I’m going to be honest with you. I’ve never met someone who successfully lost the last 10 pounds and then told me their life was different because of it.
That’s the big fairy tale. There’s this idea that losing weight changes you in some way other than the obvious physical change. People are tricked into thinking that emotional weight disappears when physical weight disappears. That stress evaporates. That fat cells are replaced by happiness cells.
That’s not how it works. Of all the factors that impact happiness, changing your physical body is one of the least influential. In fact, making that a goal is often detrimental to happiness. There’s an enormous cost to success in that paradigm. Time. Attention. Sacrifice. Obsession.
The reason weight loss slows down as you approach that “last 10 pounds” area is because your weight is normalizing and you’re very close to your body fat set point. This is a body fat percentage that your body is biologically programmed to defend. In other words, it’s not really supposed to go lower than that.
If you want to go lower you have to force it. That’s not something I help people do because it’s antithetical to having a body AND LIFE you love. If you insist on pushing, you can easily end up with a body you love and a life you hate.
Happiness can’t be achieved that way. It can’t be achieved through weight loss at all. It’s achieved through other relevant factors, some of which I talked about in 8 Critical Vitamins You Can’t Afford to Be Deficient In.
If you’re still not convinced, here’s some additional insights into what losing the last 10 pounds can cost you:
– It will require cutting calories when the body doesn’t need to cut calories. This is a huge stressor on the body and will eventually degrade your health.
– It will take away from what you’re able to invest in your spouse, kids, and family. You’re going to have to commit to a large amount of exercise, a no-frills diet, and an unhealthy level of obsession.
– Instead of doing things you love, you’ll have to do things according to a very specific plan. There will be very little spontaneity in your life.
– It depletes your margin—the extra room in your life that keeps you from falling off the edge of the stress cliff. Life without margin is an unhappy life.
– It will affect your social life. You will lose friends. You will lose opportunities to connect. You will have a hard time nurturing relationships.
– You won’t be able to relax. All the work required to lose the last 10 pounds is required to maintain that result. You’ll be stuck in an endless cycle and your worth will be tied up in your weight and the ability to maintain your new persona.
If you change your perspective and let go of this arbitrary goal, you can be happy now. That’s what I want for you and what I hope you want for yourself. Stop obsessing over weight and start focusing on nourishment, health, energy, vibrance, mood, and love.
By changing your perspective, you can stop worrying about the last 10 pounds of physical weight and focus on losing the last 10 pounds of emotional weight. You can dramatically change your relationship with food, body, and self. That’s a mission to be proud of. And that is how you arrive at a place of true happiness.
