“What Victory Tastes Like” is the epilogue to The Weight Loss Habit.
This is the final day of the Weight Loss Habit takeover of the site, celebrating the book’s release this week.
For those of you uninterested in weight loss content, I promise I’ll get back to the regular Self-Improvement Made Easy content with my next post.
Don’t forget to buy your copy of The Weight Loss Habit.
What Victory Tastes Like
The Weight Loss Habit Changes You
I started off this book by quoting Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit:
“If you believe you can change – if you make it a habit – the change becomes real.
This is the real power of habit:
The insight that your habits are what you choose them to be. Once that choice occurs – and becomes automatic – it’s not only real, it starts to seem inevitable.”
I ended Part One of this book by telling you it will get easier.
Ultimately, the Weight Loss Habit isn’t just about changing what you do.
It’s about changing who you are.
Eventually you will become the kind of person who has healthy eating habits.
What Your Victory Will Taste Like
Here’s what’s going to happen if you follow the advice I’ve laid out here:
You’ll start off slow, or maybe start off quickly with a burst of motivation.
As the months go by, you’ll pick up more and more healthy habits.
And the weight will keep falling away.
Eventually you’ll reach your equilibrium weight. You’ll be skinny.
And you’ll keep up your habits that got you there, so you’ll stay skinny.
You’ll be thrilled by the new you. Amazed at the new energy.
You’ll probably have more endurance than your friends who have always been skinny, because you’re used to hauling around a bunch of extra weight.
But in your mind, you’ll still have the self-identity you’ve built up over a lifetime of being overweight.
You’ll feel like a fat person in a skinny person’s body.
Years will go by. The habits will become automatic.
You’ll meet people who never knew you before you were skinny, who will be shocked when you tell them you used to be overweight.
And then eventually it will hit you:
Your nature has changed.
You have changed.
You are now a skinny person.
Not just externally, but in your soul.
And because the decisions that keep you skinny are automatic, you are going to stay skinny for the rest of your life.
The Struggle is gone.
How My Victory Tasted
Which brings me to one final autobiographical story.
A few years after I lost the weight, I took a break from work to walk over to Subway and pick up lunch. I ordered my usual six-inch sub, when the sandwich-maker pointed out that because of a special they were having, the footlong would only be fifteen cents more.
My bargain-hunting instincts took over, and since that was obviously a better deal, I agreed to upgrade without really thinking about it.
I immediately regretted that decision.
I had come in planning on ordering a six-inch sub. Just because it was a good deal wasn’t a good reason for me to eat double the calories.
I walked back to the office with my footlong sub, brooding and mad at myself.
I knew that I had violated my carefully cultivated habits. Now I had twice as much food as was a good idea.
I was in a foul mood as I sat at my desk to eat.
I ate the first half of the sandwich.
And then as I looked at the second half, I burst into tears of joy, as I had the realization that I didn’t want to eat it.
I wasn’t making a rational decision that eating it wasn’t a good idea.
I wasn’t exercising willpower.
I simply didn’t want it.
Looking at that half-eaten sandwich was one of the happiest moments of my life.
Because that’s when I realized all the work I had put in had made me a fundamentally different person.
I wasn’t a fraud.
I wasn’t a fat person in a skinny person’s body.
I wasn’t a fool for buying Medium-sized shirts that I’d have to discard as soon as I gained the weight back.
Sitting there at my desk, I knew: I would never be fat again.
Buy The Weight Loss Habit here.
Other excerpts from The Weight Loss Habit:
- Table of Contents and book summary
- Why Diets Fail
- How a Comedy Sketch Changed My Life
- The Fundamental Rule of Weight Loss
- The Miracle of Frozen Food
- Eating Fast Food For Fun and Weight Loss
- 28 Ways to Exercise That Aren’t Going to the Gym (In the book this is expanded to 45 Ways)
- Reward Yourself During Or After Exercise (But Not With Food)
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