How long does this coaching last?
As long as you want. As short as 4 weeks. We will ask you for a personal commitment based on the amount of weight you want to lose.
It's a fact, that to achieve healthy permanent weight loss, you should lose no more than between ¼ to 2 lbs. per week.
The slower and kinder your weight loss, the more convinced your body will become that it is not being starved. If you lose more than 2 lbs./week, your body may respond rebelliously with a physiological "starvation response" mechanism that decreases metabolic activity. When trying to overcome your eating problem, giving your mind and your body time to succeed is crucial. It’s the journey towards achieving your ultimate weight where the real learning, success, and permanent internal changes take place. Giving yourself time to work through the process and not giving in to temporary quick fixes like diet pills or rigid food restrictions, will assure that when you reach your destination, you’ll know how to stay there.
For this reason, we ask for your commitment based on the amount you want to lose, figuring on losing up to 2 lbs. per week. (For example, if you have thirty pounds to lose, you want to make a personal commitment of 15 weeks to reach your goal.) If you aren’t ready, willing, and able to give yourself the time you need to be successful, you might want to re-examine your motives for wanting to lose weight. Are you really ready to make changes in your lifestyle? By asking for this commitment, we’re making sure you’re not setting yourself up for failure or disappointment.
Learning to be patient is the key to successful weight loss.
We'll begin our two weeks of gathering information about you so we can create a personal plan to reach your goals. You and your coach will talk about your purpose for wanting to lose weight, your past attempts, and what triggered you to call us now. We’ll calculate your Body Mass Index and measure inches. We'll figure out your target weight and begin setting goals. We’ll discuss what schedule of contact is most convenient for you. We'll confirm your personal commitment to give yourself the time you need to be successful.
This kit will include:
- Information about us
- Medical history questionnaire
- Nutrition and self-awareness assessments
- Contract for Change
- Journal pages
Uh oh, journal pages, you say?
We will make this as painless as possible. We will need you to commit to keeping an initial 4 weeks of detailed eating & activity information for Dr. Polera to analyze. And we will twist your arm to continue on.
Like balancing your checkbook, it’s important to self-monitor your intake, your activity, and later on, what emotions and situations motivate you to eat. In fact, a 1995 report from the Institute of Medicine correlates self-monitoring (like journaling) with weight loss success. Our goal is to transform your journals from detailed eating logs to stories of self-expression. We’ll use your journals to help you avoid eating on autopilot, discover emotional eating patterns, and identify trigger foods and situations. Journals are an excellent tool to help you learn to express your feelings instead of "swallowing" them, to create an intimacy with words instead of with food.
Your coach will consider it a privilege to be a witness to your emotional journey of self-awareness. Sounds corny, but it’s true.
So what else do I have to do besides keep a journal?
We want you to agree to a few things:
You haven't mentioned your diet plan yet--what is it?
There isn’t one. Dieting involves rigid food controls and rituals - including food avoidance and food restriction. For as long as you torture yourself on a diet, you will lose weight. But the problem is, you can’t torture yourself indefinitely. You know this and worry about what happens when you go off the diet, or the diet pill. That’s why you’re choosing a lifestyle change this time. You've seen the statistics firsthand. Diets don’t work. 95% of women and men who lose weight on diets will gain it back within one year. Dieters are taught to avoid food for a limited period of time for temporary results. The more we deprive ourselves, the more we avoid food, the more we learn not to trust ourselves. We need to learn to trust ourselves to make healthier food choices, and balance our intake with activity.
Food is not the enemy. Food is not good or bad. Food is not a reward or a punishment. Food is simply nutritional fuel for the body. You control what you eat. No one but you puts food in your mouth.
Our work centers on controlling your eating impulses, nutritional knowledge, and activity choices - not controlling food. Food is not an active participant. It just sits there. It can not become energy or fat for your body until you put it in your mouth. We will give you information about the foods you choose to eat. We will teach you how certain foods affect your health. You’ll learn to make choices that will keep you feeling good.
Help! What if I'm out of control?
Changing lifelong behaviors won’t happen overnight. It can be a long journey. In the beginning, you may feel you need more direction to get where you’re going. You may feel so out of control of your eating that you may need us to help you plan meals, snacks, or grocery lists. You may need to remove the junk food from your house until you learn to trust yourself alone. Asking for help is the first step towards taking control - congratulate yourself for this. Any food planning we do together at the start of our coaching relationship will be second nature to you by the time you’re ready to leave Buddies Unlimited. Promise.
If you are frequently binging uncontrollably on huge amounts of food, using laxatives, diuretics or inducing vomiting to get rid of food you’ve eaten, or think you’re fat when the doctor has told you your weight is normal, we will ask you to seek professional help from a counselor.
Your best rewards will be internal: increased self-esteem and confidence, clothes that fit more comfortably, feelings of accomplishment and achievement, inner control, and greater energy to name a few – and your coach will be sure to point these out to you.
At Buddies Unlimited, we’ll be so proud of your successes that we’ll have t-shirts and other unexpected surprises to give you when you reach certain goals.
What if I am already on a diet plan or taking diet pills?
You don’t have to abandon these techniques until you are ready. We’ll work in conjunction with them, and support you in your efforts. Congratulate yourself for looking for help beyond those temporary solutions.
Deep inside you know the pills and the rigid controls on your food intake are not healthy. You may feel temporarily invincible and able to control your appetite, but you also begin to lose trust in yourself. What happens when you aren’t taking the pills? What happens when you fall off of the diet plan? You don’t want to live on frozen dinners or weigh food forever. If you have surrendered your control to pills or diet plans, you may also lose trust in your own ability to control and take responsibility for what and when and why you eat.
Your Coach will work on returning the control to you so you don’t have to avoid foods or feel scared to be "drug-free". When you are off these temporary solutions, you’ll be well on your way to permanent changes. Dr. Polera will assess your diet plan in accordance with your nutritional needs and let you know if there is a problem, and she will give you information on how the diet pill works with your body’s chemistry - information those profiting from that pill may not make available.
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