Comfort: It’s Not Your Friend April 1, 2009

In many of my previous posts, I have mentioned that a large part of my weight loss has involved stepping out of my comfort zone.  Today, I’d like to discuss this issue in detail.

In many respects, I’m a fairly average American girl.  I’m a working mom and wife from a middle-class household.  My life isn’t glamorous or luxurious, but it is, well, comfortable.  I go to work at my desk job and sit in my cozy, high-backed chair all day.  I come home to a house with a controlled temperature, set exactly to my liking.  And when I go to sleep at night, I crawl into the bed that is perfectly molded to my body, and fall asleep in the arms of the man I love.

Is it any wonder I feel like I’m entitled to comfort?

The problem is, comfort is not a dieter’s friend.

When I first started counting calories, I had to get used to the “half-empty” feeling that I had in my belly as I got used to the kind of portions I was supposed to be eating.  Please don’t get me wrong–you shouldn’t go hours upon hours without eating.  Starving yourself is NOT the way to lose weight healthfully and keep it off.  But when you start a diet, you don’t feel full for awhile at the beginning.  Your body needs to adjust to the new way you’re eating.

After spending the bulk of my life as a couch potato, I had convinced myself that exercise wasn’t healthy for me.  Why?  Because every time I tried it, I was so uncomfortable.  I’d get on a treadmill or lift a few weights, and as soon as I started to “feel the burn”, I’d stop.  Or I’d get finished with a workout dvd, and when I woke up to sore muscles the next morning, I’d decide the dvd was all wrong for me.  The feeling that I was entitled to comfort was so  ingrained in me that I couldn’t comprehend how helpful, how necessary the discomfort was for my success.

And of course, the most challenging part of weight loss is finding the source of your weight gain.  If you have 20 or fewer pounds to lose, you may be able to attribute the extra weight to a busy lifestyle, a year or two of poor choices, etc.  But if you have a great deal of weight to lose, you must know that there are emotional issues behind the gain.  All of the dieting and working out in the world cannot equal true and permanent weight loss if you don’t figure out the root of your problem and deal with it.  A large amount of extra weight is almost always a symptom of an emotional matter, and eating lots of high-fat foods is a means of coping with that matter.

Facing the demons that lead to an unhealthy lifestyle is about as far away from the comfort zone as you can get.  It takes a long time to work through emotional issues, probably much longer than it will take for you to lose the weight.  But the further away you step from comfort, the closer you will come to freedom.  Freedom, not just from excess pounds, but from the unhealthy lifestyle that makes those pounds pile on.

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