Starting With Yourself

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the prevalence of obesity in the U.S. was 39.8% and affected about 93.3 million of US adults in 2015 and 2016. That number means that more than one-third of us are obese, and yet the success rate of long-term weight loss for overweight individuals is only 20% (Wing & Phelan, 2005). That statistic is defined by losing 10% of initial body weight and maintaining the loss for one year. Consider this staggering statistic; 70.7% of Americans are either overweight or obese, which means if you’re BMI is under 25, you are now the minority (Gussone, 2017). Examining these figures is quite troubling, and it stirs some questions. Will this trend keep inflating? Will it ever decline? What can we do to stop the obesity crisis?

Let’s start with yourself. According to the statistics above, you may not be taking good care of yourself. We’re much better at taking care of our pets than ourselves (Peterson, 2018). We need to understand that you deserve some respect! You are important to other people, just as you are to yourself. Furthermore, you have a vital role to play in the unfolding future of the world. Therefore, you have a responsibility to take care of yourself. You should help and take care of yourself the same way you would help and take care of someone (or dog) that you love and value. Consider the following ‘rules’ as a preliminary route for successful behavior change:

  • Realize the power of vision and direction—Who do you want to be?
  • Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not other people or social media posts.
  • The past is fixed, but the future could be better.
  • Small goals—”I want things in my life to be a tiny bit better than they were this morning.”

Let those rules sit with you a bit. They’re quite serious. Imagine if you lived by these rules for six months, one year, or even five years. Your life could be entirely different. Applied to weight loss or not, when your baseline of comparison grows each day, you get compound interest. You’ll be aiming for something higher each day. At this rate, losing weight will be just another notch on the belt, so to speak.

References

Peterson, Jordan. (2018). 12 Rules for Life, An Antidote to Chaos. Random House Canada.

Wing, Rena & Phelan, Suzanne. (2005). Long-term Weight Loss Maintenance. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, v. 82, i. 1. https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/82/1/222S/4863393

Gussone, Felix. (2017). America’s Obesity Epidemic Reaches Record High. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/america-s-obesity-epidemic-reaches-record-high-new-report-says-n810231

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2015). Adult Obesity Facts. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

About the Author: Sam Skelton, BS

Sam Skelton is an ACSM Certified Exercise Physiologist, a proud husband, and a father to two young boys. He enjoys surfing, guitar, and woodworking. Sam believes in the power and life-giving benefits of aiming for small goals each day. Sam also has a core strengthening series on [grokker.com] Grokker.

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