The Need for Dieting Ownership
When women fail at dieting they do a lot of projecting, and popular dieting literature and commentaries have encouraged this projecting. In The Concise Book of Lying author Evelin Sullivan defines projecting as placing blame for one’s difficulties on others or attributing one’s own desire to others.
Newspapers and magazines provide us with reasons to blame our parents, our genes, faulty diets, and a sadistic world for dieting failures.
Finally, research studies are vindicating our genes and reverting responsibility for weight loss back to the individual. In a 1999 article entitled “Don’t Blame Your Genes,” the Harvard Women’s Health Watch investigated three studies on weight loss in women and the role of their metabolism.
The article concluded that the resting metabolic rate isn’t as important as exercise in keeping the pounds off. We can choose to exercise. The question is: Will we make time for it, or will we make an excuse?
Blaming Others for Our Inability to Lose Weight
“I can’t stick to a diet because I have to take care of the kids. I can’t diet because my husband needs me now. I can’t diet because my parents are sick. I can’t diet because healthy food costs too much. I can’t diet because I don’t have time to exercise.”
These are the words of a helpless woman who measures her self-worth by the approval of others. This woman will never succeed at dieting because she does not think she deserves her own love and attention.
If you think something is not possible, you will find more and more reasons to reaffirm this belief and eventually you will abandon your goal. With each blame, you lose your control and your focus. To get this dieting thing, stop blaming, and start doing for yourself.
Accepting total responsibility for our lives is a challenge for most of us. It is much easier to feel inadequate than to be as magnificent as we truly are.
Doris Helge, Transforming Pain into Power