weight loss: the sprint vs. the marathon

Good Sunday Morning....What horrible weather!!! I believe one more day of this bad stuff then back to the sun!

Yesterday I was seeing a patient whose weight loss has been steady and we were discussing the pace of her weight loss. She brought up this statement which I LOVED: "Losing weight should be looked at like a marathon, not a sprint." Whay is meant by that is weight loss AND the maintenance of that healthy weight is a LIFE-LONG effort (marathon) as opposed to whipping as much weight off as quickly as possible and then "ending" the effort. That is why we use "real" food in our program as opposed to the Optifast/Medifast model of liquid diets. Our aim is to NOT rush weight of you only to have that weight come back. Learning new eating behaviors and approach to your eating behaviors and exercise patterns are what this is all about. Yes, we do incorporate a prescription anorectic to "jumpstart" your efforts, but this is only meant to help you psychologically get "into it" more by seeing an obvious result in the firts 2 weeks.

"Dieting: is not what losing weight is about..."life-stylechanging/behavior modification" IS what losing weight is all about...and this is in fact a marathon, not a sprint.