It took decades to unlock the keys to permanent weight loss.  It started in my 30’s.  No wait, it actually started in fifth grade.  Yes, you read that right.  My little friend and I decided we were “fat.”  She told me that her mother would “diet” and get thinner.  So we agreed we would diet.  I went home and told my mother I wanted 2 boiled eggs and an orange for my packed lunch every day.  My mom knew nothing about nutrition.  She grew up in the country in England, the 13th child of 16 kids.  It never crossed her mind that a 10-year old really needed more calories for a growing body.  I think it probably seemed like an easy idea.  She could boil up a bunch of eggs and just dole them out each day into the brown paper bag.  So my fifth grade school year, that was my lunch.  Probably less.  I don’t think I even finished my orange each day.  Crazy, right?

My poor body image followed me right on through to high school when I did a famous doctor’s “Water Diet” to drop a few pounds.  That one was the basis for most of my dieting right on through to my 30’s.  Probably about 500 to 700 calories a day, all protein and lots of water.  Do not do this to your body!  I later learned from my doctor that it ate into the connective tissue of my ribs, so my x-ray resembled those of people who had been in concentration camps.  Brilliant.   Like so many other women out there, looking back at high school photos, I wonder why no one told me my body was fine.  Not fine – it was gorgeous and healthy.  But the “yo-yo” had begun.

In my early 20’s I tried a national diet institution, but the middle-aged ladies there who gave me a recipe to poach chicken in diet cherry soda just did not work for me (bleech!).  Over the years, in my 30’s and again in my 50’s, I have had a love/hate relationship with these weight loss businesses (Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem – you name it).  All those diets took off the weight – it always works.  But the weight does not stay off.  Some have meetings, some have “counselors” and they try to give you tools to make permanent changes, but they do not quite “get it.”  Of course, much of their profit is coming from return business.  So if everyone took it off and kept it off . . . . . . well, no motivation really for them to ensure that.  Right?

Exactly why would a bright, professional woman like myself not be able to stop regaining the weight?  I’ve asked that question for years.  It has taken decades for me to finally understand the entire process.  Decades.  Now I have the process and the tools.  It is a process that works for everything – not just weight loss.  I am finding I can apply this process to every area of my life, to every issue that comes up.  It is amazing, and it is just one of many tools.  I know there must hundreds (thousands?) of other men and women out there just like me.  People who are bright and savvy in life, but cannot figure out why every diet they have tried always end the same – regaining the weight back.  Or they cannot even get to the “end of the story” and lose all the weight.  It comes crashing down in a great backslide into old habits.  I cannot wait to open the doors officially on Joann The Life Coach.  The thought of being able to share what I finally know and being able to motivate others, watching them transform not only their eating, but their entire lives is my brass ring.  I am on that carousel and reaching for it now.  Leave a comment below and follow along with me.