Weight Loss and the Illusion of Control

Investigate many popular weight loss offerings today and you’ll find the notion of control trotted out as the be-all-end-all of what they promise. Gaining control over your weight is certainly a seductive promise but one that’s based on illusion. The illusion being, that control is a positive thing.

But if you consider what control really demands and what it fosters, you would come to realize that it’s actually a negative concept. Control is characterized by having a tight reign on behaviours through rules and restrictions. These constraints demand a great deal of time and energy to monitor and rely heavily on discipline and willpower to adhere to. Moreover, control fosters a low degree of trust — an important element in personal growth and improvement. Focusing on control is essentially doing nothing more than managing your weight into submission.

Managing something into submission is hardly a solid foundation for building a long-term, healthy relationship with it. Imagine the reaction you would get from a child or an employee you were bent on controlling. Once you shared your long list of musts, shoulds and have-to’s, you hover anxiously over their every move. There’s definitely no room for mistakes or learning here; the outcome is clearly one of do-as-you’re-told obedience rather than conscious-choice discernment. Can you spell r-e-b-e-l-l-i-o-n? Isn’t this ultimately what happens with your weight loss efforts under the tight fist of control?

What’s the alternative? Letting go! Letting go of those unnatural rules and restrictions and focusing instead on creating the supportive environment that will allow your natural, healthier behaviours to emerge. It’s important to note that the more dependent you’ve become on constraints over the years, the less in tune you’ll be with your natural behaviours and the more difficult letting go will be for you to entertain.

So let me offer a compelling argument. There’s an old tv commercial where a driver stops at a service station to ask the attendant for directions to his destination. After much thought and deliberation, the attendant finally declares “you can’t get there from here”. Let’s assume your weight loss destination is one where you’re at a healthy weight and free from preoccupation with it. If you’re focused on control, no matter what route you try you can’t get there from here! You will not be exploring the behaviours nor developing the skills you’ll need to release your grip on your weight issues.

And that grip may be pretty tight if you’ve experienced the initial but limited success that comes with control. Remember, this is an illusion. The real path to weight loss success requires questioning your conditioned thinking; it requires leaving your comfort zone and being willing to let go and “freefall” a bit towards something better. A life coach is well-versed in the type of questioning it takes to develop new, more useful perspectives for yourself; they can also provide the framework and support that will enable you to stretch beyond your current experience to put these new perspectives into practice, helping you embrace your excitement as well as face your fears along the way.

The end result? Empowerment with your weight — empowerment that only comes from operating from your natural behaviours and developing a high degree of trust in yourself. Now that’s a promise worth hanging your hat on.