If weight loss is your goal, Fitness columnist Emmet Rushe says you simply need to make the decision now and change your relationship with food.

This article might not go down well with some.

It might touch on a nerve or two.

But it’s time to realise that everything we do is a choice.

Whether you realise it or not, where you are now regarding your weight and your current nutritional habits is completely your own choice.

(This statement does not apply to anyone with a genuine medical condition that prevents them from losing weight.)

Type ‘Diet’, ‘Nutrition’, ‘Low carb’, ’Paleo’, ‘Weight Loss’ or any other related term into a Google search engine and you will get millions of options for free.

Look up Amazon online and you can get full systems that will help you to lose weight.

Look at sites like Precision Nutrition, Shredded By Science, Go Kaleo, Authority Nutrition and they are giving endless amounts of information, again for free, that WILL help you to lose weight and keep it off.

Each week in my articles, I give tips and hints on how to get healthier and lose weight.  How many of you actually put these into practice?

The one thing that most of you have to realise is that the only reason that you cannot lose weight is because you simply don’t really want to lose weight.

You might think you want to lose weight, but for most of you;
The pain of giving up the foods that are causing your weight problems outweighs the pain you feel every time you look in the mirror.

Obviously, I am not talking about physical pain here. It is that emotional pull that you feel for the foods that are holding you back. That pull is stronger than the pull of wanting to give them up.

Daniel Meek wrote an excellent article on this very subject.

In it he wrote;

“Nothing about losing weight or changing dietary habits is easy. If you think it is, stop reading now because this might get painful for you”.

“I’m sick to death of hearing people say that they want to lose weight and that they’ve tried everything”.

“Because they usually have tried everything.
Except the most simple, basic thing!
Every powder, every pill and every single shortcut because they want an easy way out”.

Does this sound familiar?

Have you tried every fad diet to death only to turn to another one when the first has run its course?

You see, it isn’t the type of diet or the food that you eat that is the problem.

The problem is your relationship with the food. It’s the poor habits that you have built up that you ignore and don’t try to change.

Drinking every weekend, eating highly processed foods, having chips with every meal each time you are out, eating nothing but sandwiches as your lunch, refusing to eat vegetables, refusing to drink water; the list goes on and on.

There is an easier way to do it, only for most of us it isn’t easy.

It involves eating food.

Non-processed, whole foods.

But that is no fun, because you tried that once and when it got hard or the weight stalled for more than a week, it was an easier choice to give up.

The problem is that whenever people attempt to try and lose weight this way, they always go for 100%, and they don’t have to.

If you aim for 90%, this allows you some leeway throughout the week.

The leeway isn’t a 3-course meal that has 2000 cals in it, and then a few drinks before you go home.

We have to be realistic here.

Weight loss is simple, it’s not easy.

Write that down and remember it.

If you truly want to lose weight, you have to accept that you will find it difficult at times.  It will require change and effort and some people won’t be ready for it at the beginning.

Here’s what you can do.

Write down your food intake for an entire week.

Look at it with an open mind.

Pick out what you think is the one thing that is worse than all the rest.

Try and remove that for 2 weeks.

If you can successfully do that for 2 weeks, review your diet and repeat the process with something else.

Keep doing this until you have switched your diet from highly processed calorie dense foods, to lower calorie nutrient dense whole foods.

Start with this and you will lose weight and change your relationship with food.

It’s your choice.
#TrainSmart