I was talking to my brother yesterday. My brother has never been overweight, to me, but over the last few months he’s lost about 20 lbs. So now he’s thin. A healthy thin. For some reason I felt compelled to say something to him about it and my comment sparked a short, yet poignant, conversation about losing weight.

It was either Ben or my Dad, but one of them asked him what he did to drop the weight. And, he was like, “I just quit eating so much f—ing food!” Ben, my Dad, and I laughed at his response. Partly we laughed because of how he said it but mostly we all laughed because we all knew how very true his statement was.

A couple of months ago I started counting calories again to drop about 25 lbs. For motivation I decided to blog about it because the strategy had helped me in the past. I struggled through July posting weekly about it. But, I got off track with my diet a few times and got frustrated about having to write about my same lame diet setbacks every week. Plus, it was extremely boring to write about. And, I realized, no one wants to read that I had a cup of toasted hazelnut coffee and 30 grams of plain oatmeal mixed with 15g of vanilla bean protein powder every day for 15 days in a row!

I attended a meeting recently about nutrition. The speaker said that the #1 thing her clients ask her to do is just tell them what to eat.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. Every “body” is completely different. You can follow diets and what other people do but in the end it comes down to what each individual likes to eat and what works for them. I can post about what I eat every day but it’s not going to help anybody. Diet is extremely personal to every single person who struggles with their weight. When I talk about diet I’m talking about the types of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats, not something special specific to weight loss.  Feeling good and becoming healthy is part of a wellness mind game, one I play every single day. Most days I’m successful. It’s a struggle every affected person has to figure out on their own. Thankfully there are hundreds if not thousands of resources out there to help. But, it’s up to each one of us to seek it out.

They may not realize it, but what people really want to know is how “psychologically” people lose weight. They want to know what sparks in a person’s mind that drives them to overcome their everyday cravings and habits and to search out the tools required to get on, and stay on, the path to leaning new habits that support weight loss, fitness, health, and overall wellness goals. Unfortunately that spark is difficult to describe.

I’m still going to post about health and fitness. But, it’s going to be more of a mental prospective rather than what I ate last week and how much I weigh this week.

Just writing this post has helped to calm my mind. Those diet posts were causing me unnecessary, self-imposed, stress.

Thanks for understanding.

(photo courtesy of Sam, my Son.  He took a trip to Europe a couple of years ago and took a ton of food photos because he knew I’d love them!)