I don’t think you would lose much weight if all your closest friends were obese. It wouldn’t seem urgent. You would feel normal and unjudged, at least around your friends. But if all your friends looked great in swimwear but you were 80 pounds heavier than you wanted to be, I believe peer pressure would have an impact on your food choices.
People tend to talk about food with their friends. If your closest friends know more about healthy eating than you do, the knowledge transfer to you would be an enormous benefit. If the opposite were true and your friends operated under food misconceptions, I assume some of them would spill over to you. Spend time with people who have figured out how to be healthy eaters. Some of that is certain to rub off on you.
Here is our next reframe for maintaining a healthy weight.
Usual Frame: I want food, so I must be hungry.
Reframe: I want food, so I might be tired.
If you think hunger is only caused by an empty stomach, you might be surprised to learn that not getting enough sleep mimics the same feeling of hunger. If you have ever experienced a day in which eating didn’t seem to satisfy your hunger, you might be trying to solve the wrong problem. You might need a nap more than you need food. By the time you feel hungry, it might be too late to nap it away. So remind yourself that you wouldn’t need to wonder about the source of your hunger if you put more effort into your sleeping systems.
A willpower-driven diet rarely works for a variety of reasons, chief among them that humans don’t have much willpower, if any, when it comes to resisting pleasure. But anyone can learn more about food choices, which makes it easier to trade out the bad food for the good. The reason anyone eats junk food is that it tastes great and is inexpensive and convenient. Healthy alternatives can fit that model too but not unless you work at them. Which means a lifetime of continuous learning about what foods are healthiest. You think you already know what foods are best for you, but you probably don’t. For example, would you know an avocado is better than a carrot? You do? Great. Now tell me if an avocado is better than a peanut. Oh . . . you know that, too???
Okay, I acknowledge you know a lot. But my experience is that few people can correctly answer five-out-of-five in my food comparison challenges. And my subjective impression is that people who get all the answers right are maintaining a healthy weight. It isn’t a coincidence. Knowledge about food is the strongest correlation I have seen (anecdotally) with weight. In the context of diet, knowledge is a direct substitute for willpower, which isn’t a real thing anyway.
On to our next reframe.
Usual Frame: I have a weight loss goal.
Reframe: I need to create a weight loss system for myself.
It’s okay to have a weight loss goal, too, but if you want to succeed, focus on your system for getting there. Your system will differ from mine, and that’s fine. We’re different people in different situations. For example, my system has four main components for managing weight:
Don’t keep unhealthy food in the house.
Keep learning about food over an entire lifetime.
Continuously experiment with preparing healthy food to taste great.
Check my weight and look at my full body in the mirror every day.
I asked my X followers what reframes they found useful for maintaining a healthy weight, and here are some that worked for them in the diet domain, starting with this familiar-looking one.
Usual Frame: Sugar is delicious but don’t overdo it.
Reframe: Sugar is poison.
The sugar is poison reframe probably came from a book of the same name. This reframe was a popular response to my query, so people must have found value in it. It is the same approach as alcohol is poison. It’s easier to avoid poison than delicious food.
On to the next reframe . . .
A great way to manage your habits and impulses is to define yourself as the sort of person who doesn’t do that sort of thing. As odd as that sounds, it works. One of our strongest motivations is to be seen as consistent, to others and to ourselves. If you use repetition to brand yourself as a certain type of person, all your other decisions become simpler. All you must do is act how that sort of person would act. Most of our decisions are somewhat automatic and reflexive based on who we are. A vegetarian doesn’t have to think about eating a steak, and an off-duty cop doesn’t think too hard before stepping in to stop a crime in progress. Both are acting according to who they are.
If you don’t like the decisions you make, turn yourself into the kind of person who doesn’t make those mistakes. You will be amazed how much this helps. Here’s a specific example.
Usual Frame: I am tempted by bad carbs.
Reframe: I’m not the kind of person who eats bad carbs.
Another reframe suggested by an X user takes the irrational nature of reframes to the limit.
Usual Frame: My stomach has room for more food.
Reframe: I’ve had enough.
If you pair “I’ve had enough” with stopping eating and do it often enough, the sentence itself will become a key. That means your brain will pair the trigger sentence with the response until it becomes automatic. Say the magic sentence and watch your body fall in line.
Here’s another useful diet reframe.
Usual Frame: I’m hungry, so I need food.
Reframe: I’m hungry, so I need protein.
You need protein and “good” carbs as well as fat for a healthy diet. But carbs—both good and bad—are abundant and easy to get. Same with fat. But protein often takes some extra effort. That’s why a protein-first reframe helps keep you on the right track. If you make it a habit to look for protein first, it will be easier to skip the “bad” carbs that are more convenient.
Exercise
Everyone seems to have an opinion about how to exercise right. There are thousands of books on the topic with all kinds of variations. It can be intimidating to the non-athlete. That’s why I recommend reframing all the complexity away and instead focusing on the few things you need to get right to have a strong foundation.
Usual Frame: Exercising requires willpower and motivation.
Reframe: Exercising is easier than not exercising if you turn it into a habit.
You can learn to love exercise and turn it into an addictive habit by not overdoing it, not doing boring exercises, and rewarding yourself every time. For example, you might start by taking a nice walk in the evening and rewarding yourself with a delicious protein shake. If you keep up the walking, it will eventually start to feel too easy to do short walks, and you will naturally extend them. Then let’s say your friend invites you to go on a bike ride, and you haven’t ridden in years. Your walking habit will give you confidence you can pedal okay, too, so you say yes.
The thing you do NOT need to focus on—at least initially—is obsessing over the “best” form of exercise for you. That question is settled: The best exercises are the ones you are willing to do. And if you start with some painful and challenging form of exercise, don’t expect to be doing it for long. Your brain will talk you out of hurting your body. This is a hypnotist’s truth: If you punish yourself for an action, you can guarantee the action will not last.