I have just read a fascinating article by Rothman* looking at how we have a very different kind of motivation for starting to lose weight compared to keeping it off. When we start out, it’s all about our expectation of looking and feeling better (as per Expectancy Theory) and how well we believe we can deal with the challenges we will face (Self-Efficacy Theory).  However, once we have lost weight it is then all about how satisfied we feel with our new weight and how it compares to what we might slip back to.

Learning from the Smokers!
Compared with people wanting to lose weight, smokers are less likely to attempt to give up because they can’t get excited about giving up the smokes like an overweight person can get excited about being slim and gorgeous. As a non-smoker they expect to be less sexy, less Humphrey Bogart! But six months out, the now non-smokers fight back and start to do better than the weight losers who are starting to regain! The daily challenge for the smokers is now much less as they are over the hump and non-smoking has become a habit! Their enjoying not coughing their lungs up each morning and being able to walk to the kitchen without needing oxygen masks to drop down from the ceiling!

Meanwhile, if the weight losers are dieting and feeling deprived they’re now struggling bigtime – life how it was, eating as much cake or pizza as they wanted, looks better, not worse than the daily struggle of trying to keep the weight off.  Then if there are no habits around how to eat the fattening foods they love in a healthy way – weight regain is inevitable.

Rothman points out that “The greater likelihood of long-term success among smokers may reflect, in part, their more modest expectations about what it would be like to be nonsmokers.

So, this means we need to be very careful about how much we expect our life to be better once we lose weight. One of my patients recalled very clearly how he did not turn out to be ‘rich, oversexed and happy’ when he lost 25kg – and then put it all back on! Secondly, by even three months out, we need to be in habits that allow us to eat the foods we love (there’s a really good book on this subject …) and automatically avoid the fattening foods we don’t love.

*Rothman AJ “Toward  a theory-based analysis of behavioral maintenance” Health Psychology 2000