Hillary Ehlen
HEALTH & WELLNESS SPOTLIGHT
hungry
or just
unhappy? BY C.J. English
I tell my clients all the time that in order to lose weight, you have to change your mindset. You have to re-wire your thinking, change your relationship with food, ask yourself why you eat and most importantly you have to find happiness. Every diet will help you to lose weight if you follow it. But what happens when you go off of it and back to your life? That’s when your old habits creep back. You have not done the hard work of re-wiring how you think about food or changing your lifestyle which was the root cause of your weight gain in the first place. Losing weight is the easy part; keeping it off is immeasurably more difficult because it requires you to incorporate one major factor overlooked in your previous diet plan: Happiness. 48 | OCTOBER 2018 | FARGOMONTHLY.COM
I have coached hundreds of clients along their weight loss journey and taken note of common threads among those that are successful and those who are not. One factor stands out among those who meet their goals: they are truly, intrinsically, happy. Happy with their lives, with their lifestyle, in their relationships, with who they are as a person, what they are pursuing as a career etc... They might not have been that way on day one when they came in wanting help to lose weight, but on day 300 they have made the right changes that have moved them into a more pleasant state of being. Without this happiness factor firmly in place, I have yet to see anyone be successful in their long term wellness and weight loss goals.* Each of us goes through bouts of the blues at times. Not being happy for a short period of time is normal. What’s not normal is to never come out of that state, to live in a perpetual cycle of discontent. It is those individuals who do not reach their weight loss goals, long term. The key here is working with the hand you’ve been dealt, no matter how crummy your cards. We must always be doing something to better our situation and move toward being happier. If not—long term permanent weight loss may continue to elude you, no matter what diet you try or how many times you go to the gym each week. Happiness matters. Before I take on a new client I’m always evaluating if I’m the right fit for this person or if they would do better off seeing a counselor first. I do this because my experience is that people generally know what to do in order to lose weight. When someone has a lot of stress or an unhappy life situation, knowing what to do for weight loss isn’t the real problem, it’s the stress and unhappiness that got them there and continues to hold them back. Unless those factors are addressed, any weight loss will generally only be temporary. If you feel like you
