I Can't Lose Weight Because I Ate ______.

Anybody who has ever tried to lose weight uas said this. I guarantee it.

But let's examine that statement. Is it actually true?

It's a little ambiguous, for starters. How much pizza did you eat? Did you have a large ice cream cone instead of a small?

To actually bring truth to this statement, you have to know three things: how many calories you ate during that day besides the large soda, how many calories the large soda was, and if that soda actually put you over.

That's a lot of information. That's a lot of research. That's a lot of math and a lot of monitoring, just to answer that simple question, or to validate the first statement.

Why does it have to be so hard to know?

Maybe that's one of the reasons such a high percentage of people are overweight.

Because they just don't know the impact of the foods they eat.

But why does it have to be all about numbers? Why would people need to know all of that just to lose weight?

The truth of it is that not everyone needs all of that. At least not at first.

Sometimes people can just cut out that soda and they lose weight. But in order to get all the way down to a goal that's probably not the only thing that needs to change.

Or the person that cut out eating sugar every day and dropped 30 pounds. It's possible that they need to lose over 50 and they are about to plateau.

It's only part of the story.

As they lose the weight, the amount of energy they need to consume to exist drops too. Cutting out the sugar is one one piece of the puzzle.

What about the person that stopped eating pizza and dropped over 100 pounds and made their goal weight?

We only know part of their story.

For the record, I made that up. But it wouldn't surprise me if we googled that and found a story on the internet that said so. I literally don't want to look it up because it would make me cringe to see someone trying to make money off of that testimonial.

It's probably on an ad for a product or a book on a fad diet.

45 Year-Old Woman Loses 105 lbs But Cutting Out Pizza and Taking This Magic Burn Pill!!

We are only getting part of the story.

Perhaps the statement is true and those really are her before and after pictures.

But that isn't all.

What else did they do?

We are only seeing the highlights of the program that's going to grab the eyes of those in the grocery checkout line near the magazine racks.

If it was true, then what's her real story?

She cut out pizza and dropped initial weight because the frequent pizza was putting her calorie intake over what she needed most days. She replaced it with something healthier and it dropped.

She started taking the magic pill and was inspired from her recent weight loss.

She adopted better nutrition for her meals that allowed her to keep losing.

Her newfound energy inspired her to exercise. She burned more calories each day and lost more weight.

While still taking the pill each day.

She stayed the course and lost over 100lbs.

The placebo effect messed with her mind and she blamed the pill for her weight loss.

The company is impressed, her purchase was validated. They posted her pictures and the part of the story that sounded cool (the pizza) and included their product.

People see this and the company makes money.

Even though it was the woman's change in lifestyle that really did it. Not the pill.

The pills that cause extra calorie burn only burn some extra bonus ounces per week. These are called thermogenics. Here is the study results.

It took me a long time to believe this fact.

It's all about lifestyle.

Don't get sucked in by misleading wording and partial truths.

That's why your product didn't work.

Now, let's connect this back to the original statement. "I can't lose weight because I ate _____________."

Was it really just about the one donut you ate (500ish calories usually, only about 2 ounces of weight?

Or it it just one part of the story?