I Can Guarantee You'll Lose Weight!

Let me preface by saying this is not what you’d expect it to be… 

There are many people making outrageous claims about helping people get healthy and lose weight. The reality is most of those strategies are circumstantial and their effectiveness varies person to person. If you really want to lose weight, that there’s nothing more important in the world and you’ll do whatever it takes, I have a way that guarantees it:

Cut off the lower half of your body. 

Wait, you don’t want to do that? You’re telling me that you don’t want to lose weight at all costs? You must not be committed…

I apologize if my sarcasm or insensitivity offends you, but I’m using this ridiculous example to illuminate a much more important underlying point. What we want is loaded with tradeoffs, conditions, and assumptions. Everything is interconnected and has implications in every area of our lives. 

Let’s look at some less extreme examples. If you want to lose weight, you can sign up to enroll yourself in an inpatient program. This means you’ll have to spend time away from your family, work, and passions. Would that be worth it? Or you could fast for 30 days, but that might initiate other health problems that you’d rather not have. Or you could sign up for the 75 Hard Challenge and commit to doing two workouts a day, non-negotiable. But what strain might that put on other areas of your life?

There are a number of different ways to get what you want. The problem is, some of those ways might actually take you further away from what you want overall. That’s why it helps to be way more detailed about what you want. It’s not losing weight at all costs, but rather picking a strategy that will be highly effective but doesn't put you in worse health, run you bankrupt, or damage your most valued relationships. Isn’t that more specifically what you want?

The reason I mention all of that is because that’s what you need to get clear on. What you actually want, taking into account all sorts of considerations and tradeoffs. My most unpopular opinion is that you can’t have everything you want. There are certain things in life that are strictly incompatible. Instead what I encourage people to think through is what they want amid all the tradeoffs that exist around it. Do not compromise on that!

Like I said, probably not what you expected from the title. But the best way to lose weight, and get anything you want, is by being thoughtful about what that actually entails so that you can aim for the right target. It’s more complex, but it more directly relates to what you actually want. And once that’s identified, now you can pick the option you feel is your best path forward.

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