2.2 Mental Set

Here is the hard­est thing you will have to do: stop fo­cus­ing on your weight.

Your goal is to im­ple­ment the SWLL; it doesn’t mat­ter what the scale says. Your pri­ma­ry mea­sures are things like: Have I re­duced my fat in­take? How much aer­o­bic ex­er­cise did I do to­day? What is the trend of steps tak­en, as re­port­ed by my pe­dome­ter? Were to­day’s meals suf­fi­cient to al­lay hunger while keep­ing with­in my calo­rie tar­get? Have I binged this week?

This is akin to learn­ing to play the pi­ano. Your long term goal may be to give a con­cert at Carnegie Hall, but right now you have to mas­ter the scales. Similarly, your long term goal may be to have a svelte, healthy, and ath­let­ic body, but right now you need to im­ple­ment the com­po­nents of the SWLL.

Does this mean that you must ig­nore your weight? No, it is per­fect­ly ac­cept­able to weigh your­self ev­ery day and to track the re­sults. What is not ac­cept­able is to be­come dis­cour­aged be­cause you are los­ing weight slow­ly. At first you may not be los­ing any weight at all. But that’s OK. If you con­sci­en­tious­ly adopt the SWLL you will in­evitably at­tain your weight goals.

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