When It Come To Losing Weight, This Is The One Principle You Need To Embrace

Chuck Gross lost over half his body weight. Everyone wants to know how.

I know how he did it. I know how everyone, barring surgical removal of a giant cyst or a limb, loses weight.

They sustain a caloric deficit.

There are many paths to achieving such a deficit. Some are better than others. But in the end, it all boils down to that deficit.

But “How” people lose weight is not the right question.

The right question is: “Why?”

And by asking that question we begin to understand one of the most fascinating phenomenons behind major lifestyle change. With Chuck, the “why” involved getting hit in the head with a baseball bat.

It all began in 2008 in a Bourbon Street pub in New Orleans called the Boondock Saint. A strange man sat at the end of the bar who Chuck ended up talking to for a time. Long story short, the man said something to Chuck, who at the time weighed over 400 pounds, about seeing fear in his eyes. Taken aback, it abruptly ended the conversation.

But the wheels were set in motion. Three months later, Chuck Gross would be dead.

“It’s obvious what he was talking about,” Chuck told me. “During those three months the conversation was eating away both subconsciously and consciously. A lot of the things that you bury when you’re that heavy you ignore because they’re constant: the back pain, the aching feet, always being out of breath … Before, they were facts of life, but after that meeting I became more aware of them.”

  

 

                          THE GAP BETWEEN THINKING AND DOING

In Hamlet’s Act 3, Scene 1 soliloquy the Danish prince contemplates his future, wondering if he should “Take Arms against a Sea of troubles. And by opposing end them.”

“To be, or not to be.” It’s thinking vs. doing, which in the transtheoretical model (TTM) of behavior change is referred to as the “contemplation” stage. TTM is one of the most studied lifestyle transformation models ever created. Since its initial development in the 1970s it has been analyzed from myriad angles, with research funding that totals over $80 million using over 150,000 participants.

There are five stages to TTM:

1. Precontemplation – Not even thinking about changing.
2. Contemplation – Thinking about changing behavior, but not ready to act.
3. Planning – Getting ducks in a row in order to make changes.
4. Action – A challenging time when fragile habits are being formed.
5. Maintenance – Habits are more ingrained and the new behavior becomes sticky.

But I don’t want to look at all that. For this article, we are only looking at the gap; the single and critical moment that divides one’s life into before and after, where the decision is made to take arms against your sea of troubles. With TTM it happens between Stage 2 and Stage 3. If it is a powerful enough moment, you’ll not have to worry about relapse, and getting the new behaviors to stick will be that much easier.

Planning is a form of doing, a form of action. It is a giant leap forward towards your new life that happens in an instant. It requires bravery and force to leap this chasm. When it comes to dramatic lifestyle change it can be far less about what you do after you leap –  how you lose weight– than why you leapt in the first place.

James Prochaska, a psychology professor and director of the Cancer Prevention Research Center at the University of Rhode Island, developed TTM along with his colleagues. I had a conversation with Prochaska to discuss some of the stories I’d heard regarding making this leap, and to examine how it all applies to weight loss.

THE DECISIONAL BALANCE SHEET

Getty Images

“Reaching a tipping point to move towards action involves a change of focus,” said Prochaska. “One goes from the balance favoring the ‘cons’ of adopting a new behavior to giving more weight to the ‘pros.’”

But it’s not just a 51-49 tipping of the balance sheet.

“A person is going to be a lot better prepared to stick with the new behavior if the pros significantly outweigh the cons,” Professor Prochaska told me. “If the pros only slightly tip the balance when a person starts down the path to losing weight, she will still be profoundly experiencing those cons. Her balance teeters around ambivalence; she is more inclined to give up.”

In 2010 Jennifer Di Noia, a professor of sociology at William Patterson University in New Jersey, worked with Prochaska on a meta-analysis of 27 different studies of how TTM was used to evaluate decisional balance; they were specifically looking at dietary changes to affect weight loss. Published in the American Journal of Health Behavior, they came to some fascinating conclusions. Specifically for implementing dietary changes, the pros have to outweigh the cons by almost a two-to-one ratio to be truly effective!

This stresses the importance of the great leap forward to cross that decisional chasm. Again, it’s not just tipping gently past the halfway point.

“Pros and cons of decision making is not a conscious, rational, empirical process,” Professor Prochaska said. “It is very emotionally based.”

What can make you passionate about a new direction? What can give you the drive to change? “A dramatic event can certainly cause someone to reevaluate the pros and cons,” Prochaska said.

Chuck had a dramatic event. That’s what killed him.

LIGHTNING STRIKES

Getty Images

For three months Chuck became more aware of the dilemma of his weight, but he was still only barely contemplating what to do. Then it happened.

“My wife Denise came out of the bathroom with a positive pregnancy test,” Chuck said. He explained that this was not something that was planned for. They’d talked about having children, but it was always for the future, when he was healthier and had lost some weight.

“The lightning bolt was instantaneous,” he said. “It first hit me with overwhelming joy that I was going to be a father, but then I also knew with absolute clarity that I had to do something about my condition. It was like someone hit me in the back of the head with a baseball bat, full swing.”

The bat to Chuck’s skull was what ended his life, metaphorically speaking.

“I tell people I died that day. The old Chuck is dead. I killed him.”

The dawning realization that Chuck had to change happened in an instant, where he knew he had to become not just the father his child needed, but the husband his wife deserved. But Chuck didn’t stop thinking there. The powerful “A-ha!” moment brought additional clarity to who he was, and how that needed to change.

“I realized that a big part of my identity was wrapped up in me  being fat,” he told me. The emotion of the moment was clear because years later he still struggled to tell his tale. Voice thick, Chuck continued. “I was always the fat kid growing up. People made fun of me for it. My identity was that of the funny fat guy; the guy girls wanted as a friend, but never to date. People knew me for being able to eat and drink a lot, and that was it.”

Chuck described hating exercise, he hated watching what he ate, hating trying to lose weight and failing. “Before, I never felt like I’d be able to change.” But this time was different. That lightning strike / baseball bat to the head doesn’t come from a considered weighing of the pros and cons, it’s an overwhelming sensation where your emotional self resoundingly proclaims, Dear Life: We Must Do This.

“That old identity was an anchor and he needed to die for me to move forward. That was the defining moment where my life divided into ‘before’ and ‘after.’ The person I am now was born that day.” From ashes gray, a phoenix arose.

“There was an overwhelming sense of joy and relief,” he said. “I didn’t need to struggle with my motivation; it came built in. I had a sense of inner peace and there was no question I would do it. There were still struggles to overcome, but I had this momentum that began that day, and it pushed me forward.”

That sense of joy and relief? There is science to it.

It’s a parameter of the transtheoretical model called “dramatic relief” that can take place when one moves from the contemplation stage and into the planning stage, from thinking to doing, because you anticipaterelief from your problems because you know you’re ready to work for their resolution.

It is important to note that the transtheoretical model of behavior change is not without its critics. We don’t always go through rational, linear stages towards change. Sometimes it is a highly chaotic process involving major shifts in an instant. Chuck went from barely contemplative to beyond action into full-blow maintenance in an instant because he achieved what can be called an epiphany. Lightning struck with an “A-ha!” moment where motivation to succeed comes built in.

It’s the why of losing weight that provides the energy to succeed. And as research shows, perhaps Nike was right. Perhaps rather than methodical change, it’s important to just do it. For some people the greatest success with weight loss is made by taking...