Being Thin is a Choice

Here is what the dictionary has to say: A person who is deprived has been stripped of some "necessity of life or healthful environmental influence by an external person or force." Children living in poverty are deprived. Families trapped in war-torn cities are deprived. Prisoners on starvation rations are deprived. They have no choice, no control over their situation. Therefore, deprivation doesn't just happen, it's something that is done to you.

By this definition, it is virtually impossible for most middle-class Americans to be truly deprived of food. Because the fact is, you can eat anything you want, anytime you want! Every diet you have ever tried has proven this point. No one, not me, not your doctor, not even your spouse, can force you to avoid a food. Other people can beg, nag, badger, bribe, or even threaten you, but ultimately the decision to eat or not to eat is always yours. No one can take it away from you.

A few years ago, an overweight man at a dinner party told me he had gone off his last diet because he was "tired of feeling punished." The question that immediately came to my mind was, punished by whom? No one was holding a gun to his head. No one was threatening him with divorce or unemployment if he didn't stay on the diet. This man had exhausted himself by fighting (and eventually losing) a battle with an enemy that didn't even exist.

Food Control Training is not deprivation. Living thin does not mean living without. The feelings of deprivation that you may have experienced on past diets were a product of a mind-set you imposed on yourself. No one was depriving you. You did not check your free will at the door when you signed up for the diet program. Your food options were (and are) always open.

The winners at weight loss know this instinctively because they've already eaten it all. They know that when they were eating it all they were not happy, they were miserable. The more they ate, the worse they felt and the worse they looked. That life (of being fat and out of control) was not some mythological paradise and the winners never forget that. They don't surrender their free will when they go on a diet, they take it with them.

Don't be tripped up by the fact that you may not always feel happy about saying this. No one is always happy about what they have to do to make their lives better. But they are happier for having done it. Feeling deprived is really just another way of surrendering to the control of food. It is a denial of your freedom and self-determination. You don't need a diet or a doctor to control your food intake. You have the knowledge and power to do that all on your own. You simply need to use it.

Good food is one of life's great pleasures. Sharing a meal with the people we love is one of the most enjoyable experiences any of us can have. But food should enhance life; it should not be the centerpiece of a life. Your life should not be controlled by food any more than it should be controlled by drugs or alcohol or any other external substance. You cannot focus your life on food and be thin. Being a foodie is antagonistic to living thin. If getting control of your life and weight are your goals, then you have to pick what is important to you and go
with it.