Are you ready to lose the weight and your issues with food and eating for good? Really ready?  

That’s the first question to ask yourself before embarking on your next, and hopefully your last, weight loss journey. Because it is a journey. And you can only succeed if you’re ready for it.  

That’s why diets don’t work. ​Diets treat your weight problem like it’s a quick fix. But diets aren’t a fix at all. They don’t fix the problem that caused you to overeat in the first place.  

That’s also why I wince when people ask me, “My (fill in name of person in my life I care about) has gained a bunch of weight. Should I say something?” These people think they’re being helpful, but what they really want is to control another person and their body. And even if they are well-meaning (some are just plain mean), they simply can’t do that. Anyone who has gained weight knows it. We have mirrors. We feel our clothes getting tighter. But we have to want to change this and be ready to do so. There is nothing anyone else can say to change that.  

Ready for what? Ask yourself whether you are ready for these six things: 

1. Ready to make a big commitment to yourself. That means you have to decide that weight loss is a top priority. Making you and your health a top priority means that it has to be in the forefront of your mind a lot. This requires you to pay attention to you, your needs, and how and why you eat. That takes commitment. 
2. Ready to accept the fact that you are worthy and loveable just the way you are. Maybe you’re thinking, “If I was okay with the way I am, I wouldn’t have to lose weight!” But here’s the truth: no one changes because they hate or shame themselves into it. Hate never brings about anything positive. Some people may temporarily lose a few pounds based upon their disgust with the way they look, but I can promise you that won’t result in permanent change. And it could ultimately result in more weight gain. 
3. Ready to forgive yourself for your past weight loss failures. So many people I work with arrive doubting their ability to succeed because they have failed so many times already. If they have signed on to work with me or joined Ditch the Diet Tribe​, they still have hope or they wouldn’t be there. Know that your past failures with dieting were not your fault. You were doing the best you could with what you knew then. Forgive yourself. Let it go. You can do this! 
4. Ready to change some long-held beliefs. Beliefs like you’ll never be slim. Like you can’t trust yourself around certain foods. Like you love food too much to lose weight and keep it off. Or if you ate whenever you were hungry, you’d eat everything that wasn’t nailed down.  
5. Ready to be uncomfortable some of the time. Here is a fact of life. Everyone’s life includes some pain and sadness on a regular basis. If you have used food to avoid feeling the normal pain of life for years, changing that can be uncomfortable. But not as uncomfortable as overeating and being overweight and still having that emotional pain.  
6. Ready to be patient and persistent. As I said earlier, the process of changing how and why you eat is not a quick one. Making fundamental changes rarely is fast. So you have to be patient, knowing that if you start now, a year from now, you’ll be in a much better place. You have to be persistent, knowing that no one does this perfectly, and that messing up is not failure or an excuse to give up. It is an opportunity to notice what went wrong and to make changes to avoid making the same mistake again.

If you’re ready to embark on a successful journey to change your weight and your relationship with food for good, click here​ to learn more how you can make being overweight a thing of the past.