Stage 2 is NOT a "Diet"

Are you on a "diet" or are you practicing a healthy routine?

How do you frame what it is your are doing?

It matters!

Many times people who struggle with their weight develop a "diet mentality" when they decide they are going to try to "lose weight".

For me, I am practicing a "healthy routine". Now, losing weight may be part of that healthy routine if I am overweight or obese when I begin the process, but it ain't no "diet!" I have learned to re-classify my daily actions in light of what I am trying to accomplish, which is to live a healthy lifestyle.  What I do is no different than an athlete who has a goal and is "in training" to accomplish that goal!

Therefore I'm not on a "diet" in order "to lose weight". I happen to be "in training" for living an optimally healthy life!

In our program there are 6 stages to living an optimally healthy life.

1) Preparing for your journey
2) Reaching a healthy weight (which, by definition, is necessary to live a healthy life!)
3) Transition to healthy eating
4) Live the Habits of Health
5) Optimize health for your age
6) The potential to live a longer, healthier life

As you can see, reaching a healthy weight is simply the SECOND stage of my healthy life training! It is the second stage out of SIX STAGES! Yet most of us seem to concentrate and zero in on viewing the second stage as the ONLY stage, and we tend to classify it in our self-talk (and what we tell others) as "I'm on a diet".

I am desiring to live a healthy life, that is my goal, and I am taking the steps in order to LIVE A HEALTHY LIFE! I am not taking steps to "be on a diet".

Blah! Yuck! Who wants to do that? "Diets" are temporary things where people force themselves into a chronically deprived state, can't eat any yummy things, and feel bad about themselves! That is not what I am doing!

I am simply in a stage of change from previously living an UNHEALTHY life, or being in a state of "Dis-Ease", to living a HEALTHY LIFE!

And that process began when I prepared for my journey and made the choice to do it! That process doesn't "begin" when I am at a "goal weight" and "then I'll be happy".

I'm happy NOW! I'm in training for a healthy life! I've engaged in the process to LIVE a healthy life, and I am on the path to it! I'm not on no stinkin' DIET!

Now, stage 2, which is "Reach a healthy weight" necessarily involves putting my body into a state where it is highly encouraged to utilize my EXCESS weight (fat) as energy. I do that on purpose. It is part of the plan, it is part of "Reaching a healthy weight". The way in which I do this is very scientific, clinically proven safe and effective, and harnesses the science of weight loss perfectly so that I don't have to figure it all out on my own by devouring "diet books" or reading about the "latest celebrity fad". All I need to do is follow a structured eating plan and make MY day look like a day in the Quick Start Guide. If I do that day in and day out, I am accomplishing stage 2 automatically.

Athletes use "sports supplements" to optimize their training and performance goals. Protein powders. Sports gels. Meal-replacement bars. They do this because it gets them where they want to go, it allows them to live the life they want to live. I am no different in this respect. I also use "supplements" and I call them "fuelings". Just as athletic and sports supplements provide athletes exactly what they need to get the right kind of fuel for the results they want, my fuelings or "supplements" get ME the right kind of fuel for the results that I want, appropriate to the stage I am in! It is really NO DIFFERENT.

I don't focus on the things I "can't" have. I don't even look at it that way. I look at is as "what CAN I do today to further the process of the stage I am in?" I look at it with hope and optimism because the "attain a healthy weight phase" can take me into the next stage provided I follow the plan! No muss, no fuss, no pining over yummy things that aren't ON the program. Why would I? They don't appeal to me. They won't take me where I want to go! I'm in training for a healthy life, and this is the new healthy me, so why would I "cheat" my dreams and risk NOT living the life I want to live?

Just some thoughts for today on how to "reframe" your journey. Let's not get "stuck" in the "Stage 2 loop" endlessly because we are viewing it as a diet. Diets don't work. There is so much beyond stage 2, so let's move through stage 2 and into the rest of our "health" by taking the steps necessary to MOVE us through stage 2 and into stage 3.

Rinse and Repeat!