When we talk to our clients about their problems with food, exercise or stress it's our job to help them find creative solutions to the obstacles they face. It seems that what most people want or need is to be accepted. Part of being accepted in today's world revolves around appearances. It would seem that those who look good appear to have it all together and must therefore be happy. Society also sends us very strong messages that if you don't look a certain way, then you are in some way failing and not as worthy as those that drive the finer car or look better.

Look at any magazine cover or television show and you will see that being thin is in. The younger girl gets the man and news anchors are getting better and better looking. Have you ever noticed that everyone on the television show Friends is thin and good looking? Can't heavy people have friends too? Darma and Greg are happy and cheerful and live in a cool place but didn't Roseanne and her overweight husband live in a small cluttered house? All around us the message is clear, if you are thinner, you will be happier and better off.   

Since it's our job to help people accomplish just that, to look and feel their best, we always try to convince people that it's a healthy lifestyle they should be after, not just being thin. Being thin doesn't mean being happy. That's one of the biggest lies that most people buy into. If you lose all your weight, you'll find happiness and life will be really wonderful. Right? Wrong! How is that any different than saying "When I get another job, I'll be ultimately happy" or, "When I can move out of this house and into a bigger one I'll finally be satisfied". Imagine that you are unhappy with your current job. Every morning you curse your job and wish you didn't have to go to work. You dread going to work and can't wait until five o'clock everyday. What would happen if for some reason you lost your job and couldn't get another? You couldn't pay your bills and after five months of searching, hoping and praying you still haven't found work. If your old company offered you your job back, wouldn't you take it and be extremely happy to be working again? Isn't it amazing that you are suddenly happy to have your old job, a job you once hated? The only thing that changed was your perception of the situation. The same thing happens when people look at pictures of when they were young. At that time they thought they were fat, yet now as they look at the old pictures of themselves and wonder what they were thinking. They weren't fat at all, and find themselves wishing they could look like that now! Could it be possible that if their perceptions of how bad they looked then were wrong and if so, then maybe their perceptions of how they look now are just as equally distorted? If you weren't happy with the way you looked then, what makes you think you'll be happy if you lose weight now? It's time to begin appreciating what you do have as opposed to what you don't have. After all, you have your health, both your legs and you aren't paralyzed or incapacitated by bad health. 

You see, your weight isn't really the issue. It's a by-product of a stressful lifestyle and inability to see certain truths about your behavior. In order to make changes, you first have to come to terms and admit to yourself that you are where you are today because of lifestyle choices and decisions you have been making. Start realizing that you may be holding yourself back by engaging in something referred to as "perceptual defenses." If you want to move forward you need to come to terms with your own thoughts and uncover the various ways you think about your weight that keep you from moving forward. Quit thinking that you're unhappy with how you look when in fact what's making you unhappy is how you're thinking. A perceptual defense is our way of protecting certain behaviors so we don't have to face the truth, because the truth would mean admitting on some level that we're wrong. Here is an example of a few perceptual defenses. "I hate to exercise". "I don't cook! I'm too busy". "I just can't seem to lose weight, no matter how hard I try". "I'm addicted to sweets, I have absolutely no control over chocolate". You see, these are just a few of the statements that we tell ourselves and these are great examples of perceptual defenses. In other words, our perceptions defend our behaviors. Become aware of your own perceptual defenses. These misguided forms of self-talk are the very things that keep us from changing the very behaviors we seek to change. In other words, if you refuse to acknowledge your own self-destructive behaviors, then these patterns or habits will become more ingrained in your life and become harder to change as time goes on.

Let's take a perceptual defense like "I hate to exercise" and see how one simple statement like that can affect us in so many ways. Most people develop a "perceptual defense" at some point during their life and never question its origins. Because they never question where the thought originated, most individuals tend to act on the thought as if it's a fact that will not or cannot be changed. The first question you should ask is "Where did I first learn that exercise was something you should hate?" Maybe you had a bad experience as a child in gym class. Suppose you are in gym class and you have a classmate named Johnny. Johnny is a bit pudgy and is very uncoordinated. The gym coach tells Johnny to climb the rope and Johnny can't even get off the first knot. The kids in class laugh as the gym teacher hollers at him to get his butt up the rope. Can you see how Johnny may grow up thinking that exercise is something he should hate? Maybe you had a similar experience. Here is another example. Imagine you are playing the last inning of a soft ball game with two outs and a man on third. All you have to do is get to first base and your team wins. Unfortunately, you strike out. Game over, your teammates hate you and the other team rejoices. Bottom line, people that use statements like "I hate to exercise" or "I can't cook" need to question how they created that perceptual defense and reframe their viewpoint to a more realistic perception. The only thing a statement like "I hate to exercise" has brought you is an out of shape body. Maybe you mistook one bad experience to form an all-inclusive opinion that simply wasn't true. Instead of saying "I hate to exercise", start asking yourself "What do I like to do and what am I willing to try?" It's the same thing with saying, "I can't cook" or "I don't have time." When you make statements like that guess what, you will find that you can't cook and don't have time! 

Our perception is our reality. It is shaped and molded by our experiences throughout life and the interactions that we experienced as we grew up. Consequently, we engage in behaviors that seem to work for us and on some level, in the beginning, they did work. The trouble is that as we age and things change, certain behaviors that used to work no longer do. Yet, our perceptual defenses convince us that something is wrong with everyone else. This stops us from asking the hard questions and seeing our behaviors for what they are. For example, it feels good to go home at night after a long day of work and sit down on the couch and vegetate. It feels even better to do it with a bag of Lays potato chips with French onion dip. I don't think anyone consciously sets out to become obese or to gain 30 pounds. Yet, it evolves as they continue to engage in certain behaviors for too long. By not exercising and eating junk, the natural laws of the universe take over and eventually you can't escape the problems that will occur with your weight and/or health. You have to ask yourself and analyze why you are unwilling to do the things you must do to get the things you say you want. Why are you unwilling to cook? Why are you unwilling to exercise? Perceptual defenses can really hold you back. Here's one for you to consider. Behaviorists tell us that you won't engage in a behavior if you don't get something out of it. Now you might ask yourself, what am I getting out of not exercising. Well, perceptual defenses will tell you "It's easier not to, or I have a bad back, or I don't have time". Although those may sound like valid excuses to you, they are perceptual defenses that allow you to keep on doing what you really want to do. Not exercise! If you don't exercise, how can you get what you say you want if your goal is to lose weight? It all boils down to becoming aware and acknowledging that some of your perceptual defenses aren't working and you need to question them. You may be able to come up with 10 really good reasons why you can't change and you know what, keep it up and you can prove yourself right once again.