Giving it everything...

While writing a weight loss blog is clearly the most important success factor in shedding excess weight, my analysis of weight loss research leads me to conclude that a "few" other things might help too.

During my years of lack of success, I feel I may have been too limited in my approach, switching from one focus to another, back again, something new today and then something else again tomorrow. Always looking for the "silver bullet". Now I've found the silver bullet - blogging - I can stop searching.

As a result, my level of faith in any one of the other single ideas to lose weight has plummetted. It's logical therefore that I need to do all of them at once, rather than rely on any one or two things. For the next 4 weeks I will attempt to do everything on the list below. Everything. Every last idea. I'm throwing the kitchen sink at it. I'm giving it my all. September is a giving month.

I got to the list by a simple browsing of weight loss websites, blogs etc to look for what gives success. While there are a lot of different ideas out there, it's actually quite surprising at the lack of contradiction between them all. This was what led me to conclude that you can do it all. Well, OK, you can't eat both a low-carb and a high-carb diet...both of which are out there. But apart from that, most stuff can be combined. So unless the combination of all of them reduces the effectiveness, I must be onto a winner. Oops, nearly forgot, I AM onto a winner anyway because I'm writing the blog...


The list, in no particular order:

• Eat less (yeah, yeah, boring!)
• Exercise more (yawn!)
• Write a diary: both to log the food I eat AND to explore why I overeat
• Focus on healthy not thin
• Eat only when I'm hungry
• Stop eating when I'm no longer hungry
• Eat slowly
• Strictly control bad fats (but not all fat is bad!)
• Eat breakfast
• Set a target
• Go public with friends, family or the web
• Target small, steady change towards my goal
• Eat what I want (subject to the other eating restrictions above...actually not very restrictive)
• Take Acai and Colon Cleanse supplements every day
• Drink water before each meal
• Drink water the rest of the time too
• Sleep well (7 to 8 hours per night)
• Don't eat while watching TV/sitting on the sofa
• Up the iodine (I have suspected under-active thyroid, so in the time it takes to get a doctor's appointment to test it, I'm going for diet/supplemental improvement anyway...bring on the sushi!)
• Adrenal gland supplements (I have already been diagnosed with fatigued adrenal glands...also a potential link to the thyroid???)
• General vitamin/mineral supplements (Multivitamins and a Vit B complex)

Seems like a lot. doesn't it? I have left one thing off, purposefully. I can not and will not attend a support group. I have nothing against any of them as such. But my travelling lifestyle makes it nearly impossible (I don't speak Dutch so midweek meetings are out), and the eating rules/points etc would almost certainly contradict with many of my other points. So I'm not doing it. That's final. Besides, I am a Moose and I don't think they make scales suitable, or have doorways large enough for me to get my antlers through.

Future posts will cover updates (public accountability) and further exploration of the individual items on the list.

So, instead of here goes nothing...here goes everything!