it all seems on TV commercials to “lose 20 pounds in your first month!” or anything else. It’s about you, and about your choice to live a healthy lifestyle.

Losing weight is a difficult journey toward an end, and we don’t know what to do when we get there. Living a healthy lifestyle is an end in itself, and we find ourselves appreciating the journey more and more as we go along. Oh, and we’ll almost certainly start to lose weight along the way.

It’s not about arriving somewhere, some day, it’s about being in a good place every day.

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Workplace inspections: Here’s a link to a pdf of an employers’ guide to health and safety workplace inspections published by Peninsula Group. I think that you will find it interesting and useful.

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I really appreciate comments, ideas, suggestions or just observations about the blog or any other topics in benefits management. I always look forward to hearing from readers. If there’s anything you want to share, please email me  bill@penmore.com.

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