This lightbulb is thanks to George Will, who used this phrase "Problems are Probable" in a totally different context. I realized that it applied perfectly to my efforts and, perhaps, many of our efforts.

💡"Problems are Probable" - Expecting that We will have Problems and will Struggle as We Find Success - My Different Success Strategy

"How's That Working For You?"

I'd need two hands to count how many times I've lost weight and failed to keep it off.

I'd log my food and track my calories, carbs, Points, or macros until things got rough. I'd try to push through or adjust the program but I would come to the conclusion that what I was doing was fundamentally wrong as evidenced by the fact that I was having problems with it.

If I was doing it correctly, it would be easy, natural, and inconspicuous. Am I right?

Carry It Differently

For anything you try to carry, there is an effective way to bear it, and a way that is unsustainable.

πᾶν πρᾶγμα δύο ἔχει λαβάς, τὴν μὲν φορητήν, τὴν δὲ ἀφόρητον. -Epictetus

So I decrease and track my food for a long time and I will lose the weight. That's the basic plan. Right? Right. Yes, it is right.

Except the other six or more times (sometimes months, sometimes only days), that was also the basic plan. Didn't work, didn't last, couldn't do it.

I realized this about week 6 of this effort. I know exactly where I was walking when I had this discussion with myself.

The debate I was having was whether or not to keep my weight-loss surgery on pause. I had lost a lot of weight in the past six weeks and was wondering about continuing to lose weight without surgery. I reasoned that if I ate as if I had had the surgery, I would lose the weight as if I had had the surgery. The surgeon, however, required post-op intake and exercise logs. I was already doing this pre-op and it was working.

"You've done all this before. You know how this probably ends." And that was true. I had reduced intake and logged diligently before. But then I came to another thought.

"Eventually you stop logging because it's redundant, quit tracking because it's hard, get behind in journaling because it's an unrewarding chore, and that becomes the rationale that ends the tracking. Maybe immediately, or within a few weeks or a month of that, the weight loss ends."

And if that happened, I could then schedule the surgery. But what if it was a momentary plateau and I give up too soon and unnecessarily get surgery? What if I had the surgery and quit tracking/logging and, in doing so, damaged my surgery or my guts in the process?

It was then that I found my other way to carry this problem. Now - bear with me - this part is a little weird and not many people address it this way. I invite you to think about it.

My old way was: Decrease and track my food for a long time and I will lose the weight.

My different way became: For 52 weeks, decrease and track my food and I will lose the weight.

Do you see what happened there? Same basic problem, same basic steps, but a different emphasis. It's like grabbing an awkward container from the bottom instead of from the handles.

We Are Evolved to be Problem Solvers

The 52-week commitment gave me permission to have, struggle with, and overcome problems without questioning whether or not I should quit. As the 52 weeks wasn't over, quitting wasn't an option open to me. After all, 52 weeks contains Thanksgiving and Christmas and birthdays and potlucks and vacations and everything.

And I did have problems here and there but since I had permission to have them, I was already more mentally ready. It wasn't a question of if they would happen but when they would happen.

We live our lives as if the perfect life is the problem-free life. But another way to think about this is that problems are to the mind what food is to the stomach. I know that's true for me. I am bored to tears on week 2 of a vacation, aching to get back to work on something that I am interested in. Maybe this is true for others; maybe this is why we have so much self-created drama in our worlds -- we're bored and need drama.

We're going to have problems. Problems are fine. A happy life isn't a life where you have no problems. A happy life is a life where the problems that you have are the problems you enjoy solving.

Feel the Fear, Do it Anyway

I invite you to think of these two concepts

• We are going to face some problems and we have permission and time to struggle with them.
• Rephrase your weight-loss effort in a way that commits to a necessarily long time period.

I also invite you to remember that we have something that the muggles don't have: we have /r/loseit. We have this college of other weight wizards to help us figure out new ways to look at our old adversaries. We have both the time to figure it out and the permission to struggle with it until we do.

^{♂56 5'11/179㎝ SW:298℔/135㎏ CW:183℔/83㎏ [3Y AMA], [1Y recap] CICO+🚶🏋+TOPS}

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