By:  Brianne Binford, Fall 2017 Intern

That’s a great question and of course there is no real or easy answer to that question. In my time interning at Lifexcel, I have seen many different clients and have heard many different life  experiences from these clients.

The first step in the process of losing weight is to understand why you want to lose weight and get in touch with the reasons behind this desire. A lot of the process is mental and requires a desire to live a healthier lifestyle. The next step is understanding weight gain doesn’t happen overnight, so weight loss is going to be the same situation. Many of us look to a ‘quick fix’, however, those quick fixes are temporary and eventually, you are back to where you started. It is best to understand that when you learn a healthy diet, you will begin to see a gradual weight loss, it may be slower than those ‘quick fixes’, but eventually, you notice a change and begin to feel better.

At Lifexcel, I noticed a lot of clients would feel ‘guilty’ over something they ate or would be upset because they broke their ‘diet’. First, food is not something to feel guilty about, it is something to  enjoy and to understand how it works into your life. Second, diet is not the word we want to focus on when losing weight. We want to focus on a lifestyle and a path to a healthier person. I have been there and I understand what the client is feeling. We want to reward ourselves when we do something good, but we tend to do that with food. This is another thought process we have to change. We need to find another way to reward ourselves for our accomplishments.

I have seen many of these changes in clients at Lifexcel, there is a difference in how they handle client’s situations and make sure that everyone is ready to make this change in their life.  Lifexcel has shown me that their goal is to make the client healthy both physically and mentally. There are several different reasons we gain weight and we need to address those issues as well in order to get to our goals.

So why is losing weight so hard? Well a lot of the time it’s that mental piece we are missing. We are forgetting that we didn’t gain weight in a couple of months, so we may not lose weight in a couple of months. Also, we need to create a plan that is going to fit our lifestyle. When we are on ‘diets’ we could lose weight in a matter of weeks, however, diets do not allow us to either live our life or when we begin living it again, we gain back the weight. It’s important to learn how to eat healthy, exercise and be able to enjoy the occasional small piece of cake at a wedding or a cookie at the office party.

While losing weight is hard, it’s the mental piece that can sometimes be harder and it’s that fear we have on missing out on things in life. I really believe in the approach Lifexcel takes with their clients to make sure they are able to live their life, lose weight at a healthy rate and enjoy the new lifestyle they’ve created.