Success Stories

I love reading weight loss success stories.  They’re so inspirational and motivational.  The dilemma I find myself in as a result of these stories is that in just one or two pages you go from super obese/morbidly obese/obese to a more reasonable weight.  This makes the stories seem instantaneous as a result.  Sure, common sense says that perspective is ridiculous and even a little silly.  But that’s not how my emotional core processes the information. 

I *KNOW* that it took this lady 5 months to lose 68 pounds and so she was losing weight at an average of 13.5 pounds per month…which is a really good rate of loss, and, frankly, only 1.5 pounds more per month than I pulled off in my first month of weight loss.  I may *know* these things but they don’t neatly compute with my instant gratification complex, with my emotional cortex, you might call it.  I see starting point A at 243 pounds at the top of the page and then on the bottom of the same page I see her at 177 pounds. 

Sure they tell a few things that she swore by to achieve her weight loss, but without making it into a 300 page memoir, there’s really no way to briefly detail what all she had to do in order to achieve her amazing results.  They include one day’s worth of meals, and one typical workout that she does.

Things get taken out of proportion for me in this kind of situation.  I would really much rather read a weight loss memoir where they detail their meal plans and exercise habits.  A memoir where they list off the pitfalls they encountered, the month where they gained back 5 hard lost pounds.  A memoir where they let you into their emotional ups and downs that they experienced throughout their journey.  I want to know that it wasn’t easy for them.  I want to know that they sometimes struggled like I am.  I want to know that each time, before they stepped on the scale, that they were a ball of raw nerves.

After it’s all said and done, I don’t plan to stop reading these weight loss success stories.  Although they can be emotionally confusing to me, they still serve their purpose in inspiring and motivating me.  They give me something positive to focus on, even if it comes out a little warped in translation.